Day 6 - Rocking the boat, Part 1

If you ever want to be entertained and/or really freak people out, then mess with the status-quo. Here's a potpourri of what happened in class today when 4th and 5th period saw the new seating arrangement upon entering the room:
- "What?!?!"
- (confused faces)
- "Do we have assigned seats?"
- "Where do I sit?"
- "Huh?"

And then, when we told the students we wanted to seat them alphabetically by first name:
- "You've gotta be kidding me."
- "Ugh."
- "This is the dumbest seating arrangement I ever saw."

It's really fascinating to see the emotions that overcome some people when even a minor change is introduced to their lives. Hopefully the students will get over it pretty quickly. We plan to have them working in groups as much as possible anyway, so they won't be sitting in their awful assigned seats much, and eventually they'll realize that.

After the drama and freaking out about seat changes, 4th and 5th period went pretty well. My lecture was better than yesterday and even my supervising teacher noticed that I made changes based on his advice :)

The varying dynamics of our three classes is really interesting, too. If you can get a lesson to work in 1st period, then you know it will work in the other two classes. 4th period is so quiet and calm that today you could have heard a feather drop on the carpeting, which is kind of intimidating in a strange way. And then there is 5th period- a lively bunch falling somewhere on the spectrum in between 1st and 4th period. Everything takes longer in 5th period because some of them talk incessantly and they ask a lot of questions (which is good, just time consuming). So at least all of our kids keep me on my toes, and I will certainly learn a lot from these upcoming weeks.

Coming up tomorrow- Rocking the boat, Part 2, during which we will observe 1st period's reaction to the seating arrangements. This promises to be verrrrrry interesting.