Things my students do

• Coming late and saying they got lost (“Oh yes, teacher, this boy is a new student”)
• Students that don’t belong in my class coming and saying they’re new students (and teachers never telling me when I have new students)
• Asking to search for other students who don’t show up (often they are hiding in the hallway)
• Hiding in the hallway
• Running out of the class early
• The entire 3^rd B class suddenly running out of the room and disappearing for the rest of the hour
• 3^rd B telling the principal I’m not at school so they can go to the library instead of my class
• Pretending they don’t know how to open or close doors
• Manel breaking the doorknob, locking everybody in the classroom and rendering the door unusable for about two months
• Actually, here’s the whole story. The boys of 3^rd A were goofing off at the door, pretending they couldn’t open it. However, they did something to the doorknob, and another teacher had to open it from the outside. Then I told the students we had to leave the door open because it was broken, but at that moment Manel ran to the door threatening to close it. As I looked him in the face and said “Manel, don’t close the door. Don’t close the door!” he slammed it shut. So then we were locked in again, only this time we couldn’t unlock it from the outside. Instead we had to go through another classroom to get into and to leave ours. Since it took them about two months to fix it, I had to put tape on the inside of the door so that we could use it (but then it would never fully close). Some students saw the tape and took it off, locking us in again. You can imagine how happy I was when we finally got a new doorknob!
• Students drawing on their desks (“Draw a line if you’re bored…”)
• Using a ridiculous amount of white-out
• Fourth level students doing presentations with absolutely no preparation (and failing)
• Coming to class without their backpacks, without pencils or pens, without paper…
• Hiding each others backpacks and pencil cases
• Copying homework and writing answers on their hands for tests in their next classes
• Refusing to do any work
• Favorite saying: “Teacher, this boy is crazy/stupid!”
• Always getting question words wrong: “Who is the blue pencil?”
• Ladis: “Play the fucking video!!!”
• Alex (head of the English department, trying to get a student to shut up): “Alberto, can you make silence?!”
• Roger: “Teacher, I shit. No, I have shit, I have shit.” / Albert: “No, no. I am shit, I am shit.” / Roger: “Oh! Teacher, I am shit. I can go to the toilet?”
• Antonio: “Why do people say one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi?”
• Not realizing I understand Spanish or Catalan (staff included)
• Students, thinking I can’t understand them, calling me pesada (annoying) and fea (ugly)
• Swearing in English, even when they don’t know the meaning
• Ignoring me or mocking me
• 8 students in 3^rd C bowing down to me and chanting “Forrest Gump! Forrest Gump!”
• Students obsessed with telling me that Forrest Gump is retarded
• Students calling each other "down" (Down syndrome) or "Meritxells" (the name of the special-ed school)... sometimes when I told them to "sit down", "get down", or "calm down" they'd look offended and tell me "I am not down!"
• Marta and Nora switching their names on the first day of class
• Writing dialogues about skipping school to smoke weed
• Bringing bouncy balls to class; “Teacher, you can give me back my balls?”
• Electing a class translator and insisting on speaking through them (Though not always exact translations; Me: “Jonathan, stop jumping off the desks!”, Euan: “La puta quiere que no saltes de la mesa.” / “The bitch wants to you stop jumping off the desks.”)
• Using iPods, headphones, and cell phones in class
• Edu calling a friend on his cell phone and asking me to talk to him
• Opening porn websites on the classroom computer
• Marc plugging his iPod into the computer while we’re doing a song activity (so instead of the English song we hear one of his awful techno songs)
• Changing passwords on the laptops
• Switching equipment in the computer rooms
• Playing computer games, YouTube videos, and Facebook when they should be working on presentations, then Rick Rolling themselves
• Constanlty playing the “Pim pam, toma lacasitos” video
• Cutting pieces out of the wall and chopping it up into powder, then making lines and pretending to snort it
• Collecting pencil shavings
• Stealing chalk, throwing chalk, cutting up chalk, or drawing on the bulletin board, the walls, and each other with chalk
• Cutting up erasers and throwing them around the room
• Throwing paper and paper airplanes and keeping score on the board when I’m helping other students
• Throwing dictionaries or ripping pages
• Slowly picking the keys off the keyboard in the room
• Playing with broken desks, chairs, and projectors
• Joel dumping the entire contents of the garbage can on Guillem
• Pushing chairs off desks
• Putting red paint on themselves and pretending it’s blood so they can go to the bathroom (or just coloring or painting on themselves in general)
• Drawing penises anywhere and everywhere
• Playing with lighters and burning paper in class
• Playing with ping pong paddles, soccer balls, and basketballs in class
• Playing drums
• Opening the windows on windy ways when we are using pieces of paper to play a memory game…
• Fighting and wrestling in class
• Jumping off tables and chairs
• Benjamí climbing onto the roof to get Jordi’s hat and Fanny’s lighter
• 2^nd B standing up whenever a student gives the secret signal (I thought this was clever, but not in my class!)
• Hurting themselves so they can go get ice
• Boys of 3^rd A claiming to be able to guess girls' bra sizes by measuring their noses
• Knocking and opening doors to other classrooms, especially when two classes are connected
• Rolling around on wheely chairs in the computer room
• Edu throwing glue on the ceiling and catching it in his mouth, Alejandro throwing glue on the chalkboard (it’s still there)
• Breaking other students’ artwork when we use other classrooms
• Changing their clothes in class
• Playing “operation” on the table instead of doing a presentation about the doctor’s office
• Naiara constantly going to the bathroom and coming back with wet hair
• Asking to go to the bathroom but coming back with candy from the vending machine
• Going to the bathroom and escorted back by a hall monitor telling me all the awful things they have been doing
• Crawling around on the floor
• Trying to make each other faint in class
• Eating all of the librarian’s candy out of her desk
• Jonathan asking me to open the window on the bus so he could smoke
• Students I didn’t recognize pulling my hair on the bus
• Students thinking London is in America or Washington, D.C. in England
• Students thinking that there are still slaves and legal segregation in America, causing awkward conversations about racism, segregation, and Affirmative action
• Wedgies
• Sponge Bob Square Pants song
• Héctor attempting to steal my USB
• Dropping out of school