Yesterday in the middle of my fabulous lesson on the Constitution (read: students were paying attention, participating, and learning about how the Constitution and our class rules go hand in hand), LU's desk broke. We have the kind of desks in my class that are attached to the chairs and when I say her desk broke, I mean that the desk part of the desk ended up on the floor but still managed to be attached to the chair, which was upright.
How did this happen, you ask? Well, I accidentally gave the one already broken desk to one of my students who was going to figure out how to break it further. So of course, LU figured out how to break it further.
She didn't mean to break it more, I'm sure. Instead, what I think she was trying to do was get out of her desk. Why? I'm not sure. I was teaching, which meant she was supposed to be in her desk. But now it was broken so her sitting in it was no longer an option if she wanted to be productive.
So I had her move to the round table at the back of the classroom.
At first, I thought this was a bad move. She talked to the T.A. back there. She whispered to the T.A. back there. She listened to the T.A. back there.
And then, on second reflection, I realized she also was reading the constitution I left back there and adding to our conversation by saying things like, "We could do ____, because it says it in the Constitution." This was really cool because it helped the discussion like icing on cake.
Of course, her desk couldn't stay broken, and she couldn't stay at the back of the classroom (distractions and all that), so the Dean of Students at my school came and fixed the desk after classes ended. Which was really, really nice of him.
When LU got to class this morning the first thing out of her mouth was, "Yay! My desk isn't broken!" And, maybe unsurprisingly, she paid much better attention in class today.
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