Stir The Storm

Man, I'm giddy.

Everything came to a head yesterday afternoon after school. I couldn't take it anymore -- there was just too much competition between myself as a teacher against my students and the ever-popular Internet.

I decided to have the Interent absolutely cut from my room. No more games, no more music. Although I had tolerated it for most of the year, it was time for it to end.

Our "TechGuy" wrote up a script for the computers in my room to disable Internet Explorer (but there are a few sneaky computers with Mozilla). I just couldn't wait to gauge my students' reactions this morning.

At first, they decided to log off and re-log back on to the network -- didn't work. Next, let's shut down the computer completely, then reboot -- didn't work. Finally, let's all complain to the teacher.

*grin*

I heard it all. "It's not fair!" "What are we supposed to do now?" "I hate my life."

My rebuttal: of all the classes that I teach, none of them require the Internet. It was about time that I thought it to be very disrespectful that while I'm up doing my presentation or trying to get some material pushed across, the students would rather have their noses planted firmly on their screens looking to find that new exiciting Flash game.

If they truly wanted to use the Internet, the school has four other computer labs. Use the Internet on their own time, not mine -- but oh, no -- that cannot happen. They just cannot imagine staying after school for a few minutes to do their thing.

In the end, my attitude is: whatever. Bitch all you want. They brought it on upon themselves. I finally knew it was a problem when my students just wanted me to present my material as quickly as possible so they could do their thing. Discussion was out of the question. Yeah -- BIG PROBLEM.

But I've got the Internet on my laptop, hooked through the wireless network. The students fired back saying that if they cannot have the Internet, I shouldn't. Tough. Life's not fair; besides, I need it for my attendance taking.

If only they could realize...but again, whatever.