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!