Summer School

I'm teaching sophomore English in summer school for the first time this year, and boy, am I getting an education. The day starts at 7:30 and ends at 12:45, with only two ten minute breaks during the day. That's obviously very demanding not only on the students, but on me to generate daily lessons that fill the equivalent of a week during the regular school year. To make things more interesting, the class is populated by, shall we say, challenging students, some of whom seem to have been in jail as much as school. To wit:

When asking for volunteers to read sentences during a grammar exercise, I tried to encourage the quiet students to read by making up silly limitations on who could volunteer, such as only blonde males or black guys wearing blue. You know, just to throw curve balls at them. Well, one kid threw a curve ball back at me when I said the next student to read must not have a tattoo.

The kid raised his head, looked slowly around as if trying to find someone, and said, matter-of-factly, "Mister, we all have tattoos."