Consistency is exhausting

 On the first day of school, my class voted on the reward they wanted to receive when they spelled the word responsible.  We are going to spell all the RIDER values (responsible, inclusive, determined, engaged and respectful).  Rider is the name of our mascot.

They voted on popsicles.  It seemed like a great reward mid-August.

It has been so hard fought!  They earn letters for making speedy and civilized transitions and I have given subs leeway to either add or subtract letters.  I have erased a few letters at times when they are being crazy.

On Friday, they finally earned their reward.  Some of them had been worried, "It will be too cold by the time we earn these popsicles!"

But they finally did it!

At the store on Saturday, I nearly forgot to buy popsicles.  It would have been tragic if I'd forgotten!

Then all weekend, every time I'd get ice out of the freezer (so, often), I would tell whoever was nearby, "I can't forget to take these popsicles to school!"

Sunday evening, Adam put the red and blue Marks and Spencer bag he brought home treats from London in on the seat of Joan.  He said, "This will remind you not to forget the popsicles."

I went out to my car yesterday morning and sure enough, I had forgotten the popsicles, but Adam's brilliant way to remind me had worked.

I got the popsicles and put them in the freezer in the teachers' lounge.

They were SO excited.  After lunch, I had the popsicles ready.  We distributed them and my thinking was that I would return the extras to the freezer and be back really fast and then read aloud to them.  Everyone would be busy with their popsicles and it would be a quiet and calm read aloud.

My thinking was wrong.

When I rounded the corner to my classroom (I had purposefully left the door open so I could hear the hooligans), I could hear an uproar.

I walked inside and they told me that one of the boys (of course he did) said something inappropriate to another student.  

I unceremoniously took his popsicle and threw it in the trash.

He cried and sulked and ripped papers and slid his desk across the room and went to the reading corner and sat not the floor and got a book and pretended to read it.  (He can't read is how I know he was pretending--also reading, even pretending to, doesn't really make me as mad as he thought it would.)

I read aloud anyway.

Throwing a fit must work at home.

Later, I told him that he didn't get his popsicle because of what he said.  I asked, "Do you understand?"

He whimpered.

Later we had Read with a Cop.  You would think if there was any time third graders would be at full attention it would be when we read with a cop.  I mean, they're armed.  But the third graders are pretty naughty.

I had this same student come over and sit by me because he was being disruptive.  He complained, "I can't see the pictures."

Alissa and I shrugged at him.  Did we care?  We did not.

We were in the cafeteria and he started banging his head against the table.  

Alissa said, "It must work for him at home."

Yep.

Eventually he got tired of, you know, hitting his head against the table.

The cop finished one story and was about to start a second.  I asked my student if he wanted to go try again and he humbly said yes.  He was good throughout the second story.

A girl, who was being a chatty Cathy, was seated on the other side of me.  She was completely happy about it.  She complimented me on my fingernails and wanted to chat about what she was doing after school.

I kept shushing her.  (Note to self:  sitting by me isn't always the consequence I was hoping for.)

I gave myself an O in our ongoing tic tac toe game when we got back to class.  Because they weren't their best selves....

I gave them an i, the first letter in inclusive at the end of the day because they had cleaned up the classroom pretty well.

It is exhausting.  April and May Thelma will thank me, but it is exhausting.