Fuddland

Landmark day today: I made a kid cry in one of my classes for the first time.

He’s quite a hyperactive boy at the best of times — if I was any kind of expert I’d probably say he had some kind of attention deficit disorder — and I tend to spend quite a lot of any given lesson telling him to sit down after he jumps out of his chair for the umpteenth time, waving his hand and launching into a meandering [and usually incorrect] explanation of whatever I’ve just asked the class.

But today, he was the worst I’ve ever seen him, acting up and messing around, not concentrating on the work, and I ended up sending him out of the class so I could actually teach the rest of the children something. At the end of the lesson I called him back in to have a quiet talk about his behaviour — not to punish him further, but to check that he was okay and to see if there were any deeper issues we needed to talk about that were affecting his schoolwork. He got all teary and apologetic, and I felt quite sorry for him. We shook on the deal that he’d be better behaved in the next lesson.

He’s not all bad, he just needs to calm down. And at least he doesn’t bring flick-knives to school, until his classmate, with whom I had to have serious words just the other day.

#1

Daisy | 2006 / 03 / 18 – 01:18

What age are they David?

#2

David | 2006 / 03 / 18 – 06:25

Re #1: Dunno, mid- to late-forties, I think. ;) Naw, they’re around eight to ten years old.

#3

Daisy | 2006 / 03 / 20 – 07:33

*rolls eyes*, forgets what comment she was originally going to make… ;-)

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