I once subbed in a class room that was notoriously difficult, always in some sort of uproar, 30 kids, 27 of them acting up and out at any given time. When the sub office called to see if I was available for that class the first time, they even warned me about them.
I walked in that morning to utter chaos. Imagine the worst you’ve seen on TV – kids standing on desks, chasing each other around the room, yelling, throwing things, a fist fight happening in the corner…..It took a couple of hours, but I got them under control.
They were working quietly, heads down, bent over their papers when the principal walked in, very briskly, with great authority and purpose, ready to help….and stopped dead in her tracks, a look of awed surprise on her face.
She gazed around, then looked at me and murmered, ”...You got ‘em! I don’t know how you did it, but you got ‘em!”
I get a rush even thinking about her reaction to this day.
That was the class I adopted a kid out of—the biggest trouble maker of them all!—and then I met his older brother who was in 6th grade at the time and I adopted him too.