Why sixth graders can't be spies:

Like every teacher in the world these days, I have trouble with kids taking out their phones and texting when they are supposed to be working on something else.  Frankly, I'm not much of a stickler for the no-phones-in-class rule, but it is a school policy so I follow it.  I have one student who is super sneaky.  I never see her texting, but the girl who sits next to her, (I'll call her A), does and it bothers her that the texter gets away with having her phone in class.  So A came up with a system for the texter to get caught.  She stayed after school one day and worked this out with me, (all her idea.)  She said, "I am going to give you a signal when B is on her phone.  What should the signal be?  It should be something subtle, but obvious to you.  Hmmmm.  What should it be???  How about if she takes her phone out I will scratch my forehead like this," and she scratched her forehead like a meth addict. I agreed and then promptly forgot about it.

The next day during quiet reading time, A had apparently been scratching her head like crazy because she did an obvious "Heh HMM!" and I looked up and her forehead was all red.  She gave me the eye that said, "WATCH ME!" and then she went back to reading.  Apparently the phone wasn't out right that second.  So I watched.  Soon A scratched her forehead so I quietly asked B to come up and see me.  I was going to tell her to give me her phone until the end of class and rock her world by letting her know that I knew she had it when she was so sneaky.  Then A interrupted and said, "Oh no!  I just had an itchy head that time!" 

Cover blown. 

Sometimes I'm pretty smart

I had a stroke of brilliance at work last week.  I have this kid who I love, but who honestly, drives me absolutely nuts.  He is anal and needy and a total butinski.  Because he is so anal, he is super organized and always has his work done.  This leaves him lots of time to point out everyone else's flaws which drives his classmates NUTS.  If he sees a discrepancy between what another student said they did and what they actually did he literally cannot stop the loud, annoying, tattling words from spewing out of his mouth.  He MUST correct the situation.  His neediness manifests in asking me a question every 1.5 seconds no matter what else I'm doing (talking with another teacher, teaching the whole group, working one-on-one with another student, going the the bathroom, etc. etc.) which drives me NUTS.  I bet he has said, "Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl...Mrs. Lindahl..." a billion times this year. But generally, he is a sweet kid and a good student.  Just annoying.

I have another student who I also love, but who also drives me nuts.  He is a very bright kid, but is so slow-moving and dreamy that he is always ten steps behind the pack.  I passed out lists of missing work last week and this kid's list was looooooong.  I was trying to motivate him to do his missing work, but every time I turned around he was off in La La Land again.

How could I get Kid 1 off my back for two seconds and get Kid 2 to finish all his work?  The solution:  Assign Kid 1 to "help" Kid 2 finish his missing work list.

As soon as I proposed the idea, they both thought it was brilliant.  Kid 1 went from being on my heels every second of class, to tenaciously nagging Kid 2 in ways that I'm sure nobody has ever been nagged and cajoled and browbeaten ever before.  The result were wonderful:

1. Kid 2 finished about 2/3 of his missing work, bringing his grade up considerably.
2. Kid 1 was off my back for a few days which was a welcome relief.
3. Kid 2 was WORN OUT after a few days of having someone relentlessly dog him about every little thing.
4. Kid 1 and Kid 2 both privately expressed maddening frustration in having to deal with the other every day which gave me unbelievable satisfaction because I successfully deflected their annoying behavior off of me and on to each other.

Brilliant.

Annoying

I'm kind of irritated with Kira today because she keeps doing an annoying voice that for some reason gets under my skin like I just stepped on a mound of fire ants and then my legs turned into the legs I have in my dreams when I can't run anywhere because my legs weigh 400 pounds each.  I should have known better than to let HER know that the voice bugs me so much, but it bugs me so much that I couldn't help myself but to say (scream), "STOP DOING THAT!!!!"  Which for Kira (or anyone between the ages of 11 and 15) means OMG KEEP DOING THAT! 

Also, I took the time to clean, fill and remember to bring my special water bottle to school today.  I had it in my bag and hauled it up to the fourth floor and just as I was unlocking my classroom door, she grabbed the bottle out of my bag, said, "My throat hurts, I'm getting a cold," and then took a long, sloppy swig off my pristine water bottle that I prepared especially for myself.  Now I can't drink it.  I wanted to push her down the steps.

However, I don't need to resort to child abuse because we spend every day in the same place, and by merely being the woman who birthed her and who takes care of all her needs, I am a total embarrassment.  As a teacher at her school I can simply go on the computer and get her schedule and see where she is every minute of the day, and now I am contemplating going into her 1st period class and pretending I'm having a stroke by limping and drooling and possibly peeing my pants and begging her to help me.  But you know what?  She wouldn't help me (and that would piss me off), and if I did that she'd keep doing the voice forever and ever, and I'd be stuck in pee-pants for the rest of the day.  There is no winning with a middle school kid.  They can't lose a contest of annoyingness. 

Also, there are only ten days left until the end of the school year and I may be just a tish touchy because every kid I come across is upping their own personal annoying factor exponentially each day and it's pushing me over the edge. 

Before my classes every day I prop my door open because I LIKE IT LIKE THAT and every single day the same kid comes in and pulls it shut behind him.  Every day I make him go open it up again.  It drives me fucking crazy. 

The kids in this school are all issued new beautiful free planners on the first day of every quarter.  They are to keep this planner with them to write down important information for classes, for parent correspondence, and to use as a hall pass during class.  I made it abundantly clear the first few days of school that if they don't have their planner, they weren't leaving my room.  I have one girl who asks me EVERY SINGLE DAY to go to her locker/go to the bathroom/get a drink/talk to a teacher/etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc, and EVERY SINGLE DAY I say, "Do you have your planner?" and EVERY SINGLE DAY she gets huffy and says, "NO! GOD!" and then sits down and pouts.  EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. 

Don't believe me that they are increasing their annoyance-level?  Yesterday the journal question was "What do you think is/will be/was the best age to be?  Explain."  And I came across these gems when I was correcting them:

"I think the best age is when you are a baby because at that age you don't have to go on the toilet.  You can go in you (sic) diaper."

And:

"I think that the best age would be a baby so I didn't have to go on the toilet." 

They don't even want to use a toilet.  In light of that, I'm pretty impressed that I can get them to do schoolwork.

I've been trying to get my students to FOCUS these last few days of school and you know what?  It is really really hard.  They are starting puberty and have spring fever and their brains are shutting down for the big sleep until they are in their early 20s.  The only super active parts of their brains are the parts that turn everyday items/phrases into inappropriate and not-very-clever sexual innuendos.  That part is spot on.  One day someone noticed that it was 69 degrees in the room.  HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Hilarious. One of my little angels learned the phrase "friends with benefits" and thinks that she made it up and nobody over the age of 13 knows what it means so every time the word "friends" is said, she says, "with benefits!"  and everyone laughs and thinks I'm not laughing because I don't get it.  I GET IT.  If it was even remotely clever, I'd give them my kudos, but it's just annoying. 

I remember the good old days when kids were sweet and not annoying.  Right before Kira started middle school she was shopping at a t-shirt shop with her grandma.  Grandma said she'd buy Kira any shirt she wanted.  Kira chose one with a cute bird on it, but Grandma refused to get it because it said, "I froze my pecker off in Minnesota."  Kira didn't know that pecker was a euphemism for penis, she just thought he had a really cold beak and that was the joke.  Grandma had to explain it.  After Kira knew what it meant, she didn't think it was all that funny.  She thought a bird freezing its beak off was funnier.  She just wanted a shirt with that bird on it.  The good old days. 

Never mind about my pecker.

Student of the Month

I teach an intervention reading course to sixth graders.  It is for kids who are slightly behind grade-level in their reading.  My classes are small because it's intense and also because the kids have a lot of behavior issues.  Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's hilarious, and sometimes (but not as often as you'd think) it's rewarding.  Lately it's been mostly frustrating and hilarious.  I asked a kid yesterday to show me what he had written as an answer to the journal question.  All he had written was a girl's name about 500 times, trailing sadly down the page, getting smaller and smaller.  While I was looking at that, another kid came up to me and said, "MEOW!" for no reason whatsoever.  I lost it.  I started laughing and could hardly pull it back together.  The meow kid looked insulted and said, "What are you laughing at?"  I said, "You people are WEIRD."  Meow kid was afronted and said, "No we're NOT!"  I said, "You just went out of your way to walk up to me, get my attention and say 'meow.'  Nobody was even talking about cats or anything.  That is, by definition, weird." 

I pick a kid from each class to be student of the month every month.  They get a poster, a can of pop and some special privileges as a reward.  I was having a really hard time choosing a student of the month for one of my classes because they've been so difficult lately.  Mitch said, "Just pick an inanimate object."  Brilliant.

The kids are going to be so pissed.

Biztown

I went on a field trip with Kira's class yesterday to Junior Achievement's Biztown.  It is a place where classes who have been studying basic economics can go and pretend to have their own town with their own economy for a day.  The building was set up like a little downtown with 14 businesses.  Each business got a loan from the bank and had the day to run the place and try to be successful enough to pay off their loan.  It was so adorable, I almost died.  I was the adult volunteer assigned to the newspaper, the Biztown Buzz.  We had a CEO, a CFO, some ad executives, some reporters, some photographers, and an editor.  They started the day with a big meeting in the town square:

Here they outlined what the businesses were and what each business would be doing.  There was a grocery store, a cafe, a bank, two stores, a post office, town hall, a wellness center, a radio station and a construction company, to name a few.  They were all so adorable.  The postal workers wore post office uniform shirts and had big sacs and delivered letters that the kids wrote a few weeks ago to each other.  The construction workers had vests and hardhats and built a bench in the town square.  The adorable mayor walked around town in his little tie, glad-handing all day, and one of the kids even brought a briefcase.

In our business we had to run the paper, and at the end of the day we actually produced a town paper.  We had to write up the paper, sell ads, take pictures, and the CEO and CFO had to deal with payroll and paying bills.  Because we had a fantastic editor, our paper was a success, although at the end of the day we discovered we hadn't made enough to pay off the loan.  Oh well, newspapers are dying all over the place.  Everyone knows that.  Just add Biztown Buzz to the list.

What did I learn?  I learned that even though eleven-year-olds can run around and look really busy and impressive, DON'T LET THEM RUN YOUR BUSINESS.  They will drive it into the ground.  At one point I had to retrieve our CFO from hula hooping in the town square so she could make her bank deposits.  And the CEO was way more concerned about sending candy grams to her pals than signing paychecks.

Working

I haven't been subbing nearly as much as I would like this year so I am taking jobs that last year I would have turned down.  For instance, gym.  I'm not a gym teacher.  I don't like noise and I don't like to try to yell over loud echoing noise in humongous gyms because my voice isn't very loud.  But I do have my very own whistle for just such occasions!  I taught middle school gym last week and they were swimming in the pool.  They are very cute in a pool because some of them are soooooo skinny that they can barely float.  Fat is like a life vest.  My fat is my life vest.  I'm only tubby in case I ever find myself stranded in the ocean for days at a time.  I could do it.  I could tread water for days.  In fact, I couldn't NOT tread water.  I could never drown because I'm too buoyant. So if you ever hear that I drowned, I have been murdered.  I pop up like a cork.  Even when I try to be stealthy and swim under water, my butt pops up.  Oh well.  I'm not chunky, I'm buoyant.  Like a bubble.

I taught third grade last week which is my favorite grade, but this particular class is about 1/3 behavior problems so it was a challenge.  You know what I've noticed about kids since I've been teaching?  Little boys who have mohawks or earrings are little assholes.  And I've seen the same boys without the mohawk and they are NOT assholes when they don't have that strip of long hair running across the top of their otherwise bald head.  Moms, don't let your little boys get a mohawk.  It's not cute and it turns them into little dicks.