Saturday Morning

Every time I entertain the idea that a baby would be a great idea, Saturday morning rolls around and my mind is changed in an instant. Saturday morning looks like this in our house (please remember that I am unemployed and my husband does not have to bring his work home):

Me (to my husband, about 10 a.m.): So, what are your plans for the weekend?
My Husband: Oh, well…..I need to go to the hardware store, I want to spend some time in the studio. That’s about it.
Me: I think I am going to hit up yoga and then go meet up with a friend. That’s about it. Want some pancakes?
My Husband: Yes!

So we slowly roll out of bed, pet the cat, make pancakes and go about our day.

No kids jumping on our bed waking us up at 6 a.m.
No shouting from the living room about whose toy is whose or what show to watch.
No “Whose turn is it to change the baby?”
No “Annika has a play date at 3 but Eric has soccer at 3. Can you call the Johnsons and see if they can take Eric to soccer?”
No “I think Annika is getting an attitude problem. What are we going to do about it?”

Oh, Saturday morning, you save me every week.


Reasons not to have a kid: 3
Reason to have a kid:0

“They make you laugh everyday.”

In a very serious conversation with a friend of mine (who does not have kids) on this Kids vs. No Kids debate, she said, very seriously, "But they make you laugh everyday.”

Well, my cat makes me laugh everyday. Do I really need a kid?


Reasons not to have a kid: 2
Reason to have a kid:0

“But You’d Be Such a Good Mom.”

I have heard this a few times- “But You’d Be Such a Good Mom.”
No.
No I wouldn’t.
Here’s why: Because sometimes I think I would be a good mom. I know it sounds illogical, but hear me out. Anyone who has the audacity to think they’d be great at the most stupid, crazy-hard job in the world (as I do) is CLEARLY too self absorbed and naïve to be an affective parent.
I watch parents make choices and think to myself a variety of things (usually negative) such as, “That was so stupid! They just taught their child that screaming in the store gets the child a stick of gum. I would never do that.” Who am I to make these judgments? And what makes me think I would do any better?

Reasons not to have a kid: 1
Reason to have a kid:0

The Positive

I have been trying to see the positive in things, so here is a recent list:

1. My student from Kazakhstan called another student a bi#%h. I asked him if he knew what the word meant, he said no. I wanted to reward him because he used the word correctly (she kind of is one) but instead just scolded him and told him to not say that word at school.
2. One of my kids from Pakistan has said two funny things recently (be sure to read these with a thick Pakistani accent). 1). "Sometimes when I am eating my cereal, I imagine that my cereal bowl is a portal to Pakistan. I dive in and I am there!" 2. While reading a book about dinosaurs, he asks, "I don't understand: If people did not live at the same time at dinosaurs, how did they get this picture of dinosaurs?" I did a really poor job at explaining the difference between a drawing and photograph. Poor kid. He probably still does not get it.
3. We published the first (and last) edition of "The Fourth Grade News." I loved seeing all the kids really excited to receive their copy. I just had to stage this photo.
4. My students are really starting to love books. I recently stopped reading Esperanza Rising right at the good part. There was an uproar. "No!!! Keep reading! We have to find out what happens!" Very satisfying.
5. There are only 5.5 weeks of school left.

nonscents

About noon on Wednesday, I got whiff of an intolerable funk coming from the southwest corner of my classroom. After a while, when it did not go away, I confirmed the smell with the SPed teacher. We chalked it up to a student having bad gas (with 16 ten year old boys, these smells are not unusual) and figured it would go away at 3:30. But, after the students left, the smell lingered. I called a few other people into the room to make sure I was smelling what I thought I was smelling. They all confirmed that my classroom smelled like poo. But, nobody could find the source.
At this point, I have become obsessive. Where is this smell coming from? I searched every chair, under all desks, my own shoes (did I step in poo?) but I could not find it. Finally, the cleaning person came in and she said, "Yeah, it really smells in here." She started moving tables and..there it was. A turd-about the size of a baseball-under a computer table. I gasped and ran out of the room. Immediately, my mind fills with questions: How did the turd get there? Who put it there? Was it an unfortunate bathroom accident or a malicious act? If it was brought in to punk me, how did the student bring it to school? And, the biggest question of all, how did I not notice the turd being deposited in its current location?
So, I found the principal and she tells us to just clean it up and we will talk to the students about it in the morning. We are all in disbelief and yet, find the whole thing pretty hilarious. So, the next step is to plan the strategy to talk to the students. After much discussion (Do we come down hard? Scream and yell? Pull the old, "nobody is going anywhere until we find out who did this" scene?) we decided to not say anything. If it was an accident, that child does not need to be singled out. If it was done as a prank, that child wants to get a rise out of me so it is better to just let it lay low. I came into school in the morning and a fellow teacher gave me a card with a big ol' pile of poo on the front of the card. I strategically placed it on the bookshelf behind my desk so if any students were paying attention, they would notice it. And this is what I said to my students in the morning:
"I was here late last night dealing with the stinky thing somebody left in our classroom. If you did it and it was an accident, I am sorry that happened to you. If you did it on purpose, know this: you are a disgusting person. You know who you are and you are disgusting." So, of course the uproar starts: "what happened? who did what? What did you find?" I say nothing. About 30 minutes later, a student finds the poo card and says, "Who gave this to you?" I say, "Oh, Mrs. P. gave it to me this morning." When they ask why, I just shrug my shoulders and watch the chaos unfold. Somebody, somewhere, knows who did it and I will find out. Their little hearts can't keep this big of a secret forever.

untitled

Every day I hear a story from one of my students that blows me away. Recently I heard that one of my students does not eat dinner because her mom puts her in her room (with her two siblings) and shuts the door at 7 p.m. and then parties all night with her friends. My student's words were, "there is really loud music and my mom has a lot of friends come over." In the morning, she gets up with her two siblings and grandma drives them to school. She said, "it is too hard to wake mom up." She lives part time with mom and part time with grandma and it is no wonder she comes to school without her homework. Sometimes she doesn't even have her back pack-mom or grandma just drop her off with nothing.

Here is the other heart wrencher for the week: One student (who never confides in me) asks if he can talk to me in private. This student lives with his grandmother, and his grandfather just died (not related to his grandmother guardian). He has been having a really tough time. Not the kind of hard time where you cry and are sad. He is having the kind of hard time where you punch kids and rip up other people's papers.
We go outside the room and he says, out of the blue, "My auntie died in 2004. She was shot in the brains." I reply (as if I hear this every day), "Are you thinking about her because of your grandfather and the funeral that is coming up?" He replies yes and I say, "How does it make you feel?" He says, "sad." I asked him who shot his auntie and he says, "her boyfriend." I asked if they caught him and he said, "Yes. He is in jail for fifty years." And I am supposed to teach him long division.

Insults and Ignorance

Insults
After lunch, my students are incredibly squirrely. I am convinced it has to do with the preservatives, high fructose corn syrup and trans fats that are in the school lunch. Every day it is a battle when I pick them up from the cafeteria. On this particular day, one of my students could not get himself together: spinning in circles, hopping up and down, throwing his sweatshirt around, you get the idea. So, at the classroom door, I stop the class and tell this student for the billionth time to calm down, get in line and get ready to go back to class. He responds, "Aarrgh! Woman!" You know, with the lip pop and all. I almost lost my mind. Luckily I filled up on patience that day (the previous day I broke a clipboard by slamming it down on a desk-low on patience) and just stared at him with giant eyes for about 45 seconds while the rest of the class just stood and watched. At first he said, "What?" But when I didn't budge, he eventually realized that what he had said was not OK with me and apologized.
When I told my fellow teachers what had happened, they all said, "At least he didn't cuss at you." I am not so sure.
The sad part is that he hears this type of thing at home and thinks it is OK.

Ignorance
We have been practicing our state standard testing since we all get tested in March. The pressure is really intense as I am judged as a teacher on how well my students do on this test. One of the things that is tested is ability to respond in writing to a given text. So, we are reading a non-fiction story about elephants and how smart they are. The writing prompt says something like, "The author of this article thinks elephants are smart. Use examples from the text to support this idea." Well, it was written better than that, but you get the point. So, I am circling the room to see what my students are writing. The response should be at least two paragraphs in length and I notice one student has written four words-all of which I can't read. So I say to him, "Go back in the story and find a part that says something about elephants being smart." He responds, "But it doesn't say anything about that." I say, "Yes it does, go back and circle the sections that explain how elephants are smart." He says, "But in this story the elephants aren't talking." I then realize that he thinks elephants can talk. So, of course the elephants in this story aren't smart because they aren't talking. Remember, I teach fourth grade, not pre-K. I wanted to yell "Elephants can't talk!" But I didn't. I just walked away and watched my test scores go down the drain.
The kid watches way too much of the cartoon channel. And needs to visit the zoo.