Thursday, February 16, 2012

A first time for everything

So far the garden is going pretty well. We have several plants growing and only one small problem. None of the plants growing are growing where we planted them. For instance, in one bed we planted watermelon and in one bed we planted peppers. We now have watermelons growing in both beds and peppers growing in a third bed. I have a theory about birds coming, digging up the seeds, and then crapping them out in another place where they grew. Overall though, the garden is still quite nice looking and should be producing its first fruits within a week or two.
On to something more interesting. This week I made my first learner cry and go home. Then another first, I had my first parent come to school to find out what I did to make her child cry and go home. So let me explain. Thursday I gave all my classes’ physical science exams. I made them extra long because I have double periods on Thursday which means I teach the same class for two straight periods. The first class (8A) worked nearly the entire time on the exams and my preliminary grading shows they did ok. Grade 10A followed and they worked nearly the whole two periods. Then grade 8B took the exam. The entire class finished in about 25 minutes. I look at the exams and notice that half of the answers are blank or have a random word filled in. This angers me severely. Some of the learners went to sleep after the exam (I have no problem with this because I did it all the time in school) so I started waking them up by going around and tapping on them with the exams. Not hard but hard enough that they woke up and knew it was time to listen to the teacher. I start asking questions off of the exam and going over answers. One girl goes back to sleep. I go over and wake her again. She turns her head and says “no” and puts her head back down on her desk. Now, there are several ways to anger a teacher (I’ve done many of them) but saying “No” to a teacher is probably the fastest way to get their blood boiling. I pull her desk away. She puts her head on her lap and says “No” again. I asked her to leave the Stand up. “No”. “Leave the class.” “No”. I am left with no option. I start pulling her chair out from under her. She stands up and leaves the classroom. When she gets outside she runs away from school and I have no chance to talk to her away from the other learners. I go back to the exam.
About five minutes later a parent comes to my door with another teacher. I escort her to the office and we have a conversation through/with the principal, it was partially in KKG. She wasn’t angry, she just wanted to know why her child came home crying. I explain my side of the story and she agreed that her child was out of line. She also gave me a little advice, next time don’t send her child out of the classroom because it’s embarrassing. Instead just beat her. We left on good terms and everything was fine.