Elementary school

Footlicker

Posted on by Erin

Originally posted on Facebook, October 2, 2006.

The following is from a few years ago.  It was my second year teaching and I was split between two different buildings, commuting between the two every day.  It was total chaos.

Today, in my walk to read group, a kid took off his shoes and socks and licked his foot. Siiiiiiiiiick. Then he got up and put his shoes in the recycle bin. Also, a kid came in with only half his braids in, so one half was neat (but huge) corn rows and the other was trying to be a fro. And his nose was full of crusty snot, as usual. One kid came in half way through and would not stop crying the whole time. A girl had a headache and got a wet paper towel (my solution to elementary school aches and pains is always to either have them sit really still or put a wet paper towel on it), but then she ate the paper towel. Or, at least, she chewed it up real good. Every time I’d call on her, she had chunks of paper towel dangling out of her mouth like they were floppy vampire teeth or deflated walrus tusks. Another kid wouldn’t take his booty off the radiator heater thing until I told him it might burn him. Nobody wants a burnt booty. A girl was spinning around on the floor and wouldn’t stop until she smacked her face on a metal table leg, which gave her a big welt by her eyebrow. The kid with half a fro chased himself around a table leg like a dog chasing his tail until the girl smacked her face. They’re sort of a learn things the hard way kind of crowd. They threw rocks. We were indoors, but somehow they found rocks. Somebody pulled the head off a seahawks candy dispenser I have. They crawled under chairs. One kid grabbed a sharpie and pretended to write on the tables. Luckily he was just pretending. They are all nutballs.

Actually, it was the best day we’ve had in a long time.

Shoulds and Should Nots

Posted on by Erin

Last school year I had one of my writing groups fold a piece of paper in half hot-dog style.  (Hot-dog style is a teacher-term with which you should all familiarize yourselves.  It’s very technical.)  On the top of the paper I had them write “Should” and “Shouldn’t.”  Then we took a few minutes to brainstorm things we should be doing during writing time and things we should not be doing during writing time.   Here is a sample that exemplifies what I was looking for:

Clearly, this one was written by a very well-behaved student.

Here are a couple more, written by students I lovingly refer to as “tweakers.” 

Should: follow directions and listen. Should not: try to be spider pig, do a youtube video, explode.
This is clearly my handwriting, but I really just wrote down what the kid said. He had a very appropriate list of things he should be doing. While his list of "shouldn'ts" are all very accurate, there are a couple that cause some alarm. Mechanical fist?

 

We compiled the ideas from this brainstorming session into a poster-appropriate list and I hung them up for the rest of the year.  Clearly we did not include any references to spider pig or mechanical fists.  We did, however, include fart noises.   When things got goofy, I’d say something like, “I’m gonna need you guys to scan the list…where are we falling right now?”  Or I’d praise them by pointing out all the things on the “Should” list they were exhibiting right then.  Or I’d say something like, “Oh, man…which side of the list are fart noises on?  Yeah, so should you be doing that now?”  They’d all discussed and come to an agreement that fart noises were not something they wanted to deal with during their writing time, so it wasn’t me they were answering to, it was themselves. 

Is this a research-based intervention? I dunno.  Is it something I found in a behavior management book written by an expert? Nopers.  Is it something I made them do one day instead of subjecting them to my eyes getting really wide and rolling around in my skull as I told them for the 32,475th time that fart noises were unacceptable? Yep.