It’s the start of a new term, so naturally the kids have all forgotten how to behave in lessons. I’ve spent the first five…ten…twenty minutes of each lesson this week going through the rules and how I expect them to behave. It sounds a bit harsh standing in front of a group of kids and saying “this is how I expect you to behave. This is what will happen if you don’t”, but if you don’t tell them what you want them to to they’ll never know.

And really, 20 kids all nattering amongst each other as if they were on a dinner break totally ignoring you is “one of the problems with young people these days”.

With some of my groups this is a quick two minute run through a small list of expectations. With other groups, like the one I had last thing today, it becomes the main part of the lesson. My Tuesday afternoon group is a right pain, there’s several kids who like to constantly interrupt and mess about on purpose. They’re not “just being kids”, they’re doing it on purpose. It’s kind of like a mini rebellion in their heads, to me it’s just irritating and I want them to stop it.

I lined them up, explained they would go into the room quietly and sit behind the desks (always a killer in a computer room. All those nice shiny PCs and you’re not using them right now). They all swarmed in like rabid zombies, so I shooed them back out and lined them up again. Again they were told to go in quietly and walk to their chair and sit down and wait for me. They managed it this time, and I had them listening for a whole two minutes before someone started talking.

In the end I shooed them all outside again to line up, again. By now they were getting sick of it, which meant it was working. This time they were actually quiet and I did manage to explain the consequences for “doing it wrong”. A few even got to test out my newly explained chain of consequences. They’ve got detentions tomorrow.

It’s all fun and games here. I’ll do exactly the same again next week… and the next… and so on.