The teachers all return to their classrooms Monday. They’ll be hanging cutesiness and making plans. Once again, as with the past two years, I won’t be joining them.
Over the summer I’ve popped onto the Broward County Schools employment board several times. I viewed the openings in a somewhat desirous manner just long enough to remember…
Christopher L. was the bane of my fourth year in teaching. I had fifth graders who misbehaved far greater than Chris, but he simply had the ability to misbehave with such panache. Example? One day, after returning from lunch, I noticed a slice of pizza plopped onto the newly installed carpet, the carpet our principal had warned us to never, ever allow eating upon.
“Who brought pizza back from the cafeteria?” I uttered without summoning any best teaching practices gleaned over the past four years. Silence.
“Everyone here knows there’s no food allowed in the classroom, “ I added. Silence.
“If someone doesn’t start explaining how that pizza ended up on the newly installed carpet that our principal from hell is going to kick my ass over…” or something like “If someone doesn’t tell me how that pizza got there, we are ALL missing recess,” I blurted.
Up goes Chris’s hand. “May I speak with you in private?”
I tell the class of thirty-four wide eyes to start reading something, anything, to turn around and “get to work” on something, anything, as I join Chris at my desk.
“I cannot tell a lie, Mrs. Tasses, I was reentering the room when I noticed that I had a slice of pizza stuck to the bottom of my shoe.” This is truly how Chris spoke. “I, ever so gently, rubbed my foot to remove the pizza and didn’t think to pick it up and throw it in the trash.” He batting-eye added, “Please do not punish the class for my stupidity.”
This wasn’t the start of the year. I knew Chris and I saw the evidence. “That pizza is not flat. That pizza is puffy,” I managed to stifle my desire to scream. “ That pizza was not on the bottom of your shoe. That pizza was in your pocket.”
There is no other profession on this planet where you will ever hear those words spoken in that order. Only in the teaching profession. Well, maybe crime fighting, but still…
There are other stories from the nine years, ones even more ridiculous. They help me close the employment board window.
August 9, 2008
Puffy Pizza Ponderation
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5 comments:
Sounds like something my son would do. Using those exact words.
My wife does a lot of volunteering at the elementary where our youngest three attend. She routinely tells me that the 5th graders are all "from Hell" and the worst behaved students. And this is a classy elementary school in a fairly affluent part of the district.
Too much Playstation makes Joe Fifthgrader a nuisance . . .
I am a teacher and empathize with you...i go back to work in a couple weeks...it only takes one to really screw with you and make your life really difficult.
I quit teaching after four years (in those four years, I taught grades 12, 10 & 8). but it wasn't the kids that got to me, it was the administration.
tysdaddy: It's all relative. In an elementary, the 5th graders seem tough. But in a middle school, they're just pussycats. My principal moved me from 3rd to 5gth and I cried. She did me the greatest service of my entire career. Now, I'd never teach lower than middle school.
ya ya's mom: I have my fingers crossed that you're getting a good bunch this year. I know you'll need it:-)
jena: out of nine different administrators, I only had difficulty with one. Three were worthless, but they didn't bother me. Two, I loved. I wish you'd met them instead.
"That pizza was in your pocket."
love it. it's my new slogan for when I catch the boys doing something they shouldn't...
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