I have had some funny stories this year.
With the great possibility of making no one laugh...I will type them anyways. My fear is that, "then I found twenty dollars" or "you would have to be there" will need to be attached to many of these, but my blog IS entitled, "Miss Martin" and it was supposed to be a place where I wrote of my school dealings, and these kids are HUMOROUS! So, let me tell you...
They are very much into Star Wars. This is a conversation I overheard while two boys SHOULD have been finishing their work during morning recess:
Student One: “We need freedom.”
Student Two: (serious and ready for a conversation)“Yes, we do need freedom.”
Student One: (suddendly, he turns his body with great energy) “The viceroy has invaded earth!”
Student Two: “What?!” (turns around,) “they are NOT real!” (Turns to me,) “He thinks they’re alive. They’re just plain old MOVIES!”
Then after lunch recess with the same two students, I hear more mumblings and rumblings about Star Wars.
Student Two: “Miss Martin, will you tell him that he is NOT a Jedi?! If you were a Jedi, you would NOT be at school because you would be too smart. You would have already been at the academy. You are NOT a Jedi!”
Student One: “I have come from another planet. I am fighting…”
Wise words of the teacher, “You are not a Jedi. That is just pretend.”
Student One: Shock.
Student Two: Smiles.
Our day continues on.
Other quick quotations:
“You look very cute.”
“Thank you, my mom likes to doll me up.”
As we are getting ready for P.E. one student comes up to me to show me his blue, biker-like shirt, “This is my spy shirt,” he says with great excitement.
After a lesson in which I spoke of such things, a student approaches me in earnest, “I am part artist, scientist, and secret agent.”
During a lesson in which I was about to teach a difficult and slightly boring concept, I wanted to energize them and get them excited about learning. I began in this manner:
“I am about to teach you things that Miss Israel is teaching the THIRD graders and things Miss Brown is teaching the SECOND graders. Would you like to learn those things?!!”
I waited for an excited and resounding, "YES!!!" and was shocked when I heard one small voice call out from the crowd,
“No. No, I don’t want to learn what they are learning!”
Suddenly, other small voices started echoing this leader, “No, I don’t want to learn it!”
The protests began to gain momentum.
“We won’t learn it!”
Their cries were unifying. It was a mob of protesting six-year-olds -- wielding slightly sharpened pencils!
Internally, part of me was laughing, while the other half was franticly trying to think of a way to be sure they WOULD be learning it – and not trampling their teacher underfoot.
Calmly, I moved to ding the bell.
This would control the mob.
ding, ding
It did.
“Well guess what?! You must learn it NOW for first grade because we will be learning it THIS year and using it THIS year and so you MUST learn it and you are GOING to learn it!”
(I emphasized the necessity of learning this information with the use of my hand-shaped pointer waggling in front of their faces.)
Almost immediately there was a hushing of the crowd with just a few groaned complaints.
They were ready to learn it.
I had disassembled this mob and would never again use "next year" as motivation for this group to learn. (Least they have not realized what the power of a unified mob could do for them.)
Just you wait, second grade!!
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