Unwelcome visitor

Today I was the one providing entertainment for my students... I had just finished lecturing them about how they've been too chatty and they need to calm down and focus. We started Language class, and I was in the middle of a sentence, when I saw a student pointing to something on the floor. I looked down, and there was a huge brown blur shooting across the floor. I interrupted myself with a loud "EWW! WHAT IS THAT?!" As the class all got to their feet and gathered around to see the creature (a disgusting thousand legger), I retreated to the corner of the room. (Many of you know I have an extreme phobia to thousand leggers.) Thankfully one brave boy offered to kill it with a tissue. (He liked being the hero.) I was so worked up over this that I could feel my face getting all flushed; the students were sure to point out that I was all red. You can imagine how long it took us to get back to Language. 

After I took the students out to recess, I returned to the room and found this on my desk: 

Notice the red face. It didn't take long for me to deduce that it was from my hero. He later told me he should have put the note with the thousand legger in a jar. Several times I caught him at the trash can trying to dig it out. 

Needless to say, the students saw a different side of their teacher today... Glad I could provide some humor for them, although I'm sure I'll never hear the end of it! 

Not my strength

The other day in my devotional book, Jesus Calling, I read this:

It is good that you recognize your weakness. That keeps you looking to Me, your Strength. Abundant life is not necessarily health and wealth; it is living in continual dependence on Me.

I had to think of that today. Being responsible for 25 children creates many moments when I cannot depend on my own strength! Today, for example, I had two students getting sick (one throwing up in the classroom), desks falling apart, about five students who just can't seem to get caught up with their work with the end of the quarter looming ahead of us, a boy retrieving something who ended up completely under his desk for a minute or two, a student -while microwaving his lunch - exclaiming, "Peas and chicken are popping out of my soup!", behavior issues, which included students running/skipping/jumping after I had just talked to them and was making them walk with me, students constantly calling out and talking without raising their hands, students making all sorts of noises such as squealing, clicking, and sirens, a student lying completely underneath my rocking chair (head out the front, feet out the back) right before I was ready to sit on it...

By the end of the day, I was actually saying to students, "Listen, I have no patience left!" I'm glad God doesn't run out of patience with me, and I have another chance tomorrow to show a little more grace. :)

And I did get a nice self-esteem boost this afternoon as I was grading papers. One of the directions on their Language paper was to write a sentence about their teacher using a linking verb. I made sure to instruct them to be nice, and so it was rather pleasant to read 25 variations of "My teacher is nice," or my favorite one, "My teacher is pretty." Thanks, students! It means a lot, even though I did tell you to write nice things about me!

A week's worth of stories

Last week seemed to be a bit of a blur. There were some difficult and challenging moments (as always), but as I think back over it, I have to smile...

The gym teacher made the students these really cool T-shirts for their volleyball tournament. This resulted in some interesting moments in class. Many of the students chose to change into their new T-shirts the day they got them, which was fine for the most part. However, throughout the day I had students constantly asking to go change into their T-shirts, or change back into their other shirts... And then there were the two boys that decided it would be funny to put their T-shirts on backwards, during class. And what to do with their other shirts? Well one boy decided to wrap it around his head.

We also had some issues with the bathroom passes this week. (They put the pass on their desks so I know where they are instead of taking the passes to the germy bathroom!) The boys' pass was missing for a day, but I figured it would turn up eventually. Finally when it became an issue, I stopped in the middle of class to ask them if anyone knew where it was. I got an answer I wasn't expecting... Yes, one boy knew where it was. Somehow it had gotten into his backpack and he had taken it home the night before. Later that same day, the girls' pass was missing, and when I asked where it was, one of the boys piped up, with a completely serious voice and face, "Maybe it's in someone's backpack." That made me laugh even though I'm still not sure if he meant it as a joke!

At break time, the snack battles continue. One day one boy put something in the microwave. It's not usually necessary to microwave a snack, so I asked him what he was microwaving. He brought a plastic cup with a brown lump over to me, explaining, "Look, Miss Weaver, I microwaved my Snickers bar to change it from a solid to a liquid." Well, I'm glad he's been paying attention in Science class, but for the rest of the morning the classroom smelled like melted plastic and burnt Snickers.

On Wednesday morning, the chapel speaker shared an acronym, and one of the words he used was "necessary." I'm not sure if this is what sparked this one girl's use of the word or not, but later that day she brought me one of her papers and said, "Is this necessary?" I looked at it, but I didn't understand what she was asking. She repeated the question. I said, "Do you know what necessary means?" "No... I mean, is it good?" So I explained to her the meaning... hopefully she'll try using it again. :)

I had to leave early Friday afternoon for a doctor appointment, so all the students were waving and saying goodbye, and just before I went out the door, one boy called, "I'm glad you're leaving!" I didn't take him too seriously considering this was the same boy who earlier that week gave me bunny ears and openly admitted to me it was because he wanted attention.

Even though I'm never sure I have enough energy for the coming week, I'm not ready for the school year to be over yet. These students keep my life interesting!  :)

Who knew dictionaries were so interesting?

At the end of the day one of my students commented to me, "You look tired." I said, "I am tired!" They couldn't understand. "Why? It's Friday! We're never tired on Fridays!"

Today started with one student telling me his family got fish last night. I was thinking he meant fish to eat, so I stared, waiting for an explanation. When he started saying what kinds they were, I realized he meant pet fish. So I said, "Oh, that's exciting!" and called on someone else who wanted to share something. Well I guess this student was really excited about his pet fish and wasn't done talking about them, because as others were talking, I heard him still making comments. "They like to swim at the top... They're pretty small..."

What kind of teacher doesn't let her students look at dictionaries? Well... me. One of the local schools donated dictionaries for each of my students. I mentioned this in passing one day, but I had left them in my car. They were so excited about getting these dictionaries; they kept asking about them and reminding me to bring them in. So I finally handed them out this morning. Never have I seen children so fascinated with a reference book! Every spare minute they were absorbed in the dictionaries. All day long I had to threaten to take away their dictionaries if they didn't stop looking at them during class! You should know, though, that they weren't just reading definitions... there was a lot of information in the back of these dictionaries, like maps and charts and such. But still... Many of them wanted to take them home for the weekend. Hey, as long as it's not during Math or Spelling or any of my classes, enjoy your dictionaries, kids!

Lunchtime entertainment

Just a quick story for you today.

A few days ago, one of my boys ("Bobby") demonstrated his juggling skills for the class during lunchtime. (Incidentally, this is the same boy who was making balloon animals the other week. Maybe he'll be in a circus someday.) He was quite good for a third grader (much better than I would ever hope to be).

Today at the beginning of lunch I saw across the room that one boy ("Johnny") was up to something but I wasn't sure what. So I asked, "What are you doing, Johnny?!" His answer: "I'm juggling, like Bobby was the other day!" However, instead of juggling with nice soft balls, Johnny was "juggling" with his yogurt and fruit cup. Just as I opened my mouth to tell him that that was not a good idea (seeing as his juggling skills needed some work), up went the peaches and yogurt, down went the peaches, splitting open, spilling juice and peaches on the carpet.

Never a dull moment in the third grade classroom.

Trash can digging, lectures, and Sammy Sosa

I didn't fully realize until I became a teacher how much I like to be in control. (The Lord is continually working with me on that!) I have a plan, and heaven forbid anything get in the way of following it. So you can imagine my frustration when interruptions in the classroom prevent me from carrying out a lesson as planned. A few of the interruptions that occurred yesterday morning were:

1. my need to confiscate a blue sharpie from a student who was drawing on all kinds of things with it during class
2. a boy trying to quietly open and eat a granola bar during class (after break/snack was over)
3. a boy spitting on the carpet (I'm still not quite sure why or how, but it was a significant amount!)

But these types of interruptions I'm used to. It wasn't until the afternoon at the beginning of Math class that I really got flustered, because I wasn't able to stay on schedule. :)  We had just started, and I asked a question about a problem we read. I called on a boy, and instead of answering, he asked me where the hand sanitizer was. (The bottle that I bought to replace the one that got knocked into the trash can that no one bothered to dig out or tell me about a couple weeks ago.) So I stopped the lesson and went back to look in the disgustingly full trash can, all the while lecturing the class that there is no reason it should keep ending up in the trash can, and if it does, the person who knocked it in needs to pull it out. I finally pulled the trash bag out of the can, and there it was on the bottom. So I dug it out, but warned them that I'm not going to keep buying more and if it happens again, they'll just have to wash their hands instead of using sanitizer. As I was lecturing, I went to wash my hands, only to remember afterwards that we were all out of paper towels. (There's nothing more annoying to me than dripping wet hands and not being able to dry them.) 

So I finally got myself together and had just said, "Okay, back to Math!" when my two students that go to another teacher for Math came waltzing back into the classroom announcing that their teacher wasn't in her room . So I stopped Math again and tried calling down to the office, but the phone just rang and rang. So I told them to find a book to read for now (meaning in our classroom) but before I knew what happened, they were back out the door. I guess they thought I meant go read in their room until the teacher came. So I left the room to tell them to come back or make sure there was a teacher with them. I seriously couldn't have been out of the classroom more than 30 seconds. When I came back in, the students looked at me and started laughing hysterically. When I asked why, one boy said, "We threw all the chalk in the trashcan!" which wasn't true. I still don't know why they were laughing (which makes me rather nervous), but it took them a few minutes and another lecture to calm down. We finally got back to Math class without any more major interruptions. Well, there was the boy after I said something like, "If you gave 2 apples to so-and-so..." who raised his hand and said, "I don't know anyone named so-and-so. But I do know someone named Soso. Sammy Soso." I said, "I think it's Sosa." He was sure he was right, and I was sure I was right, so even though it didn't matter, I had to look it up to prove myself. Okay, so that interruption was my fault. 

And now this snow day without any snow is really throwing my plans out of whack! But oh well... I just have to accept that I'm not in control!