Whenever I reached the saturation point with any one of those insubordinate boys, I asked the classmates to tell me the student's name. Conveniently for me, the students were in the seventh grade, and had not yet developed a code of ethics which forbids revealing the name of an offending student. I then wrote up an office referral. By the end of the hour, a large fraction of the students were in the adminitrative office.
Thank goodness for planning periods. Not only do they give you time to recuperate from classes like that first period class, they also give you time to think about ways in which you can improve.
After the third period class came in, I quickly became acquainted with AJ, who was throwing paper wads. I had a piece of paper readily available and I was all prepared to write down the name of each child who volunteered to read aloud. All I had to do was glance at the list, and I wouldn't have to ask the embarrassing question, "What was your name again?"
At first, there were only three or four students volunteering to read, just as there were in the first period class. But as the other students saw how much attention those few students were getting, the list grew longer and longer. Moreover, I saw very little misbehavior from any of those students on that list. The list included Shandia, Amy, Kayley, John, Michael, Cory, AJ, Caroline . . .wait a second, did I say AJ? Just a while ago, he was throwing paper wads!
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