From the Teacher’s Desk: What is Really Happening at School

My only assignment this week was a repeat performance.  I was with the 1st-graders again . . .the first student entered the room and stopped dead in his tracks with “you’re the teacher who made us put our heads down on our desks for a long time.”

Yes, yes I am and just so you know – it could happen again.

Seems they all remembered me.  Having great instructions and lots of handouts, we started the day.  The same kids were the ones to start off on a bad foot, but responded well to, “do we need to put our heads down for a while to gather ourselves”?  The day went well, we did STAR (aka sit tight and read) a book report series – something new.  They all let me know – we don’t do this!

I had to remind them about the “new sheriff in town”.  We continued with a little language arts, math and then it was time to head off to the cafeteria which meant the first battle for line leader.  If I’ve learned nothing else in this new endeavor, its to NOT choose a line leader.  So I quickly informed the “very anxious” group that I would be the line leader for the entire day.  So down the hall we went.  They were perfectly-behaved right up until we entered the cafeteria door of the cafeteria and ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.

They all immediately started running.  Now I’m as excited as the next person about lunch, but chicken patties – seriously?  After we (and by we I mean two other teachers and a cafeteria worker) settled the kids down, we got in line only to have them begin with – “yuck I don’t like that!”  My response was, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Its just a big flat chicken nugget for crying out loud and NONE of you can tell me you don’t like chicken nuggets – everyone under the age of 13 loves chicken nuggets!”  

Seems chicken nugget was the magic word.  Not good enough for me I’m afraid.  I hate chicken nuggets so I opted for the salad.  Lunch was going so smoothly at this point, right up until one kid called another kid’s mom a “welfare ho”.  Of course, he denied having done so.  I really thought the girl was going to knock his head off and frankly, can’t say I wasn’t in her corner.  After pulling her out of his face, she went back to her seat and picked up her roll and promptly threw it at him.  That set the tone for the rest of the day.  More on that later.

Note: Have any of you ever used a spork?  Do you know how hard it is to eat a salad with a plastic spork.  For those of you not educated in the fine eating utensils, a spork is a fork and spoon all in one handy device…very small device.  I think it may have been designed specifically to help you lose weight because you get so frustrated trying to eat with it- you finally just give up.

Back to the classroom and the group pee.  Since we were less than behaved at lunch and the way back to the room, we had some “head on the desk time” while the class left 2 by 2 for the bathroom.  That gave me just enough time to keep them quiet before MUSIC CLASS–with another teacher.

My first thought after the lunch from hell, was to punish them by not allowing them to go to music class.  But I then thought: ARE YOU NUTS!!!??? That’s 40 quiet peaceful minutes ALONE!  So I promptly delivered them to the music teacher.

It was the quickest 40 minutes of my life so far.

Now it was time for social science.  I had several hand outs to provide along with a snack donated by some outside source; not sure where they come from.  I was told they are donated by different people every day.  On this day, it was sliced carrots and snow peas along with some GREAT RANCH DIP!  Needless to day, everyone yucked the snow peas.  I told them that if they ate them it would snow.

That’s all it took.  Once they tasted them, they all agreed they had never had anything so yummy.  THANK GOODNESS THE WEATHER IS CALLING FOR A POSSIBILITY OF SNOW FLURRIES THIS WEEKEND!!  Those kids will want snow peas all the time now.