Cry me a River

In training we had to mock teach and also practice classroom control. We had these cards that had different scenarios on them such as yelling out answers, not sitting in your chair, not understanding the material, etc. The person mock teaching would step out of the room and two of us would choose cards and act them out. Of course the people acting took each scenario to the extreme (or so I thought). We would climb under the table, write on the board, yell out answers, and chat with our neighbors, but one situation that stands out in my mind is Q pretending to cry.

Well what I thought was an extreme situation of a student crying, happened not once, not twice, but THREE times to me last week! I mean I know that I’m a really intimidating, scary, and mean person (ha), but really three times in one week?!

On Wednesday it was raining all day so the students brought their umbrellas into the classroom. Now these weren’t travel-sized umbrellas, for some reason their parents thought it was necessary to send their child to school with golf-sized umbrellas. Bigger umbrellas mean there’s a bigger chance to poke or stab people with them. It wasn’t quite to that extreme, but one of my students somehow got wedged in his chair between the wall and his desk and his umbrella was digging into him and he started crying. I fixed the situation by un-wedging him and he was fine.

Thursday was an “acting” day. The students recite a news report about the topic of the day and I record them in front of a blue screen. It’s actually really cool. There are usually two parts and each student gets a part. The kids are smart enough to realize the part with the least amount of lines is the easiest to memorize and act out so of course everyone wants that role. Well, one student didn’t get the part he wanted and started to cry. I stood my ground and did not let him change parts. I did however let him choose first the next time. Since then I make them draw parts out of a hat to make it fairer.

Friday’s sob story is a little less climatic than the other two. One student (another boy!) had a bad headache and started crying.

Boohoo.