"I'm just kidding!"

This week was one that will stick out in my mind when I look back on my first year of teaching.

By Tuesday lunch I had thrown three kids out of my class. There was a fire alarm - interrupting a test I was giving - in the rain. Another student cut my class because he "wasn't prepared for the test" I gave. Yet another student told me "I don't go to this school" when I asked him why he was in the hallway and not at class.

Two of the kids I threw out of class stemmed from related incidents. I confiscated the cell phone of one kid, Smelly (no he doesn't really smell bad, but that's what I'm gonna call him here), because I caught him a second time sending text messages in class. A short while later, his classmate, Woody, decided it would be a good idea to sneak behind me after writing something on the board and take Smelly's phone and return it to him.

Upon seeing Smelly with his phone, and immediately realizing how he got it back, I sent Woody down to the office, over his protests that, "I was just kidding!" After Woody left, Smelly persisted with "That was stupid. He was just joking. Of course I was gonna give it back to you." After Smelly continued to go on about the stupidity of my decisions, he was sent down to join his classmate.

The student who told me he was not a student at the school (and then shortly thereafter changed his story to "I'm getting paid to pick up trash from the hallway," and then again changed his story to "I'm going to the bathroom" and then proceeded to walk away from me as I was talking to him), also fell back on the "I was just kidding!" excuse. Said to the tone of "Why are you all bent out of shape? Geeeeez!" I'm not exactly sure why the students chose that explanation.

I tried, with each "kidding" student individually, to explain that their actions and comments were most certainly not jokes. My guess is that theirs was a defensive move: "Maybe, if the teacher thinks it was just a joke, I won't get in trouble." But for the teacher to say, "Oh, you were just joking? In that case don't worry about it," would set a really lousy precedent as an authority.

In different ways, each of the three students was trying to gain a step of power over me. Each was trying to say, "I'm the one who runs things here. What you say / think / ask is second to me." They see a young teacher and think, "Oh, he's my pal. He's cool, he won't get me in trouble." Not so fast there, slick.

Yet what's amusing to me is that as big as they puff themselves up, it's remarkable how much the threat of a phone call to their parents will yank them back in line. The biggest ego of the three, the "I don't go to this school" student, maintained that he didn't care if I called home, and that even if I did, nothing would come of it. But talking with other teachers who know him well, that's probably the worst outcome for him - me informing his dad of his son's disrespect. Before I had the opportunity to call home, the student approached me and agreed to stay after for detention, saying he just wanted "to get it over and done with." Code for "if you call my folks, I'll be paying for this for a while."
The other two were given opportunities to speak to their folks before I called home. Neither did, and both phone calls were made. And wouldn't you know? There was absolutely no problem in that class the two other times since then.

Nicely, this week ended on a high note. I was walking down the hallway with Hoppie, a fellow teacher who's part of the completely school-inappropriate lunch crew. She was wearing her Casual Day outfit of a Patriots jersey. Knowing my loyalties to the 4-12 J-E-T-S from New York (Jersey), she joked that I'm a bad person because I'm rooting for the Pats to lose this weekend. She picked up a caulking gun lying on the ground and pointed it at me (there's a lot of construction going on in the school) and I said (not intending to be the least bit dirty), "Watch out what you do with that caulk." Immediately and independently, our impure minds changed the pronunciation of "caulk" and we ended up doubled over in laughter.

If there were any students around, I would have told them "You see? Now that's how you joke!"