It has come to my attention that I haven’t written about how things have been going in my classroom as of late. And since I seem to have a great amount of time this evening, I thought that I would fill you in a bit.
My thoughts about teaching still haven’t changed, I don’t particularly enjoy it…I like to teach, but I don’t like myself when I am teaching…might just be the age of my students or the fact that by the afternoon I am just as tired as my little students and rather short tempered.
Tattle Tale: An on going problem in my class at the moment is that my kids must tell me everything that is happening…whether or not I see the “problem” or not. As an example let me introduce you to Marson, now Marson gives me a lot of trouble during the day…he is a smart little kid, but he MUST tell teacher anything that goes on in class whether it is as small as Wolfgang singing to himself or as big as McRon punching Trumaine in the arm…His voice will pierce the silence or uproar “TEACHER! Wolfgang is talking!” Now I should interject at this point and tell you that Wolfgang is a very quiet boy…he cries a lot, talks or sings to himself through out the day, will wander out of my classroom at any time he pleases, and has an attention span of three seconds. On the other end of the scale Marson is always disobeying teacher, and he knows it. So why not blame the disruption on someone else? Wolfgang happens to be a wonderful target, because he is never paying attention… unfortunately for Marson his plan usually back fires. Since I happen to know my class pretty well and I am extremely tired of this telling teacher stage, I ignore his complaints and continue teaching, but if it gets too loud I remind Marson of our number one rule in our classroom which is “No talking when teacher is talking” and our number three rule which is “Raise hand before asking a question” By the time I am done reminding the entire class of the rules, Marson has already forgotten what indeed was so important to tell…but that only lasts about three minutes, oddly enough whenever I see Marson I am reminded of Christopher.
Back Sale: I personally hate Friday schedule and I despise back sale. There is nothing worse then pumping a bunch of sugar into little five and six year olds and then giving them back to their teacher to deal with for the rest of the day. Because then they are more hyper then usual and will not listen to teacher even if teacher threatens to take away bake sale, which happened this week. Since we had Friday off Varsity held a bake sale on Thursday, and my students of course had to go to bake sale, and had to buy lots of brownies and cake and ice cream and cup cakes…and eat that along with their lunch…so not only did they have rice and chicken smeared all over their faces they now had chocolate and frosting…their fingers were sticky and the last thing on their to do list was to listen to teacher. So Teacher simply told them as they were packing up their backpacks and sitting down at their desks…that if I had to tell them one more time to be quiet and sit quietly (I was getting their papers ready) that I would take away their privilege to go to the bake sale. Oh it might seem harsh, but I dislike dealing with very hyper kids...besides my kids don’t need sugar, by the time they turn ten they won’t have any teeth inorder to eat sweats…and since they didn’t pay any attention to me or my aid…I simply told them that they lost their privilege. And that made them quiet.
Listening: This appears to be an art that none of my kids can master. I mean why listen to teacher? If they listen to teacher they might miss out on some fun that is happening without them. This happens to be a problem at recess…like most children, they want to stay out as long as possible, but there is also another problem…there is always a fight between my students as to who is going to be first and who is going to be last. We have a line leader to take care of the problem of who was going to be first…but I haven’t been able to come up with a set plan for dealing with the “I’m last” issue. My two problem children at recess happen to be Loriann and T.M. Now they aren’t the only ones that don’t come when I blow the whistle or yell at them...we have Chad who is usually running around the gym looking for one or both of his slippers, Wolfgang who is off in his own world wandering around the gym softly singing to himself, there is often a fight between Triston, McRon, and Marson on who is going to be last…in the line we have girls playing “patty cake and lemonade” the boys are shoving each other and informing teacher of all the things someone did to them at recess…there are other teachers yelling at their kids…and then there is my class in complete disarray. But I know that in the end they will be quiet, so I leave my class and walk out into the gym, gently pushing my lost little sheep towards their line. But T.M and Loriann make things difficult, they will run off and hide or play tetherball or if we are on the playground continue to swing…they won’t even come when I walk towards them telling them that recess is over and that they must come in NOW. They wait until I am about 5 feet away from them, then they run up to me and look up at me with big round eyes in the most pitiful look that they can muster…for those of you who have seen Sherk 2 (not my favorite movie) think of the “Puss in Boots” and how he would look up at his enemies with those sad unblinking eyes…I hate it when they do that…because it is so cute, but I can’t reward them for disobeying me…
The case of the missing slippers: Now you wouldn’t think that it is all that hard to keep track of slippers, I mean they are suppose to be on your feet right? Then why is it at the end of every recess we have to go slipper hunting? I will tell you why, the elementary students take off their slippers and run around in their bare feet, they will throw their slippers at other students, those students will take the slippers and chuck them outside or throw them at the ceiling of the gym until they are stuck. So lost and mismatched slippers are usually scattered all around the gym by the end of the day, and everyday at least one of my students head home without their slippers…which is unfortunate, but luckily most slippers are very cheap.
Trash and the fight for who will take it: This is something that I can never figure out. Why on earth is it so important for my kids to be the one to take the trash out at the end of the day, which is usually the last thing I want to carry to the dumpster. But at the end of the day, no joke, I have all 18 of my students yelling at me and asking me if they can take out the trash…I of course tell them that I will choose a quiet person to take out the trash…but they are persistent. They must take out the trash…and will not leave teacher a lone until they get their way.
That is all for part 1, tune in next time for part 2
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