William Watson sometimes seems to be afraid working of hard. He can’t help trying
to avoid doing anything that involves using his brain, particulary on Friday afternoons. He seems to detest taking life seriously, and pretends he isn’t capable of achieving anything of worth. This is unfortunate as, with a little more effort, William could succeed in making
great progress.However, at present he frequently just wants to play the fool. He enjoys telling jokes. Presumably, he imagines this to be
the best way to make friends, but in fact he often just ends up preventing the other students from learning . He has promised on several occasions to improve. his behaviour in class, but then he just keeps on behaving in exactly the same way. Recently, I have had to beg him to sit down and be quiet in the classroom, but it’s difficult to know how to make him come to his senses. He just doesn’t seem interested in listening to my opinion. I’m tempted to give up even hoping that he might improve. Having said that though, Mr Watson is an extremely good maths teacher!