adults

As you may have gathered from reading my blog, the adults who work in my building are not exactly what I would categorize as "effective." Somehow, they never cease to amaze me with their lack of proficiency in the care and handling of young children.

For example, on Friday I returned to my classroom after their 45-minute gym period to find that the room was in emotional disarray. My behavior stick (a simple, six color stick that tracks student behavior with clothes pins which can be placed from red to blue) was on a table. The clothespins were in a heap surrounding it. Two were snapped in half. Children were crying and pushing and grabbing.

When I asked the teacher what happened, she told me that during the play time the stick had been knocked on the floor and some clips had fallen off so she just took all of them off since she didn't know where to put the ones that had fallen. Then, she made a quick exit.

After she was gone, I instituted a whole-class time-out so that I could get to the bottom of what happened. As I called up one student at a time to my desk, they began to verify the truth: the teacher had thrown the stick on the ground in frustration and many clips came flying off. Some children tried to put their friends back on the stick in the correct spot and in retaliation she took all of the clips off. At this point, Eli got a hold of them and started snapping the clothespins in half. And that's about when I walked in.

How does a 50 year-old-woman think that it is appropriate to have a temper tantrum in front of my class? And why on earth did she think that my kids wouldn't tell me the truth?

More frustrating than anything else is the fact that there is no avenue for me to seek retribution for my class. Mediocrity (or less) reigns.