Today I experienced true terror. I was sitting in my room this morning, praying fervently that my class didn’t show—it was my second graders, and I’d had more than enough of them the day before—but, as usual, my prayers weren’t answered. It never fails that the classes I DON’T want to see ALWAYS show up, and the classes I DO like stay away. I hear a rumbling down the hallway as little feet run helter-skelter toward my room. (I can always hear them coming, especially this class and the 3-2 class because their teachers are always gone and the students evidently feel a need to reassert their liberty by wrecking havoc on the hallway and the eardrums of everyone on the second floor.) I think my heart actually physically sank as I rose and tried to exert some authority on the two students who were already on the verge of tsunami-scale destruction—once I lose control here, it’s impossible to regain. I suppose it’s lost already on the walk up to English, but there’s not much I can do about that unless I want to hover outside their rooms and snap the whip as soon as they emerge. Anyway, today I’m first alerted something is horribly, irreversibly wrong when one of two has a blue-stained mouth. At nine am. And then the rest of the class races in while I’m still staring in horror, each of them with a pound of sugar in their mouths. MY WORST NIGHTMARE. I know how candy works on kids—that’s why I always give it to them at the end of class. They’ll be hyper for a little while—like this class needs ANY more energy…--and then they’ll get irritable and grouchy. Since I can’t control the class in normal circumstances, today will just be that much worse. Not to mention the fact that a apple-sized sucker in the mouth makes it nearly impossible to talk, which, I thought, was the whole point of an English class with me. I almost started crying in frustration.
It didn’t turn out quite as terrible as I thought. I made them all throw away their suckers—they just ate them really quickly and the sugar went to them that much quicker, but at least they could talk, for the moment. They were a little wild toward the end, but their overall behavior was much better than yesterday. The only thing I can figure is that their teacher gave them the suckers as a bribe. I think she was really embarrassed by their behavior yesterday and didn’t want it to happen again. Still, she could have given them the suckers AFTER, so it wouldn’t disrupt English. AND she could actually be a better teacher and not resort to temporary sugar bribes. I hope this doesn’t become a regular thing.