Wednesday, May 09, 2007

My favorite announcement of the year

Please pardon the interruption. Some of you have been very disrespectful to your teachers lately. If you are disrespectful to your teachers, I'll send you home. If you are disrespectful to your fellow students, I'll send you home. If you are disrespectful to any of the staff, I'll send you home. I just gave out 20 days at the house. I've got a stack of referrals and a new box of pens, and I will send you home.

(Students: Man, Ms. Principal come back crazier than ever. She'll do it too, she be sending people home for nothing)

Pardon the interruption again. Seniors: you have not graduated yet. If you think you don't have to follow the rules any more, I'll give you some days at the house too, and you won't graduate. You are not certified yet, and if you decide you don't have to follow school procedures any more, I'll send you home.

I paraphrase, of course, but these were the two best announcements I've heard all year. Maybe that says a little about how my attitude as a teacher has changed. At the beginning of the year I don't think I understood how important it is that the students have someone to be terrified of. I even made a student terrified of me when I told him I'd break his middle finger if he insisted on continuing to raise it in the direction of other students. He tried me on it, too, and I gave it a pretty good twist. Someone suggested I'd get fired for that up north... they were probably right.

2 comments:

Mr. Aaron said...

Kinda sounds like the realization I made today that I should have slung my clipboard across the room, shattering it into a zillion pieces earlier in the year instead of today.

JTarfiel said...

That's awesome. I also have learned the value of terrifying children. As for getting away with certain things you wouldn't elsewhere, it's one of the few perks of working in the Delta.