My Algebra 2 students really DO care!



Going to school is a real family affair around here.  Our daughter attends the school's daycare and my husband is subbing while taking classes.  We live just 4 miles away from school, but on Thursday that 8-mile round-trip felt like an eternity when we accidentally forgot baby's milk bottles at home. Egad traffic, how I loathe thee.

After dropping off hubs and baby around 7AM, I made the slow crawl back home to get the milk. It took me until 7:50 to get back to school and back into my classroom where students had already been, waiting for their teacher, for about 20 minutes. I had texted my boss, but no one bothered to inform my students or the teacher who shares my classroom that I was running late.  Once I got back and settled, the details of my missing 20 minutes came to light.  

Let me just start by saying that this class, up until Thursday, drove me crazy. The apathy?  "Apathy" doesn't quite describe it.  It always seems that every year one of my two sections of any course is filled with kids who just don't seem to care. They don't do homework, or they scribble anything down last minute to get credit. They retain little, if anything, day to day. They look down, to the right, to the left, up, at the insides of their eyelids, anywhere else except at the board when I am teaching. This is this class this year. When my colleague came back into the room after leaving for a few minutes (since she had no idea I wasn't in yet), one of my lowest students was "teaching" the other kids by writing on the board and asking the other students questions. When my colleague asked where I was, they all just looked at each other and pieced together a, "Oh, she just had to go get something." They were covering for me!  When my colleague pressed them, they admitted that they didn't know where I was and "didn't want to get Mrs. Donohue in trouble."  Then they started getting nervous, fearing that I was in some sort of trouble.  


It admittedly took me a while to get my class back on track when I finally got to school, but when I later heard what had happened my heart filled right up. I guess they do care!

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