Lines, chairs, the pencil sharpener and candy

Halloween…a time for children to dress up in costumes that are both cute and scary at the same time, where they come and demand candy from you…and if you don’t give them candy they will steal your shoes and once they have the candy they will eat it until they are so hyper that the next morning they can’t listen what so ever in class. And to think that in reality it is the devil’s holiday…so nice of us to celebrate it.

Today: As luck would have it, today was the first of the month…so “Rabbit Rabbit everyone,” and I think that my “luck” so to speak has run out. When I got to my classroom all of my students were outside stuffing as much candy as they could into their mouths. It was as if the candy was some how going to disappear and they would be left with nothing, I think they knew that teacher was going to take the candy away. I didn’t take it away…I just made them throw out whatever was in their mouths whenever I caught them eating or chewing on candy. I did not want little hyper children in my classroom, but now I really wonder why I wasted so much energy on trying to stop them from eating the candy in the first place…oh yeah I remember…the no food in class (except during lunch) policy. The following are the troubles that I had today.

Lines: It would be a dream come true to see all eighteen of my little students walking in a straight and quiet line…they used to, but now they don’t see the need to…My requests are actually rather simple…walk in a straight line, do not talk, do not push or shove, keep your hands behind you back. Now what is so hard about that? Plenty, my class has to shove each other as they run to the gym, they have to yell at each other as we are passing other classrooms, they must run onto the grass to get around each other and be first. It is very important for my students to always be first. They must be first there is no two ways about it, whether it is going to recess or coming back…there is a head long race to be first. Which believe it or not gets them into quite a lot of trouble.
Now yesterday I warned my kids that if they couldn’t figure out how to walk correctly in line that I would make them walk in a line until they got it right. Well recess was as close to a disaster as it could get. My students wanted to do their own thing during math, so half of the class had to stay in the classroom with Evangeline until their math was done, which I have a sneaky suspicion they didn’t do correctly. Anyway I only had six kids to take down to the gym and they couldn’t even walk in line correctly and those that were left in the classroom (I was on duty that recess so I couldn’t stay in the classroom) ran around the school yard once they finished their math and I had to chase them down, so by the end they had one extremely grumpy teacher and after I counted to ten, got them to drink water and use the bathroom, I calmly told them that their behavior was unacceptable and they were going to learn how to walk in a line correctly during their afternoon recess while everyone else (meaning grades 1-3) were playing. They were not happy about that, but I didn’t care…these kids need to learn discipline, their parents don’t teach it to them, so I will.

The pencil sharpener: Now I know that my kids like to be out of their seats, I spend most of my time telling my kids to sit down and generally I ask them to quietly work. Now since they must move around I am always getting asked, “Teacher can I drink?” “Teacher can I pee?” “Teacher can I draw?” but my favorite is “Teacher can I sharpen my pencil?” My kids love the pencil sharpener…if they could they would probably sharpen their pencil all day long or until their pencil was just an eraser. Sometime this afternoon Evangeline snapped…she is so mild mannered that you wouldn’t think it of her to snap so, but she took possession of the pencil sharpener. She told each and everyone of the students that she was now in charge of the pencil sharpener, she would decide if their pencil needed sharpening or not, I have never seen her lecture them so, I was kinda enjoying it…teacher was getting a well earned break from the yelling. The long and short of it is, if one of them comes to school without a pencil they will not be able to do any work, which means they will stand/sit in a corner all day long...Anyway right after she was done talking I heard “SNAP!” and a little voice piped up “Teacher my pencil broke! I need to sharpen it!” But since Evangeline was in charge of the pencil sharpener I let her deal with it, and she did…

Chairs: My students sit about as well as they stand in line. They must squirm, which is understandable considering my oldest child is 8 and the youngest just turned 5. I find this a problem with my boys…they will kneel on their chairs, stand on their chairs…they can find the weirdest positions to sit…but they won’t sit correctly…so whenever I catch them sitting wrong I take away their chair informing them that there is another first grade classroom that is in need of chairs…and I am sure that some student would love to have this chair and sit in it correctly. It is a work in progress, today I took Trumaine’s chair away three times in like 30 minutes….THREE! instead of standing behind his desk he sat on his desk…when he got his chair back, the cycle started all over again…take away chair, sit on desk, be told to stand, get chair back….

So those are the trials so far…tomorrow is Thursday, we don’t have school on Friday…which is wonderful. And next week we have school on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday…Holidays are great…but I am beginning to wonder when my students will actually learn something. This weekend we are going to Ant…it is rather far from the main island of Pohnpei, but well that is where the adventure is….so by Monday you should know all about that camping trip, I hope that it is better then the last one was.