Chalkboard

Students are going to try to see what you are made of when you first start teaching...are you going to crumble or are you strong? I had a test my first year teaching high school. Oh, they were so nice, friendly, kind, and devious! They plotted and planned their little scheme at my expense. They probably talked their little plan up around the 11th grade. They thought they were so cute, I bet, as they congregated to see what action would really "get" to me.

I am sure they wanted to retaliate for how I treated them - IN THEIR LITTLE MINDS. They had been talkative and I wasn't going to have my English class be disrupted that way. I wanted their full attention! I had just finished the Master's program of Secondary English Education at Georgia State University and was "full of it." You know - thought I was the high and mighty queen of English, Composition, and Grammar. Well, I was full of it, alright.

They may teach you semantics in grad school, but did they teach you classroom management? Nada. That you had to learn on your own. And the personality of the classroom changes each period. You may have a rowdy class one period, the next a quiet one. It just depends. The longer one teaches, the better one gets at it...to either thwart the upcoming problems of behavior or to handle them as they come. Experience is the best teacher. I was one year new.

So, to combat my chatty group that year, I think I asked for students to control themselves. Then I think I pleaded. Then, I think I punished. Well, that punishment came in the form of pop quizzes to make sure they were following my teacher centered directions. (I later learned to conduct more student centered discussions to keep them interested - instead of teacher driven) These American Literature 11th graders weren't bad. They were just chatty when they needed to be taking notes.

So, I decided to zing! it to them! I made out a pop quiz from my notes. If my notes read something like this: "Christopher Columbus wrote about his travels to the new world in journals. He sent these journals to Spain trying to convince King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that he, indeed, found a new passage to the East. He elaborated about the treasures in these journals because he wanted them to continue financing future expeditions" then my pop quiz read something like this: "______________wrote about his _________to the ___ ______ in ________. He sent these ________to _________trying to convince King________and Queen __________that he, _______, found a new ______ to the ________. He elaborated about the ________in these ________because he wanted them to continue __________future _________."

Pretty bad, huh?

But it worked. They all failed. Now, I wasn't planning on keeping them in the cellar. I just wanted to have something to hold over their heads. It certainly wasn't right. I don't even think what I did was legal. But I tell you, whenever they got the least bit chatty, all I had to say was, "I am going to count that Christopher Columbus test" and that's all it took for them to listen. After a while, I didn't even have to say "Christopher Columbus test." I just said, "test."

So, sure they were eager to get me back.

You've got to realize that in the 1970's, there were no dry erase markers and dry erase boards. There were dusty chalk and dusty blackboards. I went up to the board one day to write something on it, but before I could, I needed to erase what had been on the board from the previous day. One particular FUN class (fun = chatty) really planned a good one for me. As I picked up the eraser to erase the words written in chalk on the messy chalkboard, I swiped the eraser along the board and it LIT UP with fire! Someone had placed MATCHES in between the little grooves of that eraser. With the matches scraping along the black slate stone of the board, that eraser just burned brightly until I gave a whoop and a holler, turned around, saw the bright eyes of my students in facial poses that weren't sure whether to laugh or look stunned, and then said, " THAT WAS GREAT!"

Whatszat?

They were totally taken aback to see a huge grin on my face and the laughing words coming out of my mouth, "THAT WAS GREAT!"

There was no emergency with the matches. They didn't stay lit and I proceeded to tell them my mother's PLAYBOY CENTERFOLD story (see PLAYBOY CENTERFOLD story in blog) . What they thought was going to turn into a fit by their teacher, turned in a squeal of laughter and then another story about how some other high school students tried to "best" another teacher one decade before.

After that moment, we all got along splendidly for the remainder of the year. Touche.