I Hate the Rain, and Progress Reports

As I have mentioned before, the children are affected when it rains. Something in their brains suddenly change, and they go crazy.

Completely crazy.

I guess we could say the kids are more intelligent than we stodgy, old adults. We look on the rain as necessary but an inconvenience, and idly wish it would rain like it does in Camelot, only at convenient times. Maybe the kids are recognizing on a deeper level that the rain represents life, and because life will continue with the rain, they are rejoicing.

I know they just like to get wet, but it's still a nice thought.

I have had no less than 20 students come in completely soaked for no other reason than it looked like fun to run crazy in the rain.

I also had a boy earlier today who has a skinned elbow, because while he was running in the rain (because it looked like fun) he discovered that wet = slippery, and slid an apparently impressive distance, according to onlookers, all on his elbow.

He didn't go and get it looked at, of course, because that would interfere with playing in the rain. Instead, he waited until school started to be sent, so he would waste classtime versus play time.

Plus, the rain and damp and difference of it all makes them squirrelly. So all day today, I have had to remind them we don't yell in class, we don't throw things, and lots of other don'ts that should have been obvious. So I really do hate when it rains during school hours. I personally do love the rain, and I love to listen to it falling... just not during school.

And I also hate this time of year... PROGRESS REPORT TIME. Parents will soon be requesting parent conferences to discuss why I "gave their child an F."

I hate that phrase. I really don't sit up nights thinking about how I am going to ruin their day by giving their child a failing grade. I just calculate the grades, I really do. That's it.

But I know I'm going to be getting emails like crazy telling me about how their angel turned in everything even though it isn't in the gradebook (which the parents can now check online so if they had been keeping track of their child as much as they said they were, they'd have seen the zero before now...).

Oh, well. They go home Friday... so I am safe for one more day.

Places NOT to Leave Books...

As a language arts teacher, I have a large classroom library that the kids can choose from to check out to use for their reading homework. In the beginning of the school year, the parents sign a form that says if their child loses, destroys, or otherwise makes the book useless to me, they will replace it. They can give me an identical book, pay me the cash to replace it, or they can donate a similar book to my library as long as I approve the transaction.

This has worked really well. I lost only one book (that I know of, they might have stolen it off the shelf so I didn't have a record of them having it) my first year, and I lost about 15 books my second year. It's really annoying to lose books, because I buy them with my own money (mostly used, and you can get a great deal at my public library... $.25 each for the juvenile books, but as I have over 1,000, it was still very expensive to get set up).

This past year the kids had to replace quite a few books, and they had to because of strange reasons.

One little brother helped his big sister by pouring his apple juice into the book. That book was so amazingly smelly. It smelled like wine.

Another little brother colored the book for my student.

Another's dog ate it. My student brought me the tiniest sliver of the old book, giggling like a fiend, to show me. I was like... what??

The strangest situation this year was with one of my expensive books... Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I had several copies in paperback, but this was my hardback. One of my students who always was checking out books borrowed it, but it wasn't he who returned it... it was an informer, the type of student that makes life easier as they help you figure out what happened.

This student wasn't allowed to read the Harry Potter books. His mother didn't like them, but since all his friends were reading them, he had to as well. So he borrowed them from me, and hid them before getting home. Now, this might not be so bad, but he didn't choose a wise hiding place. He chose a bush at his bus stop.

One of my other students found it, the night after it rained. As you can guess, the book didn't fare so well.

When I contacted his mother, I found out that he wasn't supposed to be reading them at all.

Oops. Well, that's why I encouraged the parents to check with their students, to make sure they know what they're reading and to make sure it works for them as a family. He was doing his reading log on Harry Potter, so if she had been actually reading the reading log as she signed it, she would have known what he was reading.

Anyway, he brought me a brand new copy, and promptly asked to check it out. I said, ask your mother.

Strange Things They Do, Part 1

6th graders really are a strange bunch. I know it has to do somewhat with where they are in their life's journey. They are trying so hard to be adult, but they really are still children, and many of the little things they do highlight the war between the adult they want to be and the kid they still are. Sometimes it makes for misbehavior. Sometimes for humor. Many times it just results in stuff that makes the real adults around them go, "huh?"

One such event happens whenever it rains. Now, maybe I could understand this if I lived somewhere it doesn't rain very often. Somewhere nice and dry, where rain is more of a phenomenon. It's not here. It's rained here every day for the past two weeks in fact. So these kids know rain.

The second it starts to rain, the students must walk through the rain to get to their class. Even though there is a lovely overhang to protect them. Even though they are going to freeze when they get to class, because of the lovely air conditioner, which I cannot, and would not, anyway, turn off because they are cold.

If you're thinking this is limited to the boys, you'd be wrong. The girls do it too, even the prissy ones. What takes over their brains in the rain?

We may never know.