I walked into Mrs. Smith's class and it was practically empty. There were only four students in class. Two students started doing their work before class had even started and then the other two were on their phones before they had to put them away. Mrs. Smith was shocked by how little students were in class because she typically has around eight students on average on any given day. One girl was new and it was her first week at the school. When Mrs. Smith went to talk to her she didn't really listen or look at Mrs. Smith. It was surprising to see because all of her students respected her so much, but this girl was new and didn't know how the classroom worked yet. Mrs. Smith had to tell the girl to look at her while she was speaking and to respond so that Mrs. Smith knew that she understood what she was saying. Then class started and Mrs. Smith told everyone to start their assignments and to put their phones away. A different girl, *Clare, would not put her phone away. Mrs. Smith recognized that something was wrong and that it was not just Clare trying to be disrespectful, so she let Clare work on different work that she had to do and listen to music.
Watching Mrs. Smith interact with her students amazes me. She never once lost her temper or raised her voice. She kept calm and talked with a serious tone to let the students know she wasn't messing around with them. It seems that the students know that she won't deal with nonsense and when she gets serious with them they respect it.
After she dealt with the two girls she told me that I would be working with Bill again if he showed up to class. Although he was a few minutes late, he did show up. I didn't want to be quiet like I was the first time I was with him so I made a more conscious effort to talk. Our assignment was to write the standards in our own words and then send them to Mrs. Smith, then we would make a poster about the standards. Bill was very quiet at first and I had to ask him multiple times what he thought and would help him with what to say. He seemed to be more receptive to my advice as the period went on. I would tell him to fix a few grammatical errors or to add a period to the end of a sentence. We then started the poster, but only got done with one standard by the time class was over. Before we went back to the classroom Bill said "thank you" to me.
I was ecstatic. I was so happy that I had to try to act casual and not smile too hard as we walked back to class. I feel like I finally made an impact. Hopefully I will start to have Bill more and more as the semester goes on because I feel like we will start to talk about things other than school. He is a quiet guy, but he is very smart and I think he has a lot on his mind that I would be happy to talk about if he felt comfortable. I am excited for my next day at Classic City so I can carry over this optimism and continue to do well.
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