you big disgrace

Let’s just say that there are a few defining moments in my teaching career thus far and not all of them for the better. I had one of the moments recently that I continually laugh about because it was just so ridiculous. Seriously, first grade is the strangest thing sometimes, covered in insanity and topped with craziness. No joke, I got home one day to find a massive streak of blue marker on the bottom of my foot, even though I had worn chacos all day. This story, however, is a little bit more exciting than finding random marker on my person.

Here’s the cheese: first grade doesn’t have lunch in the cafeteria because there isn’t enough room, so the lunch is delivered via lunch personnel every day to the classroom. Before the kids eat, all 6 first grade classes send their kids to the bathroom to “wash” their hands (since we all know it doesn’t really happen). Anyway, the boys’ bathroom is on my end of the hallway and there are some rather rambunctious youngsters that wait in the hallway outside of my classroom while they wait on the rest of their classmates to be done. I will randomly go out and patrol the hallway, making sure no one is choking other people or being too crazy. Usually it is fine, with the occasional moment of telling the boys to be a bit quieter or asking them to move out of the way of the flow of traffic.

Until a few weeks ago.

I went outside after a not-so-great writing class and wasn’t in the most pleasant of moods. Our classroom is efficient with the lunch process, so I escaped from my homeroom and went out into the hallway for a breather. I looked around and saw four boys getting into it about ten feet away from me. One of the more corpulent boys was sitting on another kid’s face and pushing into the floor; the two other two boys were pushing, shoving, grabbing, and hitting.

That. Was. It.

I was gone. I stomped down the hallway toward them (imagine Doris Day’s angry walk in The Glassbottom Boat and add ten) and pulled the boys off of each other. I stood them in a line, staring them down in absolute frustration.

“You. You. You. And you,” I said, punctuating each word with a jab of my finger. “What class are you in?”

Silence.

“What. Class. Are. You. In,” I repeated, saying the words through clenched teeth.

A boy behind the guilty lot spoke up, “Class 1-2.”

“Okay,” surveying the boys in front of me. “You, you, you, and you: follow me.” I said each word with a point in the boys’ direction, but silence again.

“Follow. Me. Now.”

There was a bit of shuffling as I turned to lead them down the hallway. They were hesitant and I put them in front of me and told them to walk. As we were walking, I realized that I had no idea why they were fighting in the first place and I should probably figure that out before I deliver them to their homeroom teacher. We approached an empty classroom.

“Go in there” I directed.

The boys slowly walked into the room. I was seething but also trying to keep it cool. If I were a cartoon, my hair would have done those corkscrew things, you know what I’m talking about? Anyway, I stared them down, “What happened?”

The boys looked everywhere but at me, not surprising because no one enjoys getting in trouble. I waited for a few moments and was getting nowhere. Ugh, I needed to sort this out and move on, not just because of the fact of time, but I wanted to wrap this up and back in my space.

I needed to give them incentive, something to get them talking.

“Do you like lunch?” I asked.

Confused stares met my face.

“Do you like lunch?” I repeated, waiting for them to make the connection. “Well, if you want to eat lunch, you need to tell me what happened.”

That did it. Small voices began to talk all at once: “He hit me.” “He pushed me.” “He pushed me and I pushed him.” “He sat on me.”

“Okay,” I said. “Just because someone pushes you, you don’t push them back. And you definitely do not sit on anyone!” The boys looked at me incredulously because first grader logic dictates that if someone does it to you, you do it back even harder. (That’s a great conversation for another day.) I gave the boys a tough stare down and told them that Ms. Gioia—their homeroom teacher—would decide their consequences for fighting.

We walked down to their classroom and Ms. Gioia wasn’t there. I turned to the boys, “Stand against the wall while we wait for Ms. Gioia. When she gets here, you’re going to tell her what you did and then she will decide what your consequence is, understand?”

The boys nodded and moved to the wall. We stood in an icy silence since the boys knew that it wasn’t over yet—for them. I looked up the hallway to see Ms. Gioia approaching. I called out to her in a fake everything-is-rosy tone. “Hello, Ms. Gioia!”

“Hello, Ms. Mary!” she replied. “What’s going on?” She came around the corner to see the boys looking at the floor.

“These boys were fighting and I told them that you would decide their consequences,” turning to stare them down again.

“Oh, boys. Do you have something to say to Ms. Mary?” Ms. Gioia asked. “You need to apologize.” The boys shuffled a bit and they mumbled muted apologizes. I turned to walk away to my classroom, triumphant and ready for the next thing.

“Ms. Mary, did you know that you have pen on your face?”

WHAT? I quickly put my hand up to my face and broke down into fits of laughter. Just look at this, here I am trying to be all serious and in-control, only to have a huge blue pen mark across my face. No wonder the boys wouldn’t look at me or answer my questions, I looked like a complete maniac!

As Ms. Gioia and I laughed, one of the boys peeked around the corner. “Back against the wall!” said Ms. Gioia before she went back to laughing. “Well, you better go wash that off. So much for your discipline.”

“Yeah, my life!” I laughed, walking away towards the bathroom. I washed off the marker, laughing and having the song “We will, we will rock you” stuck in my head because it has that part that goes something like “you have mud on your face, you big disgrace”, and that is what I was right then. A total disgrace in a humorous way.

I was still chuckling to myself as I was walking back to my room, a path that took me right in front of the boys. I wanted to look serious and give them one last scathing look of disapproval as I sauntered past, but I ended up looking like the Joker: mad eyes, awkward smile, halted cackling. I laughed all the way down to my room and have laughed about it ever since. Good news is though, those boys haven’t been fighting. I guess my craziness is just too much to handle.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my life as a first grade teacher at SSBS.