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Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Hand Sanitizer Insanity…

Well, contrary to expectations about sub assignments during testing week, I’ve picked up three assignments for this week. A 2nd grade class today, 6th on Thursday and 5th on Friday to round out the week.

I wouldn’t designate the first two assignments “prime” because the 2nd grade assignment is at a school that has a reputation for “low expectations of social behavior” and the second assignment in a 6th grade class that I know has the same problem because I’ve experienced it twice already this year.

While most 2nd graders elsewhere are usually excited about school, think it’s fun and are respectful of adults. These 2nd graders lived down to the school reputation. In addition to being hard to control, one girl would constantly taunt others to start fights. “I don’t do homework and you can’t make me!” spouts the boy that just arrived mid-day from his “special classes”.

Just before lunch break, the kids were to line up and get a “small squirt” of hand sanitizer before walking over for lunch. I should have known better than to let the designated “squirter” kid handle what looked like a quart sized jug of the stuff to parcel out.

By the time I saw what was happening, several kids were lathering themselves up to their elbows and dripping it off the ends of all ten fingers.

This day could not have ended soon enough. All I could think of was decompressing for a whole day tomorrow before doing it all over again on Thursday…with the 6th graders!

2 comments:

Chris Osborne said...

Ah, the hand sanitizer. The only thing worse than that is bottles of lotion that some teachers have on the desk.

Anonymous said...

I once subbed a 2nd grade class of 25 students predominantly girls. They were divided into two rival gangs, literally. A fight broke out in the middle of the morning leaving several shelves broken and a couple of broken chairs. I found out that fights between these students were a common occurrence. The rest of the day was making the class cleanup the mess.