Things that Make You Go Hmmmmm...

So yesterday I was commiserating with my office-mate about in the classroom techniques to manage those unruly few students who either like to dominate the class discussion to showcase how smart they are, or the ones that think whatever's going on in the classroom is less important than the conversation they're having with the guy sitting beside them.

I mean, I don't want to be the bitch teacher or anything, but you kind of have to nip both of those in the bud, otherwise you'll never get any control over the group and essentially you're just wasting everyone else's time.

So there we were, chatting about a couple of our challenges, one of which for my colleague was remembering his student's names.

I shared my technique with getting to know everyone's name - I made tent cards with their names for each student and have them placed in front of them on their desks. This way I don't have to call them sir or ma'am whenever I call on them, but can use the actual name their mother gave them.

My colleague, who has been teaching for 23 years and is just 3 short years away from retirement looked over at me, with a withering glance and said "Well Kim, in my classes most of my students are girls. They all look alike. And most of them are named Brittany. What the hell is up with that? I mean, why Brittany?"

I'm sorry to say I couldn't answer his question. Instead, I had a question of my own and that is this: If you have a class of twenty students, most of whom are female and more than half named Brittany - how difficult is it to get to know the other student's names?

I'm just asking.