Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten


We had already sent a student to the office for saying a cuss word that I'm pretty sure I didn't even know existed when I was in Elementary School, when another student decided to call their fellow student a female dog. By this time I was tired of kids running up to me tattling on every little thing another person did wrong.

Minutes later a group of kids came to me saying that a boy had said the S word. I got the students attention and motioned for him to come see me. The whole time he's walking towards me he's defending himself; continual whining talk. I told him that I will not speak to him while he's acting like that... when he stopped I explained to him that I was going to talk first, not him.

"I don't care what anyone did to you. I don't care if they were wrong for doing it. I'm talking to you. I'm going to ask you a question and if you are honest you can sit out for 5 minutes. If you choose to lie you will sit out for the rest of PE. Now did you say the S word?"
nods head "Yes mam."
"Go sit down. I'll tell you when to get up."

The lady who was helping me had been inside the building taking a student to the restroom so she didn't witness any of this. When she returned I explained to her why he was sitting out.

"He said the S word."
"Did you ask him what the S word was? Because it could have been shut up. That's a bad word to them"
"I didn't even think about it. All these kids using fowl language got my mind on a roll in that direction. I just assumed it was the other S word."

I walked over, bent down to his level, and asked him what S word he said.

"Shut up."

Talk about feeling like an idiot.

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Another little girl insisted on calling her classmate names after I asked her not to. When he got upset because she said 'he was fat' she then started bawking like a chicken (complete with arm motions). I told her that she was going to sit out for acting the way she did. And of course, she tried to resist that too. I kept my ground and was firm until she obeyed.

After a few minutes I went to talk with her. I wanted her to know why she was sitting out, to explain to her why her actions/words were wrong.

I bent down and explained to her that it was very wrong to call someone names even if she truly thinks they are ugly, fat, or a chicken. It is not nice. She started to defend herself and tell me what the boy had done... when someone is mean to you they want you to get mad and upset - and when you do, you are letting them win. No matter what anyone does to you I want you to choose to be sweet. When you do that, you are winning. So can you play and be sweet no matter what? Yes.

A few minutes later she ran up to me saying that someone had thrown dirt in her eye.

"Be sweet. Remember?"

She came back a little later tattling on something else...
I told her that I still wanted her to be sweet, to which she replied, "when does it work?"

Appearently she was ready to win. Maybe I didn't do so good with my explaination.
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It was super hot around 1 pm this afternoon and many of us wanted to jump in a pool of ice. My favorite quote was from a lil' kindergartener who said, "I'm sweating so bad - i'm sweating like a hot cow."

And how exactly does a hot cow sweat?

(still sitting outside) There was a bug crawling on my back and while I could see it, I couldn't quite reach it to flick it off. I asked this precious little girl sitting next to me to get it off for me. What was I thinking? Little girls and bugs? She ran away, and when I let her know that it was gone she came back. haha... She insisted that it was a baby spider even though I told her it wasn't. She informed me that baby spiders only have 3 legs and they are not allowed in the sun.

Did you know that?


(Cari, how did I do on my title? bwah ha!)

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