Suddenly I see...
Watching the clock. A bad habit. I had always wondered since I became a teacher about 13 years ago now, why some students were so much easier for me to relate to than others, and then it hit me. It's about work. When I was a kid, I had a teacher named Mrs. Pollock. She was my 6th grade teacher. She was one of the "scary" teachers for all the kids in the school, because she was thought of as "mean" by many of the kids I knew. I never knew dread like the day I found out I had been assigned to her class. Oh no, NOT Mrs. Pollock! I just knew it would be a miserable year. On the contrary, it turned out to be not only one of the best years in elementary school, but also she turned out to be one of my favorite teachers. She wasn't mean at all, but one thing about it... she expected her students to be the best students in the 6th grade. (They didn't have to be the smartest, but they had to work hard. She gave you good grades if she knew you were working h