Not yet

 

World's Best Third Graders

School is weird this last week.  

The schedule is irregular and my students want to know what exactly is happening and when and it's a little fluid because I don't always know.  That doesn't do much to satisfy them.

Yesterday we had the dance festival (see above).  We had two performances.  The early morning one was for the school and parents and the afternoon one was just for parents and we had to march on and off the stage and back to class in a very regimented way and third grade had our parachutes and different ways to enter the stage than everyone else so people (the aides who had been deputized to keep everyone in line) were kind bugged by us, but our parachutes had a big wow factor and we felt entitled to buck the rules.

Also, how is the dance festival so exhausting?  Maybe because it involves over 500 children and they are ready to amble in any direction if you let them.  In the morning when it was time to go back inside, I was sitting on the side furthest from the school.  Matt made the announcement for students to go back to class. En masse, my students turned to me. I pointed for my students to go back to the classroom and they all crowded towards me.  They were each carrying a chair and it was regular gridlock.

I had to fight my way through the 4th graders to get to the school side of my herd of third graders so they'd follow me.

When we were lining up for the second performance, my student who doesn't speak English and bless her heart NEVER knows what is happening, lined up with the students who do tricks at the beginning.  I had someone ask her if she was doing tricks.  She said no.  I told them to tell her to go back with the rest of the class.

She went back to the classroom and sat there quietly alone and missed the entire second performance, thinking her teacher had sent her back to sit in the classroom alone.  I felt terrible!  I had my sweetest boy talk to her and apologize for the miscommunication.  She smiled and he said, "She said it was OK because she is home alone a lot too."

Ugh.

I've never had a student I can communicate less with!

In between the performances we did some math and writing.  They did a tiny bit of silent reading and I finished reading Ramona and her Mother to them.  They loved it and drew and colored and cut and pasted and made a tremendous mess while I read.

Everyone is organizing their classrooms before and after school.  We have this checklist we have to have people sign.  The librarian has to sign we have returned all our books.  The lunch lady has to sign we are paid up.  The secretary has to sign that yes, indeed, we have a key to our classroom.  A fourth grade teacher and I were doing it together yesterday and she said, "This is the most bizarre way to spend 30 minutes, walking around getting these random signatures."

She's not wrong.

There are a few teachers leaving the school and when I walked past their rapidly dismantled classrooms after school yesterday, I felt sad.  I felt sad because I'll miss them and I felt sad for them that they are leaving that school I love so much.

Maybe someday I'll be ready to pack up and go, but not yet.