A Preview of Every Day of the Rest of My Life

As most of you know, I'm nearing the end of my 4th week of student teaching.  For those of you who didn't know...I'm student teaching! I have 3 1/2 more weeks in my 4th grade class and then I move on to kindergarten.  I want to teach kindergarten so I'm really looking forward to those last 8 weeks.  For the time being, though, I am loving my 4th graders!  I learned the names of all 29 of my kids by day two and started to really discover who they were each day after that.  Of course I have my faves (all you other teachers out there, you know you have yours too, so no judging), and some that I would rather do without; but I am enjoying every moment of getting to know them all--for better or for worse.  

Aside from a few small behavioral issues (excessive talking, getting out of their seats, not paying attention, etc.), I have been blessed to have a really good group of kids.  So, needless to say, I only have a few funny stories and one 'proud momma' moment to share.  

I'll begin with my 'proud momma' moment.  Not that I had anything to do with situation; I was merely an observer, but I still felt proud and knew his mom would be too had she heard what I was so fortunate to hear.  Two weeks ago the theme for the reading unit was "Happy Birthday, Dr. King!" (as in Martin Luther King Jr.).  At the end of the unit, the students watched a movie about Dr. King and their teacher, Mr. B., stopped the film to explain the KKK and discuss racism and prejudice.  During the discussion Mr. B. said, "...racism is everywhere" to which a student replied, "Not in this classroom!"  I was so happy to hear those words come out of a 10 year olds mouth, and even more happy to know that he was speaking the truth!  We have a very diverse group of kids and they all truly are friends with each other.  It's almost as if they don't see the physical differences in each other.  For their sake, and for the sake of the future of the world, I hope they remain color blind forever.  

Now on to the funnies...

Every once in a while when Mr. B. needs fillers, he has the students make their own word searches out of their spelling words.  He then passes them out to random students to complete and the first 3-5 finished get a prize.  We had some left over Valentines Day candy so they got heart shaped suckers.  As I began to sort through the suckers I realized that ants had discovered the left over candy before we had! They were everywhere!  I'm talking, "The ants go marching one-by-one, hurrah, hurrah!" everywhere.  All along the window sill, into the cabinet, all over everything in the cabinet, and straight into the bag of suckers.  I thought I could be sneaky and just dump 'em out, shake 'em off and no one would ever know.  Not so lucky.  Those little suckers (the ants, not the actual suckers) found their way up the little paper sticks and inside the wrappers.  I shook, poked, and prodded until I could get most of the ants out of the packaging and ended up with only 2 edible suckers by the time I was done.  

As any normal person would do, I threw away the rest of the ant infested candies.  Dead ants on my red, heart-shaped sucker?  No thank-you.  Apparently, this was not the "normal" thing to do.  When the kids saw the suckers in the trash it was like the shock of the century!  "YOU THREW THEM AWAY?!!?" "Uhhhh, yeesh...was I not supposed to?  They had bugs on them.  You're 10.  You don't like bugs.  If the ant were crawling on your desk you would jump a mile high screaming 'EEEEWWWW!  ANT! ANT!' But put them in a bag of candy and they suddenly become harmless.  I don't get it?"  

Now most of the kids were a little upset and slightly confused as to why I threw away an entire bag of candy, but the highlight of the event was the chubby kid in class (think Chunk from The Goonies) who was seriously depressed about a whole bag of suckers sitting in the trash all day long.  First of all, he sits on the opposite side of the room as the now ant infested trash can.  I swear he found anything and everything in his desk so that he would have a reason to walk all the way across the room to throw something away just to get a glimpse of the suckers.  Every time he walked away he would make some comment about how sad it was that "all those suckers were wasted", or that "it's too bad they had to be thrown away", or just plain "aww, man..."  If Debbie Downer had a face, Chunk was wearing it this sad, sad day.  

I know it's not nice to make fun, and I'm really not making fun of the kid; if anything I really do feel bad for him.  It's like those darn things were calling out to him from across the room, "HEY YOU GUUYYS!!!".  As a future teacher, the proper reaction to this situation would be: a) not blog about it (I'm having mixed feeling about posting this one), and b)to have some sympathy and realize that there is a deeper issue here--chubby kid doing everything in his power not to take the ant infested candies out of the germ infested trash can, not a good sign.  Also, not a good sign?  This same day, Chunk went to recess with a candy bar, Flamin' Hot Cheetos, and a bag of Wheat Thins.  But, what can I say?  My humor got the best of me and I couldn't help but smile and giggle to myself every time Chunk came to the trash cans for a small moment of torture and pleasure all in one.  

On that note, I think I'll leave you with a picture of Chunk (incase you had trouble forming your own mental image, which I'm sure you did not), and save my other funny moments for another day.  After all, I've been M.I.A. for over a month, so I've got some catching up to do.