loose change

Have you ever had a couple hundred quarters go spilling onto your classroom floor?

While I was still teaching high school students, we had a situation that occured during summer school. It came to my mind earlier today. I thought I would write about it on the blog. The local vending machine rep was in our school to collect the money from the machine and restock it with items. When he returned some items to his truck, he left the money bag sitting on top of the machine.

Well, of course, a student stole the money bag, which contained a significant sum. The police were called to school and a search was started room to room. When they asked for a certain student in my classroom who sat at the back, he rose to leave the room. As he made his way from his chair quarters and other change went everywhere onto the floor. It seems he became aware the police had arrived at school. He was trying to balance the money back on his chair, but when he stood, it all fell to the floor. Busted!!!

I don't really have any words of wisdom to go along with this. It was just a decent story I thought of today. One thing about education is we always have interesting things happening!

Paper wads in the classroom!!!

Please note: As with all of my posts here, names are changed to protect privacy!!

As a first year principal, I knocked on Mrs. Gregory's classroom door and didn't have a clue as to what was about to happen. I had been regularly visiting this teacher's 9th grade English classroom to read to her students. She had been struggling with a variety of classroom management issues, and I was glad to have the opportunity to visit so I could offer any assistance. However, when I opened the door this particular day, Mrs. Gregory's students unleased a barage of paperwads that pelted me viciously from head to toe.

I remained completely stoic throughout the entire episode, calmly said, "I don't think I feel like reading today," shut the door firmly and walked back to my office fuming on the inside. I waited patiently. I waited for Mrs. Gregory to come visit me in my office. Sure enough, she walked in with a big smile later that day.

She said, "I am so sorry about what happened this morning. That was just part of my lesson plan. I had the students write down their vocabulary words and then I told them to wad them up to throw at you. I respect you so much and how you make the students smile and I just knew you would know what was best."

This incident was one of several bizarre situations that occured in this classroom. For our student's sake, I'm thankful this teacher moved on from our building.

By the way, I was later informed that several of the students in Mrs. Gregory's class questioned whether throwing paperwads at the principal was a good idea or not. She told them if anyone didn't throw paperwads at me, then the rest of the class was to throw paperwads at them. Help, this teacher is driving me crazy!