Extra

Yesterday after school the vice principal came into my classroom where I was meeting with my team and tongue in cheek asked, "Can third grade stop with the fight club?!?"

I wish and also we're trying.

Yesterday was A DAY.  I had a student come to school in tears which is always an auspicious way to start the day.

One girl stuck her tongue out at another and they were both upset.  I talked to them and one had been singing and the other told her to stop because it was annoying, so the singer stuck out her tongue.

We talked about other ways it could have been handled, because I am into futility like that.

My ebullient student who is as adorable as he is naughty, came to school late and sad.  Turns out I like him bouncing off the walls more.  I was trying to help him with math (again me + futility) and I noticed he had tears in his eyes.  I asked, "Are you sad?" He nodded.  I asked him if he wanted to talk about it and he hesitated.  I asked, "Do you want to talk about it in Spanish?"

He did.  I left my class in control of their out of control selves and took him to find someone who spoke Spanish.

I pulled a student out of line on the way to art so that we could have a heart to heart about behavior.  A quick redirection turned into about ten minutes of her airing all of her grievances against everyone else in the class to excuse her being mean.  

During art, another student was flinging paint around so he was invited to go clean tables in the art room during recess. 

During lunch the secretary came and got Miriam and me because of...third grade fight club.  There were 7 kids--mostly mine--who'd been brawling at lunch and they didn't have the sense not to do it in front of the office windows.  

When they were in full scale denial of wrong doing, one of the secretaries said, "We could see you right out the windows."

The students turned around to see what the secretaries' view was and stopped their denials.

One student started rapid fire angry Spanish and a few others joined in and a girl said, "Stop!  In English!  The teachers don't understand!"

Miriam had recess duty so I told them they'd all be with me during recess.  A few of them were accepting and a few of them were sizzling mad about it.

We had the whole conversation (again, we've had it many, many times) about if someone does something to you, you have options besides hit them back.

I had a student unrelated to any of the rest of the drama in complete sobbing tears because she'd hurt her friend's feelings in the morning and had been rebuffed in her apology efforts.  So I pulled the friend aside too and they were both sobbing until I unraveled that.

I had my students who missed recess scattered about the room working.  One of them wondered if they could talk about what happened at lunch.

Absolutely not.  (Do I look like Judge Judy?!?)

I said I knew what happened.  They were hitting each other and that's not OK.

A student got bonked in the head at recess so he was holding an ice pack to his head when they came back in.

It was a whole scene.

The student who cleaned tables in the art room came back and told me that the art teacher had said I would give him candy since he'd done such a great job cleaning tables.

I said, "OK, I'll talk to her about it."

He said, "Oh no, Teacher.  Never mind."

I thought so.

So then I had a parent meeting after school unrelated to all the rest of the day's drama, but with enough drama for daytime television at least.

No days are completely free of travail, but some of them are just PACKED with travail.