Is home or work crazier?

I have to blog about this, because today I was struck with the thought that I must be nuts to be a teacher and a father of many children as well. Just to give you some perspective, I teach second grade and I have like a mini version of the United Nations in my classroom. I have three students from Burma, one who just arrived two days ago, one from Rwanda, one from Iraq, one from Vietnam, and one from Russia. That’s seven students who are in the process of learning the English language and are at one level of proficiency or another.

Anyway, we celebrated Valentine’s Day today, so I thought I’d do this fun activity with candy hearts that was given to me by a fellow colleague (thanks Linda). We’ve been studying measurement and on the worksheet, the students had to find the perimeter and area of three separate figures with candy hearts. So picture this: candy hearts all over, kids concentrating on counting how many candy hearts it takes to go around each figure and how many it takes to fill the inside. Everyone’s of course asking when they can eat some. Bob (not real name) is picking his nose while counting his hearts, and I notice he's sneaking some from his neighbor with the exact finger that's just recently left his nostril! The activity is fun and fairly organized. Everyone finishes except for five of the above mentioned ESL students who were at ESL class and have just arrived after being gone for about thirty minutes. I tell them with a mixture of words and gestures that I’ll let them do the candy heart activity in just a minute but we need to start writing time.

Eventually, I get all the other students working and I have the five join me at my back table figuring they’ll love this activity and it won’t be too hard given that it’s just placing candy hearts around the outside and inside of these three figures (hah). Everyone else is supposed to be writing a creative paper independently that we began a few days ago. Jim and Jerry (not real names) have been out for the last four days though so they have no idea what I’m talking about when I say, “Take out your creative stories.” I quickly decide to let them catch up on hand writing instead of taking twenty minutes to go over what we’ve been doing while they were gone. They’re fairly independent workers, so they find their handwriting workbooks and are off and running. Tom has been here for all four days, but has no clue what I’m talking about and can’t locate either his planner or the story itself, so I help him go through the process of planning his paper while I’m helping English Learner #1, who’s brand new to the country, figure out what to do with his candy hearts. I’m quite impressed, he can count to twenty! Jill and Jenny (non-ELL's who are sitting in the corner) are supposed to be writing of course, but they're not. They’ve decided it’s time to investigate the various games, candy, cookies, and etc. parents have brought in for a party that we’re having later. It’s also fun to gab about the latest who did what on the playground and compare whose hair is looking cutest today. Ok I made that up, but what else could be more exciting that writing independently? I quickly break up their social hour and send Jill back to her desk looking extremely dejected that she must leave Jenny behind. I look over and Bob is picking his nose yet again and has lost his creative story. What’s ironic is that he found his planner but can’t seem to find his story, which is odd because yesterday he could find the story but couldn’t find the planner?? Go figure. I tell him to look harder:) My attention goes back to Tom to see if he’s understood any of my directions for writing his creative paper, knowing that we’ve been interrupted numerous times by other students, namely the ones working on hearts, who need help. He nods yes; I’m seriously doubtful, but send him on his way anyway, because the kids in front of me are doing everything but counting candy hearts. Finally I slam my head on the table (not literally but in my head of course), after all it’s five minutes until lunch and it’s time to leave. I look back at what I’ve accomplished: I taught four ESL students that hearts are pretty and fun to eat but that they can be used for math too! I taught two students the meaning of the word “Snippy” as in that’s what your teacher is when you lose your things for the nth time, and I’ve taught myself that I guess I can multitask faster than I thought I could. The bell is about to ring and someone yells, “Mr. Slates, one of our fish died and it’s lying on the rocks at the bottom of our fish tank!” I looked down at my hands, covered with candy heart dust and laugh. This is life as I have come to know it as a teacher. Fun, yes. Crazy sometimes, of course!