Friday, April 11, 2008

Almost True Scenes from Garlic's Teaching Career

This is Mr. Potatobrains: a student who, thankfully, I usually only have twice a month for an advisory group. A student who, yesterday, did exactly what Mr. Potatobrains is doing in the illustration, only I couldn't illustrate the defiant mumbling and the arguing with the simplest of directions. This is not the easiest group of kids and often they follow Mr. Potatobrains' example, but yesterday even the other students had had enough. So when I told Mr. Potatobrains to go next door for the rest of the half hour and he argued with me, the rest of the class was just, like, "Just get out Mr. Potatobrains!"
How hard is it to put your feet on the floor and just write 3 goals for how you want to do on the dreaded state test? The 8th graders next door laughed at him for getting kicked out of a half-hour of class. I hope he was at least somewhat chastened.
And thankfully Mr. Potatobrains will be spending his 18 hours of testing time not in my classroom, or the whole cleaver fantasy may have become much more of a temptation and I would be posting Radish from the state prison and probably minus the weaponry.
Disclaimer: I certainly would never harm a student, and the use of a cleaver aimed at Mr. Potatobrains' head is purely fiction. I, of course, not actually being Garlic, put up with all kinds of lovely behavior displayed by several fine specimens in the classroom, because that's what teachers do. Man! I've edited this post a bazillion times now.

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