Classroom Interruptions

With Thanksgiving being just next week, students are DEFINITELY showing that they're ready to be out of school. They seem to be more antsy, they don't really want to do anything and they've kinda had this idea that since it's the week before break that they don't have to do anything. Well... that's obviously wrong.  Mrs. Hastings and I are no strangers to classroom interruptions.  We have one difficult class in particular.  It's really hard to explain the class atmosphere to someone without them actually just coming in and seeing it.  There's one student in particular who, well, is VERY attention hungry.  He starts singing or humming randomly in class, stares at other students, makes inappropriate comments, makes the other students feel uncomfortable, plays imaginary drums and, recently, decided that we was going to stand up, stretch and then lay down in the middle of the floor and take a nap... Yea... All of his teachers have been struggling with him.  Generally, if there's a negative classroom interruption and students aren't willing to bring it back in to the lesson, I remind them that we don't have to do fun activities in games in class and have on several occasions reminded them that they can copy their vocabulary lists twenty times for the rest of class.  I hate being the bad person and there are some classes where I just always have to have a strong hand.  I don't think they always realize that the class could be so fun and easygoing if they just went along with what we did and I didn't have to keep bringing them back in line... It's pretty frustrating...

Who I *Hopefully* Influenced

This prompt is a little tricky for me. I generally don't think of myself as some big motivational person.  Don't get me wrong, I always try to get students to do their best but I just don't like to think of myself as an inspirational person.  However, if I had to pick a student that I think I influenced, I would pick my student "Fidel". During the first weeks of classes, he had a really dry sense of humor and was very sarcastic and cynical (not always the best combination).  Mrs. Hastings wasn't originally sure how well she and him were going to get along, however I have friends that are very similar to him and I knew that he was really a sweet kid, but he wouldn't want people to know that. Over the semester, we've had a really good relationship because we can joke around and if another student in class says something about how "stupid" and activity is, he's been quick to defend it in his own way.  It's really cool seeing that we've gotten on his good side and I've really enjoyed having him in class.