All the seventh grade teachers had been dreading Field Day this year. After all, our kids have been absolutely wild since we finished The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Testing. We had a really nice day during testing week, took them outside to blow off steam, and ended up breaking up fights left and right. (The upside to that was some of our biggest pains in the rear ended up getting suspended for about ten days which was a nice break for everyone.)
So, to say that we were NOT looking forward to Field Day was an understatement.
And now that it's all said and done (on a lovely day in the low 70's with NO TORNADOES), it turned out to be one of the Best. Field. Days. Ever.
Strange.
These kids, who prior to field day were doing everything in their power to cause drama and stir up fights were actually well behaved. We had Mrs. Reading's substitute (Mrs. Reading had a baby a few weeks ago) stay inside in a "holding room" where trouble-makers got sent and they could spend the rest of the day reading or doing piles of worksheets. She had only four customers and these were kids who got sent to her by The Enforcer after doing something stupid at breakfast.
Seriously. We didn't have to send a single kid in for getting into trouble. Not. One. The Enforcer told me he kept checking the holding room to see how many kids were stacked in there and he was astounded to see that the only kids in there were the ones he'd put in.
What's kind of funny is that after we practically had to threaten kids to sign up for events, we ended up having kids begging to participate (once they saw how fun it was). We had some new events this year and they were a lot of fun, for both the kids participating and those watching (and some of them were a lot harder than we expected).
So it went off without a hitch. Which is almost scary considering this group. We kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never did.
But never fear...we may have had a wonderful field day on Friday, but on Monday they were back to their old tricks and they celebrated by having a knock down drag out fight between a couple of our boys in between 2nd and 3rd period.
Counting the days...just counting the days.
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4 comments:
Glad your field day went so well! I have a great class this year (Kindergarten) but that doesn't stop me from counting the days, too. (five)
We had a similar surprise. Our 4th graders have been "The Class from Hell" since the day they walked into kindergarten. One of them stabbed another child with a pencil to see if it would gush blood.
Three of them were put in our holding room. One of those got written up by the teacher supervising. One the field we had a blast.
The kids were surprised I went down the slides with them. (We have 15 stations including 4 water slides, and several other "get wet" activities.
There was one accident - a 5th grader tripped and broke his nose.
Just so you know, even though I'm beyond behind in school and work and everything else and my RSS feed reader is buried 1000+ posts deep, I make it a point to come here and catch up at least once a week. I don't often comment, but I've been reading you for five years now, and I love your writing style and your stories, and boy do I identify with them most days.
Almost summer--you'll make it, and so will I, even if we have a ton of work to do between now and then. :-)
Dear Kari, how sweet you are to share with me. I am beyond flattered. Do take care. We'll make it.
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