Today was my last day as a long term sub. Well, technically I have to go in on Monday to post grades, and I could have done it today, but if I go in I get paid for the day.
I gave the vocab final to my first hour class. They were appalled that I couldn't help them. And by "help", they meant "tell the definition of the vocabulary words". And this was AFTER I gave the little fuckers breakfast (of course, when I mentioned the possibility to breakfast to them last week, they started demanding doughnuts and pancakes. Like I'm getting up to make them fucking pancakes. Have some generic Pop-Tarts and consider yourselves lucky).
Monica, my *favorite* in the class (who missed 11 days in a row three weeks ago and never made up the work) was especially pissed that she had to do the work on her own. She handed me her 160 point test with about 15 points worth of work done after only 20 minutes and announced that she was done. Now, we have 90 minutes for finals. There was no way in hell I was going to let her sit there and be a distraction for 70 minutes, so I handed it back to her. She rolls her eyes and whips out her definition cards with every intention of cheating. I quashed that pretty quick, so she sits and starts whining that she needs someone to read the test to her (yes, this IS a reading class). Because these students have IEPs, they can opt for someone to read the test to them. However, for finals, they have to either talk to me ahead of time or pre-arrange to have someone read to them. She was perfectly capable of reading the damn test. She just wanted to wander t he halls, which is a HUGE no-no during finals. We can't even let them go to the bathroom. So when I told her that *I* would read it to her, she threw a fit. And I told her her options were that either I read it to her or she reads it herself. Which went over swimmingly.
In reality, what Monica wanted was for me to give her the answers. There was no way in hell I was going to give her the answers; not after I've spent the last week drilling review into their skulls. What does she expect when she misses the Thursday and Friday before a long weekend and already has poor retention and comprehension skills?
One of the vocab words was "enormous". They had to give specific examples of things that are enormous. One in particular was "A Country". She gives the name of our town... "Is Anytown a country?" I stared at her for a second. "No, honey. Anytown is a city." "What about Illinois? Is Illinois a country?" This completely baffled me ("baffle" was also a vocab word, BTW) because she gave "Texas" as an example of an enormous state... Yet she could not recognise Illinois as a state. So I said, "No. Illinois is a state." To which she replied, "I donno no stupid countries. If all you wanna country, then y'all needs to tell me a country to put." So I asked her, "What country do you live in?" and she answered with "I don't know". So I calmly tried again. "Monica, what country are we in right now?"
" I. DON'T. KNOW."
She knew she was boned. She finally recognized that she missed too much school and she was frustrated and trying to save face and doing whatever she could to keep from going down in an epic fail. Part of me also wants to believe that this was all test anxiety. That deep down, she really knows that Illinois is a state and that we live in America. But I really can't be sure...
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