Sound Check

Disclaimer
***although this story took place this morning, something similar happens on a nearly daily basis.***

When I taught 4th grade I was a stickler for students listening to my directions.  I did not allow them to hold pencils while I was talking, insisted their eyes were on me (or on the area of the assignment we were discussing), I would ask if there were any questions, and if not, they could start working on their assignments. 

Anyway...middle schoolers are WAAAY different.  They have perfected the art of looking right at you and completely ignoring the fact that words are coming out of your mouth.  

Which brings me to the story:

Setting: Computer room this morning about 9:15
Class: 8th Graders
Assignment:  Type out two Bible verses and edit them using shortcuts in Microsoft Word.

Before beginning I made a point to stress that copy and paste was not allowed!!!  My words exactly were, " I do not want any copying and pasting.  In 8th grade we go from keyboarding practice once a week to four times a year so consider this typing practice."

A couple minutes later I am walking around the room and notice two girls are almost finished with their editing.  I have some fast typers in the class but not fast enough to type two Bible verses in two minutes....one of the verses was about 10 sentences long.

The following conversation ensued:

Me:  "I know you could not have typed those in such a short time...did you copy and paste those into your document?"  

One of them:  "yes...were we not supposed to?"  

Que the 1 minute talk where we discuss what the directions I gave were - which they obviously did not listen to at all!!!

I then walked about 6 feet away and came upon two boys who were....what else...copying and pasting.

Me: "Are you copying and pasting those Bible verses into your document?"

One of them: "Yes...why we can't?"

The other one: Looks at the first boy as he erases what he has copied "I told you we probably couldn't do that."  

Me: "Well... what were the directions?"

The both look absolutely clueless.  

A boy sitting nearby "Dude, she said we don't keyboard much in 8th grade so we should consider this typing practice."

Sheesh, at least someone listened.