Can't stop this feeling

Done and done, survived the first week, barely.

So the honeymoon period I talked about earlier this week is officially over. It was over on Thursday afternoon 7th period. I got my first flat out refusal to do any kind of work. It was from a girl that I really didn't expect it to come from. Strange. I thought we were doing something that would get them excited about our class for the semester (18 weeks). Yah, not so much. She wasn't malicious about it, but passive aggressive flat out refusal to do anything except sit in class and tell me to my face, "I don't care what you do, I'm not working. There's nothing you can do that will make me do anything. I don't care." The scary thing, they girl had no fear. It was the 4th day of school!

Now normally this would roll off my shoulders and I could care less. Except I've spent too much time this summer with happy people who are willing to be flexible. I haven't developed my tough teacher hide yet. Need to work on that.

It didn't escalate into a yelling match, this girl was above that. Which is kind of weird, but I admire her for standing her ground. Granted it wasn't the correct thing to do, but she kept her cool. So it boiled down into a power struggle between the two of us in the middle of class. I realized that neither of us were going to back down. So I punted and dropped the activity completely and moved onto the next step of my lesson. I didn't want to continue with the same activity. Once one student has taken a stand and "won" in the students eyes, the rest of that activity is pretty much toast. So we just moved on, said student being kept back at the end of class. The rest of the class didn't say a word, they were trying to figure out what I was going to do, how I was going to react to this obvious display of a power struggle. We moved on, but with a marked change of the atmosphere in my classroom.

At the end of class I kept her back to discuss one on one what exactly happened. She again refused to say anything beyond, "I hate this class. I don't ever want to come back. It's boring here. You can't make me do anything." That was the extent of our conversation. It's the 4th day, of course you hate what we're doing, it's all rules and procedures. Without them, the class is chaos and nothing happens that is worthwhile.

I mentioned this student's behavior in passing to one of her team teachers. He was intrigued because this girl is apparently a nice student. Couldn't of fooled me. He in turn mentioned it to another teacher on his team who in turn talked to her. Middle schools are worse than a bunch of old women sitting at the beauty parlor with their hair in curlers sitting under the blowdryers gossiping. Be careful what you say, it spreads faster than wildfire.

On Friday this same girl came and asked very quietly to talk with me in private at the beginning of 7th hour, of course I agreed. Honestly I was intrigued at the marked change in demeanor. The day before she was disrepectful and arrogant. Give her a night and she is respectful and wanting to talk. As we step into the hall she pulls a paper out and asks if she can read a letter to me. Now I'm really interested in what's going on. As she begins to read this letter she starts to cry and can't stop. Now I realize that there is more going on to this situation than I thought. It took her a few times to calm herself down enough to read.

Turns out there are 2 students that she has repeatedly over the last few years that she has continually gotten into "drama" with. It is so bad that already on the 4th day of school, she can't even be in the same class with them. She shuts down. As I go over in my mind the events from the previous day, it all fits. She refuses because she knew if she did the task these students would have never let her hear the end of it. By refusing she saved face, granted she annoyed the teacher. But rather make the teacher mad than give these students ammunition to attack her with later.

I don't care what anyone says. Middle school is not for sissies.

Now that I understood the entire situation, I felt so bad. I can't believe I reacted in the way that I did. We both apologized. I'll be working with the counselor to find another class for her transfer to for 7th period. She can't function in my room right now. She is too worried about what these students are going to do to her. Fine by me. Students need to feel safe in order to learn. If they are too worried about what someone is going to say when the answer or share their projects, they are not going to be focusing on actually learning.

On another note, I think I picked up a bug. It's nothing really bad, but I feel awful. Tired, headache, tummy feels weird. Just generally yucky. So I've spent today in bed....all day. Still in my pj's at 4:45 in the afternoon. Hopefully it will pass quickly and I won't have to take time off. Sub plans are even more horrible to create than normal lesson plans.