I Have a Good 5th Period.

Today, I actually had a great experience in 5th Period. Most of the time, the 5th Period kids are whiny and complaining about working. They don't ever want to and they are vocal about it. Very irritating.

Last class period, I was away from my class for the District Technology Committee meeting. I left an assignment for the 5th Period kids to complete. It was a walkthrough of a project, step by step, showing how to create a relatively difficult figure in AutoCAD. I was not sure how well the kids would do with the project. I suspected that it wouldn't turn out well.

Come Tuesday, not only was I not there, and I had a tough assignment for the kids to complete, there was also a number of different activities going on that took kids out of my class, like Pre-SAT tests, picture retakes, etc. Most of the kids didn't get my project done or even worked on.

I wasn't surprised.

Thursday in class, I tried to show the kids how to get through the project. I wasn't telling them anything that they couldn't get out of the walkthrough that was handed out on Tuesday, but they were still struggling. One young lady in particular was really frustrated, as she often is. She likes to try things for about two minutes and then frustration kicks in and she starts to push things around, throw her chair back and tell the world how much she hates whatever it is she's working on and put her head down on the desk.

Usually, if I can spend about 3-4 minutes working with her, she starts to say, "Oh, wait, I get it! That's easy, let me do the next one!"

She did this on Thursday, which was really cool. The cooler thing, though, was that she finished the project and began to help the young lady next to her. The really neat thing was that the person she was helping was getting frustrated and saying, "I don't get it!" Our hero was patient and helpful and said, "Well, let's try it again, I'll see if I can show you what you did wrong."

Really, really cool.

I was smiling and smiling the rest of the afternoon.