As part of my new job, I do recess duty. LOTS of recess duty. Every day, at lunch, from 11:20 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. That is five rounds of recess. Whoa.
It starts with the little kids, K and 1st, and involves a lot of coat-zipping and shoe-typing and suggestions to go into the restroom and wash the rest of your lunch off your face because I can see, you had PB&J today, didn't you? After the first two rounds it's 2nd and 3rd, along with the related reminders not to jump in the puddles and yes that is the rule every day it rains and no I know I am not the first teacher to tell you this. And, I know he's chasing you, did you tell him you don't like that? No? Why don't you try telling him. I think that might help.
Then is 4th and 5th, the biggest kids, and of course as teachers we never have "favorite" of anything, not related to school anyway, not favorite kids or favorite subjects or anything that would make us appear to be something besides 100% unbiased. That said, I really like the 4th and 5th grade recess a lot. There is gardening happening in the back corner of the yard, against the chain link fence, and something about kids gardening in this tiny scrappy little piece of ground with the freeway and the jail in the background does my heart good. There are always two simultaneous, side-by-side games of double dutch going on and I will stand there and cheer with the best of them, a smile on my face and hope in my heart for the kids who taught me to double dutch all those years ago in Fontana, those second graders who are in college now if they tricked poverty and fate and even made it as far as high school.
And, at the 4th and 5th grade recess there are my boys. They are in fifth grade, and it didn't take long for them and I to find one another. We met my third or fourth day at school, when the five or six or seven of them were screwing around in the back of the line at the end of lunch and I walked over to stand by them. Proximity, you see, is the most powerful of all student management tools :) They wanted to know who I was ("Hey! You a substitute or something?") and what I was doing there ("You getting us in trouble? We didn't do nothing!") but when I stuck my hand out and told them my name and made them tell me theirs and explained that I do Ms. L's job now (the former reform facilitator and current assistant principal) they had a new and more accurate sense of who I was. And when I used my famous line, honed from years of practice ("I'm not getting you in trouble, your choices are getting you in trouble, now line up please") they knew I was on their side.
Let's pause here for some background information: I am good with boys. This is part of my professional reputation. I never set out to build this skill, I think it is a combination of natural affinity and experience gained over time with many different students, but wherever it comes from it is very real. For better or for worse. I am like a Boy Whisperer. The kid who almost got kicked out of school for sticking pins through the top of his teacher's shoe and into her foot while they were sitting on the carpet for circle time? Yeah, he was in my class the next year and hugged me goodbye every day of the week. The kid climbed into his cubby and refused to come out every morning because he hated class so much, who banged his head on his desk as an outlet for his debilitating anxiety and who would run away and hide at recess? By winter break he was waking his parents up at 5 a.m. to make sure he would get to school on time. Somewhat given to extremes, that one. And I loved him so much. And I love them all.
More than once I've been told I'd be great at an all-boys school, but there aren't that many of them and it hasn't really ever come up as a professional option. And, I haven't sought it out. I figure there are plenty of boys wherever I go, and my new school is no different.
So back to my boys, these fifth grade boys: ever since that day I met them in the back of the line, we have been fast friends. They see me at morning assembly and in the hall and completely free of the self-consciousness that I know will come next year when they go to middle school, they shout my name and wave. They come up to me at lunch and look in my canvas Whole Foods bag to see what leftovers I've brought from home and brag that their school lunch is way better. They high-five me in the morning and hug me in the afternoon. And, at recess we fight.
Not real fighting, of course, because real fighting is Not Allowed At School. That is how this whole thing got started. A few days after we met, I was doing recess duty and they were fighting so I went over to talk to them. "But, we're not really fighting! We're just pretending!" And so we all sat down together by the fence and I had the talk with them about how pretend fighting looks like real fighting, in the same way pretend cheating looks like real cheating and pretend kissing looks like real kissing. We talked about how all of these things can start out being pretend and can easily become real, and also how it can be very confusing because one person can think something is pretend while the other person thinks it is real and then it can get out of hand.
They were very dejected and disappointed because let's face it, these are scrappy boys who are not going to grab a rake and go work in the garden or get in line for double dutch. So, seeing their disappointment, I made them a deal. They can fight at recess. Not pretend fight, not real fight, but STAGE fight. I will be their director and they will be the actors and for five minutes every day at lunch recess we will enact a dramatic martial arts performance. We will use what we've learned playing video games and watching The Matrix and we will do some vigorous kung-fu fighting. Okay? What does everyone think about that, do we agree? Good. Come on, let's fight.
"Teacher! Just one thing," one of them insisted, grabbing my wrist and pulling me back down to the blacktop. "We have to make a rule that if someone fake-kills someone while we're acting, that they bring the person they fake-killed back to life. Because that doesn't happen in real fighting. Like with my cousin. When he got killed he was dead for real and nothing could bring him back."
*deep breath*
Okay, I replied, of course. Good point. Can we all agree that if anyone gets fake-killed while we're acting that the person who fake-kills someone will bring them back to life?
"No! That's not good enough," another one of the boys said, shaking his head vigorously. "If someone gets fake-killed, we'll all stop acting and come over and bring him back to life, together. Let's say it takes everyone together to bring someone back to life. That way we'll all be really careful not to fake-kill anyone because if we do, everyone will have to stop playing and come over and it will be annoying to be interrupted."
Really? Are you sure? I wanted to know. This seemed like kind of weird logic to me, but they were all nodding yes. Group resurrection, group consensus. Who am I to say? If this is what they think will help them self-monitor and not fake-kill someone else then okay. Never mind the fact that fake-killing is indeed that, fake, and that in the end it is really up to the person supposedly fake-killed if they are going to fake-die or not. That's not what it's about. It's about group accountability and being responsible for your actions, fifth grade-style.
So now every day we fight at lunch recess. Hanging out with my boys is one of my favorite parts of my day. And you know what? We haven't had even one fake death, yet. Turns out it's a pretty good system after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment