Today I realized something: It could be much, much worse. I realized this because another student in another class spit in the Resident Teacher’s face. I have never seen a teacher so angry. Spitting is pretty low-down, it’s almost more insulting than if the kid took a swing–although there was some debate about that. Is spitting–which includes the insult plus the germs–equal to a four-year-old fist coming at you? Maybe I’m just thinking about how, culturally, it’s a pretty horrible yet subtle insult to spit on someone. Violence is pretty straightforward but spitting in someone’s face? Big Insult.
Tragedy struck when a recent engineering project involving molding clay and black gems to make a bridge proved faulty. The clay never dried correctly and one by one the bridges came down on their paper foundations. We had a discussion about this during Circle Time. One child, let’s call him Omar, did not hear this conversation due to his social nature. He spies his broken bridge during play time. Immediately he assumes it is his best friend, “Chad,” who destroyed it. He retaliates by destroying Chad’s bridge–one of the few that had originally survived. Chad is hysterical; he destroys Omar’s Lego ship. Omar is furious. Chad begins to cry when he realizes that destroying something of Omar’s did not replace the pain over losing his bridge. Omar feels justified because he “wanted Chad to feel as bad as I did.” The two have to be separated. Chad is beside himself. We have to talk with his Mom during pick-up time. The next morning his mother informs us that Chad is still upset over his broken bridge. He retold the story to every single family member and he still feels betrayed. Chad walks over to Omar, places his hands on his shoulders, looks him in the eye, and says, “Omar, I don’t want you to be in this class.” Omar is so offended he marches over to tell me about it. The two of them are split up again until recess when the Lead Teacher has a private conference with the two of them. They agree to be friends again…despite hard feelings, they continue to struggle to make it work, (kind of like a bad marriage).
We attend a puppet show at a nearby theater. I have forgotten how difficult it is to sit in a folding theater chair when you weigh less than fifty pounds. The seats practically fold my students in half, sucking them up into the crack between the back of the chair and the cushion. It is a struggle especially for the small students, and many of them opt to stand in front of the seat rather than sit in it. I recall my own difficulty in sitting in folding chairs at the movie theater when I was young. How old was I when my weight finally allowed the chair to unfold naturally?