One thing I come across daily are the students who don't listen or pay attention while I'm talking. There are some days where I can give directions until I'm blue in the face and there will still be kids who ask, "wait... what do I do?" I have found over the years, that nine times out of ten, these are the kids that are in la-la-land. These are the kids who are staring into space, or reading a book under the table, or even doing work for another class. 

Let me tell you a story. I had a student one day who came to me and told me they didn't understand the math we learned earlier that day. Of course I decided to rearrange our class schedule to make sure that all my students understood the math, because to be fair, it was a pretty difficult concept. So as I am explaining this concept once again to the class, this particular student gets up and goes to the bathroom. When the student came back, they said to me, "Ms. C, I still don't get it." 

Okay. Stop. Wait. Hold up. Of course the student didn't get it, they didn't stay in the room long enough to learn it! The thing about students who are in la-la-land is that the only person they're hurting is themselves. Some things that I do to motivate my students include rewards for hard work. With younger kids that might mean the chance to play heads up seven up at the end of the day, or maybe candy, or with older kids, the chance to chat toward the end of the period. Bathroom breaks are also something I do not allow during instruction. The only exceptions to this are students who have medical reasons for using the bathroom whenever they need to, and students who look as if it's an emergency. Otherwise I do believe they can wait. Some teachers have bathroom policies that allow students to go whenever they want. When this is the case, I will usually tell students the bathroom is closed until further notice. Here's a sure thing when it comes to bathrooms and students: if one kid has to go, ten more kids will suddenly have to go soon after. This is often the same for students who left their jacket on the playground.

I bet you're asking... "well what about that student and the math?" I walked the student through another problem and they caught on in the end. All was well in the land of math.