RM was out today. We had a sub that is a regular in our school- and she was awesome. My son is great friends with her son so we know each other. The boys have been buddies since first grade and they are in sixth now.
I had a day of assessments and fun things planned and everything was in order when I realized that RM was not going to be there. I knew I had a great sub coming in to help me so I wasn't worried at all. I put out a new box of 20 pencils (for some reason we go through erasers like mad but the pencils are still long...) and had everything ready to go when the students started arriving.
We had assembly and they announced who the winners were for Student Council. It was a fun assembly and didn't last too long. When we got back to class, one of my friends hollered out that something had hit him in the head. I didn't know what it was and thought maybe he was imagining something.
The day progressed without much incidence. We got through our assessments and I read them a cute story about Marley the dog- not written by John Grogan, but based on his dog he wrote about. The kids loved it and we assessed for plot using that story.
At lunchtime I thought to look at the plans that RM had left with the sub because I wasn't sure what order to do the afternoon (I always do morning so I knew that part- just not the afternoon) When I looked at them I realized they were for November 20, 2011. Oops. I looked through things that were copied and ready to go and was able to get a basic idea of what was supposed to be done.
Right after lunch I noticed that there were not many pencils with full erasers on them like there had been in the morning. And I had been picking up pieces of eraser several times in the morning off the floor. I started paying attention and noticed one student using his scissors to cut his crayon. I asked him what he was doing and of course he had no great response. I had him put his scissors and crayon away and went about my afternoon. I was walking around the room and out of the corner of my eye saw a student making a motion that I would know as throwing something. I turned quickly and saw another student move abruptly like he had just been hit. I walked over to the area of the student and was not so surprised to find a piece of the same color crayon as the one the student had just been playing with with his scissors!!! If you know me, you know I have a wicked "angry face". And that face showed herself then and there. I started looking around the room and found a huge amount of erasers broken up on the ground. I talked to the entire class about respect and how this was completely disrespectful (destroying property, throwing things at other students, and all the other infractions that happened in between!) When I released them to do their writing assignment, I had at least half of the students come tell me who were my culprits.
Funny- the whole class knew what was going on and who was doing it yet nobody thought to come and tell me to end it! When I have my own class I will try my best to establish a level of trust with them so that they understand they will not get in trouble for telling me when things like this happen.
Needless to say, I pulled the two offenders out into the hallway. One of them admitted to their behavior, the other one vehemently denied it. So we went to the dean and let her address the problem.
This was not supposed to happen. I am supposed to have control of the situation here. I have not come to the brink of insanity dozens of times over the last two years between working, school, and life just so I can have kids destroying things and being disrespectful. Of course I know that I can't watch everything. I do my best. But to even think that this was happening is very frustrating.
I'm not going to take this personally- I know the students involved are always doing things like this, but it is still frustrating. I wanted a clean report for RM about how the day went. This certainly tarnished that option.
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