Love in unexpected places

I want so desperately to dignify the content of this particular entry with a well-written post, because it deserves the fanfare and the glory. However, my bedtime has come and gone, and I’m too tired to make it fancy. So here it goes:

I LOVE MY EIGHTH PERIOD.

Yup, you read it right. I. Love. My. Eighth. Period.

Ummmm..what?

I wish, oh how I wish I could time travel back to October or November with a printed copy of this post and show it to myself. Heck, even the February Miss H wouldn’t believe it. An optimist would have gleamed hope from the words and continued to push forward. But I, much to my own dismay, am a pessimist by nature, and would have surely dismissed the words as a typo or a momentary lapse of sanity. No way would I ever, ever, EVER have believed it.

Believe it, my friends. It’s true.

Over the past few weeks, my 8^th period has become my (second) favorite class (the honors class always wins out merely because there is a certain sense of peace that is found in a room full of intrinsically motivated, albeit hormonally charged, teenagers). I’ll admit—much of my success with this class has to do with the fact that they are completely invested in my “row points” system—they’ll do anything for the possibility of one of my famous “bangin’” strawberry cupcakes or sugar cookies. Basically, students have the possibility of earning points for their rows for sitting quietly, answering questions, getting out materials quickly, etc. All it takes is one or two students who really want that treat at the end of the week to get their whole row on board and keep them in line. It’s peer pressure at its finest: no one wants to be the one who keeps his or her row from earning those 5,000 points for being quiet. And in 8^th period, almost every student is motivated by the system.

My favorite by-product of the row points system? The character-building that is happening slowly but surely in this 8^th period class. One day at lunch, I was standing in the lunch line to help with crowd control, and I was disappointed by the fact that I only heard one kid say “Thank you” to the lunch ladies. When we got back to the classroom, I shouted out that kid and gave his row 2,000 extra points for his politeness. The next day, I heard 4 more students use their manners as they went through the line. Now, over a week later, almost every student is saying “Thank you” at lunch! Granted, most kids do it more for the points than anything else, but you have to start somewhere, right? I’m hoping that soon it will become second nature.

It is a combination of the row points, my renewed attitude, and the absence of a couple “key players” that has gotten me to the point of actually looking forward to my 8^th period class. I had several students out the week before break because of suspensions, and the class was even more peaceful and well-behaved. I even surprised them with a special activity that week: while all the other classes reviewed data and statistics from the workbooks, they got to do an M&Ms lab instead! I loved being able to treat them to a special activity that none of the other classes got to enjoy, and they loved the free chocolate :)

This is our last week of review before our standardized testing, and I have to admit that although we’ve made some HUGE progress in these last few weeks, it’s not nearly enough to make up for all the lost time from the rest of the school year. Plus, the students who were suspended are back now, disturbing the peace that was oh-so-beautiful. And sadly, most of my 8th period students still won’t pass the EOG. Regardless, I am so proud of how far we’ve come and am grateful for a turn of events and a change of heart that has made my last hour at school each day one of the best.