I was doing a very practical lessons with my year eights yesterday and as with all the best lessons it involved straws. And as with pretty much all my lessons with that class there was a disproportionately high amount of time spent on crowd control.
One girl was complaining that a boy had called her a name, he argued that he'd only done so because she'd put bits of straw down his back. It's the part of teaching that I'm least interested in; I really couldn't care less about this kind of petty squabble. Though please don't think I'm so nonchalant towards more serious fallings out.
I think bashing their heads together would be the easiest way to resolve such issues but sadly this isn't allowed so you have to be a little more diplomatic.
I pointed out that I could actually see a bit of straw in the boys collar. The response was one of 'urgh, that's pervey looking down his shirt.' Having established with them that I didn't have some bizarre teenage boy back fettish I tried to point out that it's unlikely anyone would take pleasure from looking for straw on someone's neck.
'But paedophiles are weird'
Touche
2008-07-19 @ 10:30