Fickle? Or Just Working for the Weekend?

By Cyndi Faircloth – English/Social Studies/Art/Journalism teacher

Ahhh…students. Sometimes they’re so fickle.

Last week, I went home in a great mood and told my husband how great my History class is. The kids were excited about class that day. One student said, “I love learning History this way!” Another commented that they’d learned “so much” in my class.

Students said this as I was passing out a set of documents for them to analyze, in order to answer an essential question. My little teacher’s heart was glad that they were enjoying the class and it was nice to hear students say that they were actually learning something from me! (Wow! My work was worth it!)

Today, we were finishing up a set of documents from yesterday. Then, we were starting another set of documents on a different topic.  Apparently, kids can only handle one topic per day and learn “so much” from me.

As I was handing out the second set of documents, I heard complaints:

“So many documents!”

“So much to read!”

“More?!”

Fickle I tell you. Fickle.

I tell myself its because today is the last day of the school week before a long weekend. They just don’t have the stamina today because they are focused on the next couple of days off. [Point of clarification – “off” for the students does not mean “off” for me. I have two days of professional development classes and discussion ahead. I sure hope no one hears me say anything like “So much to read!” or “More?!”] Or maybe its because they weren’t done talking about the first topic and they wanted to spend more time on it. Or maybe I didn’t do a good job introducing the topic and how it connects to today.

Who knows? But we’ll finish those documents on Monday and start some new ones. Keep on swimming…

*sigh*