If you've been following this blog for any period of time you've read about the volatility of this classroom. Lately though, the classroom has been pretty quite. Hopefully I haven't jinxed the room again like I did when I said to Gnu a couple weeks ago that we should not be getting any new students for the remainder of the year. You know how well that worked out a Leftside arrived the next day. Well, the room has been pretty quiet lately but as a precaution when I walk into the classroom the day after making this statement I'll enter cautiously in case of flying objects. So I'm think why is the room so quiet? Finally it comes to me, NoFouls is now longer with us as his parental unit moved outside our school district. It's been close to three weeks since he left and there have been no violent outbursts, no fights, no constant non-stop mouth running, no scholar who thinks he is in charged of everything. We've almost reached the level of a normal classroom. Again, I hoped I just didn't jinx the classroom.
A considerable amount of progress has been made in our rehearsing to do our little reading theater production. Uh-Uh-Uh has a good grasp on the Spanish she needs to speak as she portrays the Push Pin. EM, despite his very limited reading ability, has his part down pretty well as the Eraser. In fact, he pretty much has his lines committed to memory. The most impressive part is Wide, who in his lead role as the Little Red Pen, has his lines memorized. So you know, he has two separate paragraphs to remember so that is pretty impressive.
With so much progress made on learning the speaking lines Gnu decides to introduce the final part of our little play, creating the background. Using a blank white and very large (8' by 4' or so) piece of paper she hands out the colored markers and our water color paints. The only instruction Gnu gave the scholars was to make the background look like a school classroom and turned them loose. Given the size of the piece of paper it wasn't long before the scholar were standing on the paper trying to determine what to draw and where to place it on the paper. Wide, who is the closest thing we have to an artist, finally took charge and said the desk is the first thing to draw. Following the desk it was decided the background needed a clock, white board and a large calendar like the one we have in the classroom. Uh-Uh-Uh decided to draw a globe on the desk and set about doing that. She used the bottom of a wastebasket to get started and then just used various paints to color in the land and water. When she was finished it actually looked pretty good. For the final touches Wide drew an apple, stapler, and some books on the desk. While all of this was going on MiniJ decided to start mixing our paints together. Why? Who knows but he was having a good time doing it. Unfortunately, his pants were taking a beating with multiple colors on his beige colored pants. Once he saw the mess he made he asked Gnu if she could get him some new pants. "Sorry, we don't have any," she said. That didn't set well with MiniJ and you could see him getting agitated so I went and found a pair of pants that were in lost in found and gave them to him. They didn't fit very well so he again got agitated so I told him to wear the pants while I washed his paint covered pants. That satisfied him and off I went to our laundry room. With the dials set on the washer I prepared to put MiniJ's pants in the washing machine when I noticed a completely different color stain. I was a brown stain right on the seam in the middle of his pants on the back side. I immediately recalled the incident that took place about two weeks ago when MiniJ had an accident in his pants. At the time it happened, he refused to let us wash his pants and so he pretty much sat in his soiled pants for an entire afternoon. It's now two weeks later and this same stain is in his pants and I'm wondering if these pants have been sitting at his home all this time and no one washed them. I did another visual inspection of the stain and decided that these pants had not been washed previously and tossed them into the washing machine.
With clean pants in hand I head back to the classroom. When I handed MiniJ his pants he said "thank you Mr. Schultz," and headed to our timeout room to change. When he walked out he came over to me and gave me the pants that came from our lost and found. When I looked at him I noticed that he didn't zip up his pants so I told him to zip his pants. As I said this Grrr!, who was standing next to me, said to MiniJ, "you need to be careful, you don't want that thing to get out the door." As soon as he said it I started laughing. Grrr! looked at me and said "that is what my Mom says to me when I forget to zip my pants."
The background is complete and lines have been rehearsed and it is now Parents Day. The parental units were give an arrival time so all the activities that were planned could be completed. Guess what happened? They were all late so adjustments were needed. It was decided to take out the play about the Little Red Pen. That was pretty disappointing but we had one other activity that should keep everyone happy. Gnu, Oreo, and IvyL put together a video recording of each scholar. While recording the scholars they were instructed to say sometime nice about their parental unit and then we'd show the video during Parents Day. This video turned out quite well and when showing it to the parental unit's some of them got a little emotional as they watched their young scholar speaking. Parent Day didn't quite go according to plan but the positive feedback from the parental units indicated that is was a very appreciated and successful day.
The school year is rapidly coming to a close and decisions need to be made. First and foremost, Gnu needs to decide what she is going to do about the next school year. She's already told me other school corporations have contacted her about employment and she knows right now if she leaves her salary would increase significantly at these other schools. I also need to make the return or not return decision. In the past, I waited until the very last hour of the very last day of the school year to make my decision. That is pretty much my plan for this year as my final decision will solely be determined by what Gnu does.
One final comment. My part time editor, part time consultant and full time spouse has decided to come to school and read to the scholars. Despite that fact that she has 30+ years of teaching she is a little nervous. Her concern is about what she should do if something goes wrong. So I told her exactly what I tell anyone who enters our classroom, if thing get very animated don't get involved and just head to a safe place which is usually right behind me. I also told her not to worry as no one will get out of control especially once they see that she brought cookies. I'll let you know how her visit goes later.
That's it for another week as it's the weekend and I'm out. Thanks for reading the blog.
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