An Unexpected Ending

At a well-known secondary private school in Mar del Plata, a new student joined the English classes in 4th year in May. There, the students have English Language lessons five hours a week, and Juan came from a school with only two hours. As a consequence, his language level was lower than the rest of the class.  Mrs. Belisan was determined to help him, so she guided him during the activities and the exams they had. Two weeks later, during a midterm exam, the teacher told Juan to do the tasks as practise. During the exam, Juan asked for doubts and was always assisted. It seemed he was frustrated while trying to do the test despite being told he wouldn’t be graded for that. When time was up and all the students handed in their exams, Juan had an outburst of anger and threw his exam to the teacher. He even left the classroom cursing. Although the teacher had been really patient, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She talked to the headmistress and Juan was called into her office. The next class, this student apologised to the teacher for his behaviour, and he considerably changed his attitude. He also mentioned that he was having a hard time at the new school because his parents were getting divorced, and he had just moved to the neighborhood. Similarly, during the previous three lessons, we have observed in different subjects, he had had a challenging and disrespectful attitude. After that incident, the boy started behaving properly and actively participating in the rest of the classes.