The joys of being a young teacher...

One of my students came in during lunch today, looking very concerned.

Student: "Ms. A? What happened to your head?"
Me: "Uh...?" (Did I draw on myself with a whiteboard marker?)
Student: "This morning you had a big bruise on your head."
Me: "I did?"
Student: "Yeah, it's right there." *points to the side of my forehead*
Me: "Um... that's acne. I'm having a bad skin day."
Student: "Oops."
Me: "Thanks for checking on me, though."

I also accidentally wore the school uniform (khakis and a navy blue sweater) and was mistaken for a student in the hall.

Other recent stories:
- My school's VP walked into my room and looked around. He didn't see me standing in front of him, so he started to freak out a little. "Where is Ms. A? Where is she?" I was quite literally standing under his nose. When he noticed me waving my arms, he said, "Oh, I thought you were a student." In front of my class. Thanks a lot.

- An 8th grader shoved me while I was walking up the stairs. Another 8th grader said, "Dude! That's a teacher!" The first 8th grader had had no idea.

At the very least, looking the same age as your students gives you plenty of entertaining stories.

One of my biggest challenges this year has been keeping my post-lunch class in line.

I call one of my students in that class the Perfume Pyromaniac. As the name suggests, she once doused her hand in perfume and set it on fire.

In class.

(Fortunately, not my class.)

The Perfume Pyromaniac made catty comments, called out during lecture constantly, and drew as much attention to herself as possible. I bribed, wheedled, cajoled, and eventually started kicking her out and sending her to the other 7th grade pre-algebra class the first time her behavior prevented me from teaching. I was pretty sure that the way to reach her was by showering her with attention, and she was winning every day that I continued to fight with her. So, Perfume Pyromaniac spent a solid week and a half getting kicked out in the first few minutes of the class (the first few minutes that she deigned to show up for)... but when she was in class, I positive-narrated the heck out of her.

I started to see small changes.

She started coming in five minutes late instead of ten minutes late, and she made it a few minutes longer without getting kicked out.

She started coming in a minute after the bell, out of breath. (Hey! She was running to class!)

One day, she made it through an entire class. Granted, her head was on her desk, but she was only calling out every 5 or so minutes, rather than every 30 seconds, and she would stop after one hand gesture.

The following day, she was 30 seconds late to class, showed up out of breath, and asked for a pencil and paper. She solved the Do Now along with the rest of the class and made it through the first slide of new material before putting her head down.

Progress. That was three more minutes of engagement than I had gotten the previous day.

I spoke with her during the independent practice and told her that I was so excited to see her participating during the first part of class. She lit up. I asked her if she could commit to paying attention for just a little bit longer the following day... could she stay on track during the Do Now and during the first half of the new material? She agreed... and smiled! We're only a few days into the new-and-improved Pyromaniac, and I'm loving it.

Today, I was scanning the results from the district benchmark in the office, and she was sitting there as well. One of her friends was complaining about his math teacher, and you know what my Perfume Pyromaniac said? "You should switch to Ms. A's class; you'd like her."