Ever wonder why people make these things? Me neither.

We're nearing the end of the third of six weeks of summer school. These kids are heading into fourth grade. Getting them to sit down long enough for me to finish a thought is like trying to bathe a cat with one hand behind your back. The cat doesn't like it, you don't like it, and at the end, not much is accomplished other than a lot of noise and fuss.

What is really saddening is that I do enjoy teaching, and I do enjoy helping people to be better at something that will help them to be able to enjoy life later on, and these kids are forcing me to do the "Evil Overlord" instead of the "Guiding Helper" teaching model. Grr. Funny, though, how much better they'll work after I chew their little asses out at loud volume!

Getting them to stay in their seats is like trying to hold a dozen ping-pong balls underwater in a bathtub with one hand. When one of them pops up, and you go after it, they rest of them erupt to the surface. It would be amusing if it weren't such a distraction from what I'm supposed to be doing. We only get through about half of the things in a day that I'd like to get through, due to the corrective measures that I'm constantly having to take. I'm not doing most of these kids much good, I don't think. I have one or two who might be able to learn if the other kids weren't disrupting. It's behavior, far more than ability, that has landed these kids in summer school. They're smart enough to do the work (ok, not all of them...), but the constant bickering, getting up, cross talking, and being "cute" has taken all the time for education away from their busy schedules. You know, there are kids over at the Riley Hospital for Children who WANT to learn to read and do math, who would make good use of the livers, kidneys, corneas, etc., that these kids are just having and not really using. It's a morbid thought, but I reckon we're not too many decades away from farming organs for transplant, anyway.