a new name, a brilliant idea and an indoor recess

First, the new name. I thought it should be added to this blog that I was called "Mrs. Sherkoch" (pronounced sure-coke) the other day. My teaching partner was away and I was in for her (on a day I don't normally teach) and so the poor confused students decided to call me a combined version of our two names...

Second, the brilliant idea. Whenever I need the kids to stop what they're doing, I count down. Rather than asking them to stop immediately, this gives them a chance to finish up. One time, I was counting down and they obviously didn't want to stop what they were working on. One smarty-pants said "I know guys! We can slow her down if we put up our hands and ask lots of questions!" Ha ha. It's true. If someone asks me a question I usually lose track of the count, or at the very least there is a long pause between numbers. Good thinking.

Lastly, the indoor recess. You might not know that when the temperature gets below a certain level, the kids stay inside for recess. This, I believe, is a board policy. Last week was awfully cold and therefore awfully crazy. Indoor recess is never fun - it only leads to way too much unused energy in the classroom. One of these days I had outdoor duty for first break. I knew the temperature was low, and asked the principal what the plan was. She said they would go out for 10 minutes of recess and then come in for the second 10 minutes and spend it in the gym. Apparently this is what we do for indoor recess - the entire school is in the gym. Sounds crazy, I thought, but okay. I hadn't yet experienced an indoor recess.

So after 10 minutes outside the bell rang and I told the students to line up as usual. Suddenly, a bunch of students started moving towards the other door and everyone started going in. Since that door was closer to the gym, I assumed there was a teacher there directing them in, so I didn't argue. Soon, the entire school was attempting to cram into one door. I made my way over to the door and decided to wait and let the other teacher direct the mob. Since nothing seemed to be happening, I slowly started wading my way through the students, into the tiny lobby and towards the gym. No one seemed to actually be going anywhere, although mysteriously there were less and less people outside. The mob was compressing - a process accompanied by lots of screaming, yelling, pushing and shoving. I used my unnaturally loud (and now useful) clap to get their attention. Since I had again assumed there was a teacher at the gym not letting them in for some reason, I told them they needed to be quiet and patient and stop all this nonsense. They did. But we kept waiting.

It slowly occurred to me that there were no other teachers anywhere to be seen. No one had let them in these doors, and no one was directing them to the gym. It was just two little students, trying to do the right thing, who were preventing everyone from going into the gym. They were waiting for me to let them in! Of course this was unbeknownst to me, and I had, in the mean time, been waiting around, deferring to a non-existent other teacher! So eventually I made my way through the masses to the gym and let them all in. And in they poured. Before long, it was me and a gym full of 180 crazy kids (give or take), bundled from head to toe sitting on the floor or wandering aimlessly with nothing to do. A recipe for disaster. I made a quick dash to the staff room and asked "Sooooo, in the gym, do they all just sit on the floor? Are they supposed to do anything?" Confirmed, everything was the way it was supposed to be. This was it.

Since we had wasted so much time coming in, we really only had about 5 minutes to spend in the gym. Then everyone went back to class and back to normal. But for a while there, things were pretty ridiculous. Can I just say that had there been an emergency of any kind, we would all have died. As it was, little people were nearly being trampled, there was screaming and yelling and pushing of all kinds...It was a complete debacle. Let's hope it doesn't happen again.