Teachers Talking Trash

I'll get to the title of my post soon enough.  First, I will tell you all about my day.

I returned to the middle school ESL class today.  Apparently they always throw you in a language class when you're given an ESL position so I also subbed for one period of Italian.  The ESL kids were pretty good, with the exception of the last period of the day.  For the most part they completed their work.  Difficulty arises when when they speak to each other in their native languages.  Especially since there are five or six speakers of one langauge and they like to joke with each other all day long.  It drove me crazy.  Someone mutters something and all of a sudden half the class is laughing and I have no idea what happened.

I could have really struggled with the Italian class.  These were 8th graders and they were not messing around.  They were hell bent on being pains in my you-know-what but I was strict right off the bat.  I told them the worksheets I passed out were going to be graded and that they had to be completed and handed in at the end of the period.  In reality I have no idea if they are going to be graded but that usually lights a fire behind some of the students.  I was constantly reprimanding kids for talking and tried not to take crap from anyone.  A couple of the students were real winners, the kind of guys who sprawl out when they sit and have that really wonderful bored expression on their faces.  These guys did absolutely nothing the entire 45 minutes but as long as they were quiet I let them slack.  It's their loss, not mine.

The last period of the day an irritating young man, A, joined us.  He had the F word written on his fingers and ate his string cheese inappropriately (let your mind wander into the gutter and you'll know what I mean).  He kept saying something about 69 and 666 to the other kids and swaggered around the class disrupting other students.  I had to send him to his seat a number of times and eventually moved other kids around so there was a radius of empty desks around A.  As the period wore on the kids got louder and louder, stopped listening to me, and began speaking almost completely in their native languages.  There wasn't much I could do about it so I just collected their work and tried to keep the noise level down at least a little bit.  The teacher next door, who also works with the ESL kids, commiserated with me after school and said I shouldn't feel bad about the day.  She deals with A all the time and she had to help me calm them down and focus them after their lunch period.  I'm glad I know it isn't me but them!

I do okay in middle school but sometimes I just want to be placed as a kindergarten aide.

Now, about the teachers.  I ate lunch in the teacher's lounge and two 7th grade teachers ended up joining me.  The entire 45 minutes of lunch was taken up by trash talk about the students.  This student is so effing dumb, this student is such an effing bitch, blah blah blah.  I couldn't believe the swear words they were dropping!  One teacher got a call from a parent during lunch and afterward called the parent a "real bitch".  I was amazed.  I understand that middle school is tough, especially with some of the kids I've seen, but I'm not sure I'd talk like that in front of a stranger.  I would save that conversation for home.