o no you did NOT

last thursday was not the greatest day for me. having caused a child to burst into tears and continue to bawl for most of 5th period, i was going to seek her out during 6th period to reiterate why said child had been assigned lunch detention. (curious? after refusing 3x to pick up her binder which had spilled its contents all over my classroom floor, and after my suggesting she get busy taking notes, she defiantly wrote on her notes page, 'learned this in 4th grade' to which i responded with a note of my own: going to lunch detention tomorrow. clearly this was not respectful, and you are probably aware of how i feel about respect in my classroom.)

however, i was distracted from my reparation mission with this student because a new student had unexpectedly been enrolled in my 6th period. as i was introducing myself and getting this new student a seat and a warmup page, i was again distracted by 6 more new students arriving to my class.

now, i should explain that my 6th period class had been shrinking the first few weeks of schools as student schedules got ironed out, until only 12 students remained in the class. this is much smaller than my other classes so myself and the students referred to it as our 'cute little tiny class.' these students are some of my lowest students, but since it was so small, i felt like i was able to give them a lot more individual attention. i saw some results from this on the last quiz, as their class average went from my lowest class to my second highest class! i was anxious to see if this trend would continue. however, i digress. 6 more new students.

it seems the reason behind my 'cute little tiny class' was that some spots were being reserved for students who were in the ESL Academy because they just barely moved here from Mexico. fun times! i asked them to introduce themselves to the class, and (after a translation) they introduced themselves...in spanish. fortunately for my non-spanish-speaking-self, most of my students are bilingual. the new students do have a teacher that comes with them 2 x a week, but the other days we are by ourselves. so, feeling rather helpless, the next day i paired up my bilingual students with the non-english speaking students and have them do a lot of translating for me. its not really the best situation as these students, while benefiting from having to explain what they are learning, are having to work extremely hard to help out their classmates. they are being great sports about it and i am most proud. however, these new students with absolutely no warning, were quite the surprise.