Sometimes It's Enough to Make You Wonder About Yourself

As a kindergarten teacher, I spend way too much of my day trying to get young folks to sit still and pay attention. Often, this is a losing battle. Today, one of my students had spent much of the morning avoiding following directions, so he was missing part of his free choice time as a consequence. I'm very mean. So I go to sit down and talk to him about the situation. We talk about the need to listen and follow directions, and mostly this means I say things like "did you make a good choice" and he says "no," and I say "will you make a better choice tomorrow?" and he says "yes." So a lot of "yes" and "no" on my student's part. And this is what transpires:

Me: Do you think that you would get more points from your friends for doing the right thing and listening and following directions?

Student (chastened): No.

Me: No?

Student (looking at me, seriously): I don't understand what you are saying.

At this point, I burst out laughing, lecture over. I didn't really understand what I was saying, either.

This is your brain on kindergarten.

On Friday, not one, but two of my students decided that it would be a really really good idea to put rocks in their ears. They were the little gravelly rocks that you find under the jungle gym, and they shoved them in while they were sitting in their specials class. You know, just for kicks. To see what would happen. Makes sense. Both of them went home with pebbles lodged in their ears and notes from the nurse.

Meanwhile, another one of my students has figured out that he can make a really fly tooth grill out of the foil cover of his little juice container. Very bling-bling. He looks like Flava Flav. Except not.