General oddness

I had an odd sort of day today. The 'difficult' class of repeat students has apparently decided that I'm an acceptable teacher to have after all, and hung around for their full ninety minutes, the annoying little buggers. The first two weeks they were out the door before I'd finished telling them we could finish early if they wanted. Suddenly they're hanging around and wanting to talk, and I'm the one wanting to rush off because my next class is way across campus. Obviously they're having too much fun. Must remember to give them something tedious next week.

Then the student I wrote about earlier who is my only weirdo this semester revealed his true colours. Not in a way you can fault, exactly, but he made my last class, which I had thought would be easy, incredibly difficult. He is a model student. He does exactly what he is told. But he does it with an air of patronizing patience. He is a big lump of a guy (not fat, but big), who wears his trousers up around his nipples somewhere and has the social skills of a tub of lard. He seems to regard the other students as silly children, and it is hard to believe he is only nineteen himself. He is like a tired old man, bored with the silly infants he is being forced to associate with.

None of this would be a problem, except that any student I pair him with, or group I put him in, gets the life sucked out of it so fast it's like it has moved into the orbit of a black hole. As it is a small class (only twelve students!), this is affecting the entire class. I get them changing partners and groups often, to spread the pain, but all that means is that the black hole gets moved around the room like a vacuum cleaner, sucking the energy out of the whole place. I can see the other students trying hard, the sweeties, trying to include him in the general fun, but he discourages them and it is starting to show. They are becoming reluctant, and I don't blame them. That kid is a VAMPIRE.

I am tempted to tell him to sit in a corner and talk to himself next week. I won't, of course, but I don't know what I will do.

In the repeat students class I did the general knowledge quiz today, which is part of the reason they had so much fun. They were astonishingly bad at it, and LOVED it. My favourite little discussion came when I asked the question,

"Which country was Picasso from?"

The two guys who were trying to answer the question went into a huddle.

"All I can think of is Spain," said one to the other, half apologetically, and I almost fell off my chair. I restrained myself, however, and kept quiet.

"Don't be silly," said the other one. "Picasso was from Europe!"

"Oh, yeah. That's right. Sorry."

The world righted itself again. I don't know what I'd do if my students started showing signs of actually knowing anything. Half my activities would become boring, because I wouldn't be able to laugh at them any more.