Well now I feel good.

Just did the last session of my most unruly class yesterday. This is the class of 16 kids (14 boys), and it went for 12 weeks instead of 8. While most of the kids were good, there were about four rather obnoxious boys and one not-especially-smart girl that I really could've done without.

This time I had two SBITR's (Smartest Boy In The Room, and yes I'm being sexist, they're always boys). One of 'em was actually pretty smart, and the other one spent so much time boasting of his intelligence that he never had time to write any code.

On the first class of the session, the actually-smart boy was almost in tears. He had been looking forward to the class since the summer, but it was clear that there wasn't much I was going to teach that he didn't already know.

I fully expected to not see him the second week, but I did. And I tried to give him extra challenges as we went along. For example, in the "Greedy Birds Game" lesson, I challenged both of the SBITR's to follow my steps but also add a floating powerup that could freeze your opponent for five seconds.

(And I made sure that the challenges were never quite met. If one got the powerup working, I'd insist that it turn the bird turn blue so it looks frozen. And then the bird shouldn't freeze in midair but should fall to the ground. Etc etc etc.)

Anyway, I just noticed that his mom gave my class a 5-star review.

And that's why I feel good.

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