Lawd a mercy! These kids will drive you crazy...

You know what kids like to take advantage of? Disorganization. If things aren't planned for them to do every second of the school day, then they become psycho. They literally lose their freakin minds and cause you to do the same.

One such event occurred just this morning. About an hour ago. I had to write this now while it was still fresh in my mind. Ok, so this morning I arrived at school and went to the office to sign in, you know, like a perfectly normal day. After I signed in and signed for the computer lab keys, the principal and assistant principal informed me of something to the extent of someone coming to the computer lab, with a class, so I won't be tutoring today, but I don't have to leave, I can just stay in the lab with them. I barely understood what they said, but that's the gist of it. So I was thinking "Sweet! Free time today." Silly me.

I went to the lab, like I normally do, pulled out my laptop and started to check my email. Not too long afterward, I hear a loud rumbling noise. The sound of rambunctious muddy feet running up the stairs to the computer lab, anxious to enter my domain. All of a sudden, the doors swing open and a stampede of little monsters, I mean children, rushed into the lab, grabbing chairs, touching computers, turning on computers, turning off computers, and in the process, irritating the hell outta me. But the teacher must be behind them, right? Or at least the mystery person who's gonna be in the lab, right? Silly me again. Nope. Just the kids.

Miss? Miss? Miss? Miss? Miss? Can you turn on the computer Miss? Can I play games Miss? Does this computer work Miss? (Oh yeah, every student here in Jamaica, past and present, call the female teachers Miss. Sometimes they say the last name. But mostly it's just Miss.) So this is what I heard for what seemed like forever, in combination with the moving metal chairs. It was so awesome. Then guess what happened: another class came in. Great! Just reread the first lines of this paragraph and you'll see what happened for the next few minutes. But double it!

So I tried to calm everyone down. I yelled for everyone to sit down and be quiet, and everyone who knows me knows I don't yell. It's not like I thought it would work; I don't have a deep forceful voice, and I have this Southern American accent which everyone seems to think is so hilarious. But it worked. Temporarily. At first I told them not to touch the computers. "No, you can't play games, you're not here for that. I don't know why you're here, I'm not teaching you today." Then, as minutes rolled on, and my patience wore thin, I gave up and told them to turn on the computers. I figured playing a game would keep them quiet.

After about two minutes, this lady walks in and tells everyone to turn off the computer. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out who the heck she is during all this chaos. She tells us that she's here to review for the Grade 4 Literacy Test, specifically with comprehension. Of course the kids aren't paying a bit of attention to her, so she uses my wonderful method of yelling. Not surprisingly, it worked. The kids were finally quiet.

So she passes out a few practice exams. Of course, some kids had to share...not enough for everybody. Then, she asks one of the boys to come up and read the first question. "Mi cyaan read Miss." "You can't read? Go tell teacher to write your name on a piece of paper." I'm teacher. So she proceeds to go through every single kid present. An overwhelming majority of them couldn't read the first question. She then sent for her 1st grade niece to come. She read perfectly. So then she goes into this whole lecture about how if they can't read this simple sentence, then there's no way they can pass this test. I totally agree. Then why are you here? Oh yeah, she even told them that she didn't want them to end up like Dudus, the now-captured fugitive that caused all the uproar a few weeks ago. But she also told them that Dudus was really smart when he was in school, one of the best in his class. How this helped the situation, I have no idea.

So by now, it's break/lunch time so I made every single one of them get out. I asked the lady if she was coming back after lunch and she said that she didn't see the point since they can't even read. So she left. After break, each of kids came back to see if they could come in. I politely said nope, the lady left, so you have to go back to class. The lab returned to its original quiet state. Mi happy now, although I just found out that the lady will be back tomorrow. Still don't know who she is, so for now she's just "the lady".

Fun times.