"I'm bored," whined Chris, looking at me as though I should fix it. I quirked an eyebrow at him.

He said it again, more plaintively. "I'm boooooored." Was I babysitting?  Back in the past with my teenagers?  Onstage at a circus, letting the audience down?  No.  I looked inquisitively around.  The chalkboard anchored one wall, the white board on another, my desk was jammed with the day's work awaiting my bloody red pen.  My world was in place. Which world did Chris inhabit?

Must have been the same one as Vera, who pulls out her beads every time I turn by back, or Shala with her cell phone, or Osmany with his CD player.  This year, I've taken to announcing several times a day, "You are at school.  Remember? And what grade are you in?"   I smile encouragingly and coax them to check reality. 

Sometime, I say it to couples in the hall avidly trying to absorb each other's flu germs.  "You're not at the movies, come up for air.  You're in the hallway at school.  Teachers are watching."

Other students busily penned five-paragraph essays.  We had brainstormed, story-mapped, and told our tales aloud.  Now we were inking out the stories that told how to test a true friend.

Chris had raced through his and refused to edit.  And now he wanted entertainment, it seemed. Here I am on Sunday night, praying that tomorrow I'll break through to the segment of the population who forgets why they came to school.

I almost wept in relief Friday when parents connected with me and asked what homework their students could do over the weekend.  A couple of chagrined parents pledged their support to enforcing that their sixth graders would attend class and learn.  One threatened to send her daughter to Mexico. 

It would be so helpful if, tommorow morning before school, parents would shake their students by the shoulders--especially the junior highers--and say..."Honey, remember, you're going to school.  Take a pencil and a pen and some notebook paper.  Here, eat breakfast.  Go to classes. Leave your Game-Boy and IPod and car magazines here."

Of course, I was a parent of teens once myself.  I had a dozen such speeches.  Sometimes, there is no substitute for repetition...and tenacity. Therefore, I'll try to outwit my students with humor and affection, solid teaching tactics, research-based methods.  And I'll reming them, "this is school. I'm not going to juggle. We're going to read and think and write."  Over and over.