Chalkdust Torture

Due to the never ending battle of our school's fuse box and faulty wiring, these past two weeks it has been back to the chalk board; no electricity. I'm beginning to master methods of stalling classes, and I'm starting to become aware of my former teachers' stalling methods that I never noticed at the time. Unfortunately, the most obvious method, playing a videotaped PBS series, is not an option. I'm also getting extremely good at slowing down my speech to speeds not uncommon to the crawling pace of an injured sloth.

Lack of silence usually doesn't bother me in the computer lab because students are always helping each other to find solutions and moving about, but when I'm trying to lecture and explain things on the chalkboard I require silence. This can often be difficult to come by, especially on entering a classroom. I'm tired of yelling, so lately I've been working on my Clint Eastwood "I don't have six-shooter drawn but as you can see by the look on my face I'm about to pump your head full of mind bullets, or maybe throw an eraser at you, and you'll be pushin' daiseys, unless you take out your notebook and pencil and shut the hell up." I'm getting pretty good at it. My favorite stare-downs occur when the rest of the class notices it and submits except for maybe two people, and the whole class is silent, shifting glances from me to them in anticipation of what will happen next... BOOM! Eraser in the face.