Bad Ryan!

Today I was able to do something I'm never allowed to do, and boy did I enjoy it: I was "the bad student" for an entire 2 hour class period! I'll try to explain as concisely as possible. My prof is supposed to be modeling Classroom Management behaviors/strategies in our class, but one of my classmates talked to him about how we are an ideal class and we won't really see his strategies. She was then given permission to act out in class so the prof would have someone to respond to to model the strategies. What he didn't know is that she asked me to do it so Gene (the prof) wouldn't know who was doing it. Let me just say, it worked wonderfully.

I began by refusing to raise my hand (an in-class signal) and be quite when prompted. Then, during group discussion time, I stood up and wandered the class talking to other groups and eating their food (a perk!). I did this for probably a good 10 minutes before Gene noticed, put his arm around me, and walked me back to my group, telling me this was when we were to be discussing the readings as a group.

From there I began to build fortresses with paper on the table and play w/ my pen. Next came the note-passing. I was really quite fun, as it presented a challenge to pass the note halfway across the room w/o being seen by Gene. Me and another student sucessfully passed this note back and forth (which involved throwing it across the class) 2 or 3 times, never being noticed. Toworads the end of the period I was throwing balls of paper to other table groups, which the prof did notice, so he came and stood right by me (which did stop me from throwing paper, but then I put my hand to the side of my face where Gene was and began to mimic him so the class could see, but he couldn't--let's just say I had WAY too much fun w/ that).

Another line of distraction I took was being contradictory and rude about his comments in class. One stemmed from a real frustration I had w/ the previous night's reading which I just embellished and made a much bigger deal about. Gene later came to my table group and talked to me and my group directly about it, but I still put up a fair fight and let him know I was not happy w/ him or the assignment.

All in all it was a great experience. While I frustrated and angered many of my classmates (since many of them didn't know what I was doing and thought I'd lost it), I think it was worth it. I got to see Gene's strategies for managing me, as well as experience what the student feels when they are acting out and when the teacher tries to quell that.

After class the student who had the orignial idea and I went up to Gene and asked him about what he saw and what he didn't see, only to discover that he didn't realize what I was doing was connected to the conversation they had had the previous class. We had a great little de-brief about it, and those other students who were still hanging around were pretty engaged in the dialoge as well. I think it was a good experience and I'm glad to have done it, both for the learning and for the chance to be "bad" and to let out some of my frustration in a "positive" way.