The Patience for Seventh Graders

I've had a lot of frustration lately with my third-period 7th grade GENERAL social studies students. They misbehave. There are 33 of them. They ignore their work. Their reading ability is very weak. They lose their papers. I give them new ones. They lose those. They make me scream. They make my voice go scratchy from so much shouting over them. They make me crazy. They hate me. I wonder if I hate them. But its my job - and I care - so I keep going back. I try new tricks, I revise old tricks. I try incentives, I try scoldings. They write out their punishments. I give them points and prizes. Sometimes I wonder if I'm getting anywhere. I beg them to pay attention. I try to persuade them I want to help them, but I need their cooperation. Can they please cooperate? Pretty, pretty please?!? They give a mixed response. I leave class feeling like I have no clue what I'm doing. I wonder what can be done.

Fast-forward to my fourth-period 7th grade HONORS social studies students. They are angels. Seriously. They follow my directions. They work independently. They understand nuances of their readings. They pay attention. They make jokes at appropriate times rather than ALL the time. We laugh. We have fun. They spout off the details the day's lesson with ease. I leave class feeling like a great teacher.

Fast-forward to the evening. I'm grading papers. I'm grading my 7th grade HONORS papers. They did them all by themselves. The answers are correct. They spell the words correctly. The papers are beautiful.

Then I'm grading the 7th grade general papers. I walked them through the work, basically giving them the answers. But as I'm reading, I notice something. They really REALLY tried. I wrote answers on the board for them to copy onto their papers. They copied carefully. Their words are spelled correctly and every blank is completed. As much as they make me crazy, I have to acknowledge that with the very simple task, they tried. Its hard to guess how much they actually learned from copying answers and being fed everything. Still, the effort means something. I want to reward them and encourage them to press forward. I'm determined that they learn to READ their textbooks, not just learn from pictures and my explanations and dramatizations and dancing around the room. Words are power. Books are power. And I want them to have that power. HOW can I bridge this gap? How do I push them higher? And again has this simple task taught them ANYTHING?

These are the questions I ask myself every day when the bell rings at the end of 3rd period.

Here's to the hope that I'm getting through to them . . . somehow.