Lemmy died last Dec . He was the warning of what was to come . <| sep |> Pretty damn good tornado if I ' ve seen one <| sep |> In terms of behavior management that ' s tough because you seem like you ' re trying the right things . Teaching middle schoolers is really hard and in my experience , using humor , being funny but firm , and forming relationships didn ' t really work for me until I did it enough times . In terms of notebook checks , I have a pretty good system for this . Instead of actually reading their full responses , get a stamp and ink pad with adjustable dates and stamp their notebooks at the end of each notebook assignments , only if they seem to have put effort into their work . For some the stamp itself will work as motivation . randomly after maybe 2 weeks of doing this , tell students to count the number of stamps in their notebook and all of the students with a certain amount of stamps gets something I usually use homework passes , extra credit , or if I ' m feeling really generous candy .