Rosetta: Lesson Learned

So school has gotten to have a sort of rhythm. I have a pattern I follow and nothing really new or extraordinary has happened lately, which is why I haven't been blogging as often. However, today I was with Laurent and a full class of 15 and 16 year olds. Now, normally the class is split into two groups and Laurent has one hour with group 1 and then later in the day, 1 hour with group two. This means he has about 14 students at a time. Of these 14 he usually allots me 4. Well, once or twice a week he sees the whole 28 of them at once, this means he is working very hard to make sure that both groups achieve the same goals so that when he has them together they are at the same level. Today we had both groups and instead of giving just 4 like he normally does, Laurent gave me group 2. This meant for 25 minutes I was alone with 14 students and we were supposed to talk about the video we had just seen. We struggled through the ingredients they had mentioned on the video with me writing them on the board (as I had done with previous classes with Laurent present). There were 4 or 5 kids involved, 3 or 4 kids chatting, and two kids with their heads down on their desks. Finally we got through the list of ingredients and I could tell I didn't have their attention. So I decided to put them into groups and make them decide the order in which the ingredients were used. This was about 15 minutes before the period ended and I made the colossal mistake of deciding to mix things up and put them in groups with people they were not sitting next to. So I counted off, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, until all the students had a number and then I designated an area for ones, and area for twos and an area for threes. The kids took a full 10 minutes acting confused and standing up and wandering around or refusing to stand up. By this time we only had a couple of minutes left. I tried to hurry them into groups but those kids were pro at pretending to willingly do whatever I ask but only one at a time when I specifically asked an individual. So no one really disobeyed me they just feigned confusion and ignorance until there wasn't much time left. Finally I after they were in groups and after I has insisted they find pen and paper (which they didn't want to do because they knew if they just waited another couple of seconds it would be too late) and after they had all agreed they understood what they were supposed to do, I think maybe one or two of them had written 'onions' on their paper before the bell rang. All in all it was a complete disaster and Laurent apologized and told me he wouldn't stick me with the whole group any more. So we are going back to groups of 4 or 5 and I am even more decided in my choice NEVER to become a teacher.