Trolled.

Someday I'm gonna write an epic novel about 3-6 class. But today is not that day. Today is wash it all off in a quick shower, be thankful it's a fake Friday and get your ass downtown to drink it off with a great buddy day, instead.

I'll put it this way: I'm officially no longer allowing myself to be trolled by them. And trolling is exactly what they're doing. I love that word, because it puts some behavior I've never quite been able to classify into perspective. For example, they've gotten so fucking Lord of the Flies that they got their seats rearranged by another class's homeroom teacher. And then, by the next period, they had ripped the seating chart off the podium so the other teachers couldn't check it.

I came in while a befuddled Korean English teacher was taping another copy back on. Don't care. Have my own arrangement for them, which stays in my file, and they know it. We do it kindergarten style -- I call their names and point at a chair until they put themselves in it. Every single one of them. Every single week.

Sit down sit down sit down sit down sit down. Turn around turn around turn around turn around. Be quiet be quiet be quiet be quiet.

At this point in the semester, they just give up pretty quickly. Because they know they're no longer going to get any kind of epic reaction out of me, and I'm just going to stand there being more stubborn than they are and staring at them like a bunch of class A morons until they do what I'm saying. It only takes about five minutes these days, before they cave. Of course, we have to pause every five to ten minutes to have another good dose of the 'hey idiots' face.

If they start to get pissy, I smirk and tell them not to get pissy. They're not cry babies. There's no reason to start crying. If they decide that the fact that they have no choice but to be quiet does not mean they have to participate in the listen and repeat or answering questions, I explain that not talking is just fine by me, too -- we can do worksheets quietly by ourselves just as well as we can talk and do speaking exercises all together. Here are the worksheets....

You can't troll a troll. Is what it comes down to. And I started to get real invested, about a year ago, in figuring out the most effective ways to troll them right back.

Today I put in a real effort to spend a good portion of time during their activity pulling up a chair and having a little chat with each group. Explaining that I know they aren't bad students -- not a single one of them (lie -- there are like three or four who are just flat out bad, but they don't need to be told that), yet somehow all together they're very, very, very bad. What are they doing? Are they trying to make the teachers cry?

They just look so fucking clueless, when it's put to them like that, nearly one on one. They know damn well their class has gone full on off the rails, and that it's their fault, but it seems no one is fucking driving this thing.

We ended class the same way we have for over a month now -- with them all sitting down quiet in their seats facing the front, and me staring at them, like, "Yeah? Really? This was the best you had today?" I told 'em, I've got four or five more classes with you, period. Forever. I've been your teacher for three years. Let's try not to completely destroy my memories of you forever, huh?

One more month to go. God bless the teachers that have got them through the year. They're gonna need it.