Decisions

In the past 2 days I have realized that I make A LOT of decisions as a teacher. And, ultimately, those decisions affect many, many people. Some decisions are good ones, and I know it at the moment I make that decision. Others I question myself, but still do something. I mean, something is better than nothing, right? And then there are moments were I just plain make stupid decisions and later think, "What was I thinking?"

Well, in the past 2 days, I've dabbled in a little bit of all of the above.

Let me list some examples...

1. Lostboy. If you've been reading my blog lately, I have a kid that has stolen my heart. On my last post, I shared how he had stolen my cookies out of my lunch sack, and the following day was his birthday. Up until this time, he had not stolen from me. Mind you, he has stolen from others and not even shown a bit of remorse. But, I had been safe. Until Wednesday. So, knowing he had stolen, knowing he had a birthday the next day, and knowing that he would probably get squat for his birthday, I was torn. In the end, I went and bought him lunch at McDonald's. My logic was the fact that he wouldn't destroy the lunch, and it would probably make his day. I could tell by the people I shared the story with that they didn't agree with me. They felt I was rewarding him for stealing. By the way, he denied the stealing, for the first time ever. Punk. Anyway, I did it. I had three different teachers disagree, saying if he stole, he shouldn't be rewarded. I agree, knowing should be rewarded for stealing. At the same time, this Lostboy probably didn't get much last night for his birthday. He was absent today too. In the end, I felt I did what was right. Will he steal again from me? Yep. But at least his 10th birthday wasn't all bad. As Mr. H. said yesterday, he made it to his 10th birthday. I pray he makes it more, without winding up in jail or worse.

2. Jump the River. All week we've had students taking our state assessments. And, I will refrain from my own personal views on it all because it would take days to truly tell you how I really feel about it. Anyway, the kids were NUTS by the end of yesterday. And, to be honest, I was on the edge of cabin fever being caged up in my conference room classroom. So, I agreed to take the kids out yesterday afternoon. I wanted to do a game called Jump the River. They jump between two jump ropes while the distance between them gets bigger and bigger. This is not a game that I could do on the concrete. Kids fall and I was afraid a kid would split his head open. So, we went to the grass. It was wet, but didn't seem too muddy where we were and I thought it would be okay. On about the 3rd jump, I realized mud was going to be covering kids. I didn't really care. I mean, I did. But, they only had 90 minutes left of school at that point, and I figured they were already dirty so I let them play. I questioned it in my head, I really did. But, I knew we all needed something to laugh and yell about. And just about the time I was laughing and enjoying it, I had a classroom aide come over to me and tell me I shouldn't be letting them do it. I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "Noone's hurt, they're having fun." The para looked at me, and said, "I would complain if I were a parent." I said, "okay." Truth be told, she is a parent of one of our kids, but her son didn't play. Then she stomped off. My initial thought was, "What grade are we in?" But, I knew she was right. I just didn't think she handled it as an adult. Then one of the teachers came over to me and said, "Are you sure they should be doing that? Their clothes are all dirty." I just looked at her and said, "They'll wash. And, this is the last round and then they'll go play." I didn't care at the moment. She looked at me and said, "Well, as a parent, I'd be calling the school and complaining." She yelled as she said it, and then stormed off. I stood there, mad. Noone knew the week I'd had or the fact I knew this would be a day the kids would never forget. After the last round, I told them all to go play. I prayed the whole time they played. I knew we would get parent complaints. And, I knew that I had to let my administrators know what I did. So, when they all lined up I told them they wouldn't be doing it again on a muddy day like that, and that I didn't want parent complaints. One of the kids in the classes said, "You did a great job, Ms. Spring." Then they did a raise the roof chant. It made me feel good, but, I knew it wouldn't help the fact I was the adult that let them play in the mud. In the end, the administrators accepted my apology and promise that it wouldn't happen again. My teachers were okay with it, stating noone got hurt, so it was okay. The kids just had to sit on the floor for the last hour of the day. (There were about 20 of them in mud.) As for the para, she isn't speaking to me right now. (What grade are we in?) The teacher apologized this morning saying she was really rude to me. I accepted her apology and said, "Our lives go on, that was just one day." We were fine. Go figure.

3. Testing. I spent all day scripting. My teachers wanted me to do make-ups. Today and Monday are my two days of the week I can script all day, and I didn't really want to make-up test. I said I would. Then later I was told the our administrator gave us permission to wait until Monday. Praise God. I'm glad that decision was made for me.

So, while it hasn't been an awful week, it has been a busy one and I'm ready for the weekend. I'm spending the weekend babysitting some really nice kids, so it should be fun.

I'll keep ya posted on any further decision-making dilemmas I have. For now, I see sleep in my future.

Later!