New blog Week 2

Hello again. I hope everyone is having a good week. In response to Dr. Burns' question regarding an event that has taken me by surprise good or bad this past week, I have to share something that occurred last week during my craziest class. My third period class is over 2 hours long due to lunches. We have the last lunch, of course. In addition to the length of the class, hunger and having 30 students, this class is also made up of mostly freshman and sophomores. Imagine all of that combined with a few "too cool for school" seniors and you can imagine what my day is like from 11:46 to 1:44 everyday.
I have been having some problems with alot of talking during my lecture part of the class. Some of the students were even getting up and sharing snacks during this time. I have to refocus this group about every five minutes or so, and sometimes I feel like I am a big babysitter instead of a "technical expert instructor." It was one of those days and the students kept talking and whispering and we were not accomplishing anything. I had about had it, so I started silently counting to ten over and over while just looking at the class. This went on with them continuing their talking for about 4 minutes. All of a sudden, out of the blue, my most reluctant Junior student stood up, told everyone to "Be Quiet" and "Quit being rude to Ms. Draper because she is trying to teach us something we don't already know. Remember the number one rule is respect."
Well, I could have died right there. This student is one that I have struggled with to keep on task, reminding him of assignments and encouraging him all year long. Sometimes he does his work, sometimes he just looks at me while I am talking to him with a smirk on his face. He has let me know he did not want to be in the Healthcare Science class and that he thinks "all of this health junk" is boring. For him to be the one to stand up and quiet the class was amazing, but the students reacted quickly and apologized and started to take notes when I went on with class like nothing had happened.
Later, I spoke with the student and asked him why he stood up in class like that when usually he showed no interest in what I had to say. He told me that "Ms. Draper, I may not like all of this health junk, but your class is alot more interesting than some of them and you are a cool teacher. You help me when I need it and you are good to all of us and I just thought you needed a hand today." That blew me away. I realized that sometimes, even in our most trying times, how we model ourselves in class really does make a difference to someone. That makes all of the hard work worth it!