The teacher in me wants to put the title in alphabetical order, but I'm forcing myself to be okay with chronological order. It was an eventful day, not only was it a Friday, but we also had a fire drill. Awesomely, I got to the be the one to pull the alarm!
Fridays tend to be test days, at least in my class, we will typically have a reading and spelling test every Friday. During the reading test, Margaret came up to me to tell me Gwen was crying. I stop what I was doing and ask Gwen to join me at the round table, so I could ask her what was wrong without having to worry about all the children budding in on the conversation. Gwen says Celine is mad at her and she doesn't know why. I asked her how she knew that Celine was mad at her and she said that Celine is playing with other girls in the class and she rather play with them than her. I told Gwen that everything will work out and it is probably a misunderstanding and to give me some time later today to talk with Celine. Ultimately, I didn't want to go from Gwen to Celine right away making Celine feel that she was in trouble.
On our way to library I walk beside Celine and just as she is getting ready to go in I pull her to the side discreetly. I ask Celine if something was wrong between her Gwen, that they are best friends, but Gwen feels that she is mad at her. Celine responds back saying that Gwen doesn't sit at lunch with her and is playing with other girls in the class. I said okay to Celine and let her continue into library. When they both came out I sat down with them and explained that the two of them are upset over the same thing. I told them that although they are best friends, that sometimes they will want to play with other children, and the important thing is to try not to be jealous. Friends sometimes need a break, but that will help them to build a stronger friendship. Celine and Gwen hug each other and walk back to their seats. I smile seeing two little girls happy again, I couldn't let a friendship die that I saw start in first grade.
A little later in the day Father came to visit our class. He began talking about scapulars and the promises and indulgences you receive by wearing one as well as praying the rosary daily. Immediately, I thought about the fact that I was not wearing one. To make this visit worse, he asked the children why they weren't wearing the scapulars that he had given them. This is one of the moments where as a teacher you want to put your head down and cry, asking yourself why did they just say that. Joseph immediately yells out his broke, other children chime in with the same response and then of course we had the others that say they lost theirs. Now in hopes to be the good Catholic teacher that I want to be, I will be finishing this blog and order a class set of of scapulars, so that we can receive our indulgences.
At the end of the day I told the children I would like to have a clean classroom before the weekend. I wanted them to wipe their desk, their chair, I needed the teacher's aide to clean white boards, the sweeper to sweep the classroom, and everyone to make sure their belongings were neatly put away in cubbies. This started out GREAT! I was thinking to myself, oh I can't wait to do this again. The children went straight to cleaning and were down to getting on their hands and knees to wipe the marks off the floor. It was the most wonderful present the children could ever give me, but too good to be true. Because of all of a sudden Regina learns something new. You know how when children learn something that they think is cool they want to show everyone and do it repeatedly? Well, Regina wanted to show off her knew found skill, which once shown the other children wanted to learn too. REGINA LEARNED HOW TO MAKE BLACK MARKS ON THE FLOOR!
"How do you do that?" asked Maximus.
"Like this" says Regina with a squeal in her voice. She bends her leg at the knee and swings forward full swing so the bottom of her shoe gracefully hits the bottom of the floor to make this huge black mark, which she considers awesome.
The next thing I know I now have half the class trying this out marking up my once beautiful floor.
LOL I LOVE Regina! She sounds like a real gem :)
ReplyDeleteHow old are your kids? I work as a Teacher Aide with very spirited Years 9 and 10 and a few older ones (teenagers!). It's a laugh a minute in my job. I love it.
The children are 9 and 10. I used to teach first grade, 6 and 7 years olds and thought they were some of the most entertaining little things, but then I moved to fourth grade and learned otherwise.
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