Today my head almost exploded.

It's so hard to teach a class when someone decides to be difficult. Doubly so, when that student gets a sidekick. I was trying to do today's lesson, which was going over some material that the class didn't quite get the day before. Plus a few students were absent the day before. So this was really for their benefit, not mine.

The student (the one in my previous post) decided to ask a bunch of questions, not questions to understand something, just questions. And by the time I was halfway to her desk, she'd have already answered her own question. "What did you say? Nevermind." "Where is that? Forget it, I see it." "Say that again! Forget it, I heard you." "Where? Oh, I found it." "I don't see that! Oh, I was looking at the wrong place." "Speak up!" "That's not what it says on my screen! Oh, yes it does." "What did you say? I wasn't paying attention."

Now throw in her sidekick, who can never follow what we're doing in class and is always laughing and making bizarre little jokes. Her: "Come here and show me that." Me: "Okay, just give me a sec." Her: "HA! You buggin'! One second! HA HA HA HA! You funny, Teacher! You crack me up." Yes.. just like that. Plus, when class is over, they're two of the first ones racing to leave.

I'm trying to see if I can get them to settle down before making a big stink, reporting it to the office, but there are times when they really disrupt the class. Between them and other legitimate questions being asked in the class, I couldn't finish the lesson. It took more than an hour and fifteen minutes to get as far as we did. I did the exact same lesson with the next class, and we were done in about thirty minutes.

If they don't learn to settle down, I'm going to have to report them. I'd rather not because in the end they don't learn anything, but I can't let the rest of the class suffer for their issues.