There Is No 'But...'

Last night, after spending two mind-numbing hours watching the Bachelor, I got on to the sub site and found a job for today!  It was for a second grade at one of the few schools I haven't been to yet.  I believe this brings my total to 37: been to, and 10: not been to.  Impressive, no?  Add in the 3 schools in Astoria and one in Warrenton and that brings my total of schools taught in to 41!  Yahoo!

Anyways, the school I was going to today is like on the complete other end of town, so I had to leave kind of early this morning.  I arrived to find all supplies and schedule laid out nice and orderly and an attendance list of 24 kids - 18 girls and 6 boys.  The morning went pretty well and we sailed through the schedule without any problems.

However, after lunch, music, PE, and a lesson from the counselor, they were all pretty wound up.  We tried to do math, something they've apparently done before, but about half of them needed my help and were not very patient and would resort to getting up and following me around after a while.  The other half was just loud.  I had to keep stopping every 5 minutes to tell them to sit down and work quietly.  It was frustrating for them to have to wait so long for help, but it was also frustrating to me because I just couldn't get around fast enough!  After a while of this I noticed two girls in particular who were bickering with each other.  One would push the supplies container in the middle of the table closer to the other, and then the other would push it back with increasing force and dirty looks each time.  Then one girl started to reach over and scribble on the other's name tag.  That girls would erase it, and the scribbler would reach over and do it again.  So at this point I stepped in.  I asked them what the problem was and they both launched into some story about who did what.  I told them to keep their pencils on their own paper and to just leave each other alone.  Well, it had not been 2 minutes later when I see these girls just shooting daggers at each other with their eyes.  I mean they had the nastiest looks on their faces!  Then girl A grabs the supplies container and puts it on the floor, which just makes girl B even more mad.  I told girl A to put it back, and now I can see she's starting to get frustrated with me.  So I went over and talked to them again!  (Meanwhile I've got like 10 other kids with their hands raised who need my help and I'm being distracted by the bickering girls - so I'm getting pretty irritated with them).  I told these girls they needed to knock it off, and since they obviously couldn't get along they were not to talk to each other, look at each other or touch each other for the rest of the day.  They were also to keep their hands on their side of the table, and to not touch the supplies anymore.  At this point girl A made the mistake of trying to argue with me ("...but she...!").  Bad idea.  So then I said in my loud-enough-for-everyone-to-hear-me-voice, "No.  There is no 'but...".  There is 'Yes, Miss Barnes.'  There is 'Okay, Miss Barnes.'  But there is no 'but...'.  So lets try that again." (A set of phrases I learned from another teacher this year on how to prevent kids from arguing with you.)  Girl A did not apparently think I meant it because she attempted the, "...but she...!" again.  So I repeated myself again.  Pretty much everyone is listening to us now, so she decided to quit trying to argue and give it up with the phrase I was looking for, "Yes, Miss Barnes."  After this point the girls continued to look like someone had force-fed them lemons for lunch but I didn't have to deal with them again.  However, I did give one of my timeless lectures to the class on how, "In life you are going to have to sit next to, work with and probably live with people who make you crazy.  Best get used to it and learn to deal with it now."  Oh so many pearls of wisdom for the day!