high school? um, no.

I have to say that the kindergarten kids were much better behaved and less prone to tantrums than the high-schoolers. There was a change in plans, so instead of teaching English, I got Science for two days. Loni is probably a better authority than me, but my impression was that most of these kids were sophomores. Don't they learn manners by then? And as Hoosiers, they should certainly know the words of one of the state's favored sons, John Cougar Mellencamp: "When I fight authority, authority always wins." In this case, I was authority, and I won, but I'm kind of wondering if it was worth it. The first day was chock-full of challenges, requests for bathroom breaks, "smart" comments, cheating (cheating!), and even furniture disassembly. I sent three kids to the principal's office in one period alone. It really boggles my mind. I'm trying not to sound too old here, but these kids were brazenly disrespectful. Each period is 48 minutes long, and they only had to endure my presence for one period per day, but apparently that was too much. Needless to say, the second day (today), the students were dismayed to find that I'd (foolishly) come back for more. Luckily, today I followed the finest of substitute teaching traditions and showed a movie during every period. There was still plenty of sass, and I overheard some conversations that showed a remarkable lack of judgement on their parts (ok, so I wasn't surprised), but nobody went to the office, so I guess the day was a success.