They Seem Perfectly Reasonable To Me

I seem to have fallen out of favor with a certain classroom clientele.

The gales of February came late this year. Any teacher who has made it through an entire school year knows the trials of the February doldrums. We are bogged in a thankless miasma of routine. Students are tired of us. We are losing patience with their shenanigans. Shenanigans that might have been cute three months earlier. A squall can develop instantaneously, perhaps due to nothing more than the flap of a butterfly's wing five time zones away. That's the nature of working with the citizens of tomorrow.

Pity the poor adolescent who must sit and participate in a game of online Science World Jeopardy. How hard it must be to take a turn and answer one question in thirty minutes, out loud, while waiting for dismissal on an early out day, just before a three-day weekend. Life is so HARD.

It seems that I am perceived as SO STRICT. I infringe upon their rights and needs daily, for fifty minutes at time, directly after lunch. I'm mystified that none of my captive audience has reported me for violations of the Geneva Convention. Unless, perhaps, it's that they are not familiar with the Geneva Convention.

Among my transgressions, the following outrageous demands:

Sit in your assigned seat
Do not put up the hood on your hoodie
Remain awake
Bring your book
Bring a pencil or pen
Turn in assignments when they are due
Be in the room when the tardy bell rings
No food or drink
No copying another student's answers
No swearing
Delay the expulsion of urine and feces for fifty minutes
No phone usage
Wait fifty minutes to rehydrate yourself

I know. Such expectations surely warrant a mutiny. Any day, I could be hauled off to the brig. I'm banking on blog friends with a knack for baking cakes with files inside.