When a pupil is late for more than five minutes, the teacher can forbid the entry in the classroom. The latecomer spends the rest of the hour in the study hall where he may read, draw or even sleep. This paradise has a price label: parents are informed and asked either to send their child earlier or to check what he does along the way.

I did not like to prevent a pupil from entering a classroom. I thought that a half lesson was better than no lesson at all. As a teacher, I considered a newcomer's entry to be an opportunity to summarize what had already been told. To teach is often to repeat (and to repeat often!), but it is important to be careful: teenagers are very sensitive and they are easily offended by anything they could feel despising. To find opportunities to repeat something without letting the young people think you laugh at them is not the easiest part of the job.

Nevertheless, I knew that if I let enter any pupil at any time without punishment at all, the day would come when the whole class would arrive almost at the end of the class hour.

So, the moment I finished summarizing the lesson, the latecomer was sure to be called to the blackboard to do the first exercises while explaining the others why he did this or that. Third repetition and well done, believe me! They know that three points would be subtracted from the mark to make up for having been late.

A day I realized that nobody was listening to me when a seat was empty. Why should you listen to your teacher when you know that she is going to repeat everything within a quarter of an hour?

Of course, I had to change the way I dealt with the latecomers... until the class leapt into another breach.

Gabrielle Guichard
is a French teacher who reads novels and comments linguistic issues on French Reading.

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