2C Opened the Floodgates

2C made me cry again yesterday. When I walked in the classroom, pencils were flying, soccer was being played with half-full water bottles, children were fighting, mouths were full of food. I sat down and waited for the chaos to slow down (even to a trickle). It never did. I felt the tears well up and just decided to leave the classroom. I waited in the hall trying to get myself under control. The music teacher saw me, walked into the room and started yelling at the class. I headed to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. She sent two of the worst (there are 16 in the class - 14 mis-behavors) upstairs although don't know what upstairs means. Since they are unescorted, maybe it means a trip to the school candy story.

Anyway, I had just gotten the class under control and speaking English when the two (of the 14) culprits returned, knocked on the door, disrupted the fragile peace, and said "I am sorry teacher." They sound like robots when they say it and have no comprehension of the meaning. I motioned for them to sit down (accepting their apology was not going to happen, because it would be insincere, just like their apologies) , but by then the peace was broken. More pencils and erasers were thrown. I had a pocket bulging with miscellaneous projectiles. After class, I told my co-teacher that I needed to talk to the homeroom teacher. The behavior is unacceptable. She came with me and when we approached the classroom, every child was wet and there was a 1/2 cm of water sprayed all over the floor. It was like walking into a cage of monkeys. The homeroom teacher was nowhere to be found so my co-teacher asked me to get the head master, which I gladly did. He said he would come but never did. If he could not grasp the sense of urgency in my body language and Turkish then this class will "rule" the school by 8th grade. 18 days (720 minutes) left of this class...And, I am counting every minute.

...I just had a brainstorm.. These kids like math so every day we will count backwards from 720, subtracting 40 each day. It will take up lots of time because it's difficult to count backwards in a foreign language and it will give me an internal sense of glee and a chuckle.

...Update: on the morning after this incident, the students came bearing gifts and apologies. That was awkward for me. I was able to muster a "thank you" but it brought forth very conflicting emotions...