Look what I found in my drafts: A story about my class from December 15, 2005. These were my students from my next-to-last year teaching. The wiseass is Megan, who is still a wiseass today. And the class did go the entire year without a single negative point. I’m a softie.
There’s no real conclusion to the post, and it’s impossible to get back the same feeling I had while writing it, so here it is, in the raw.
Yesterday was my last class before the winter break, three full weeks of sleeping in on Sundays and no rushing to class on Tuesday afternoons.
Tuesday classes are always the bigger challenge. The children have been in school all day, and the last thing they want to do is learn for two more hours. They are always more active, less patient, rowdier. On Sundays, I get them at the beginning of their day, not at the end. Sunday is a breeze.
This year’s class is the best-behaved class I have ever had. They’ve gone two and a half months without a single negative point. (I give and take points which the students can trade in for prizes throughout the year).My previous classes are a bit jealous and tend to pooh-pooh the current class as a bunch of goody-goodies, but that’s not the case. They’re a small, tight-knit group of six, and there are only two boys. I’ve noticed that the recipients of most of my negative points over the years have been boys. Oh, the girls get them too, but not nearly as often, and when girls get negative points, they tend to stop the behavior that brought it on–as opposed to the boys, who effect bravado and challenge me to give them more. It is a mistake to challenge me, particularly if you are a nine-year-old child challenging my authority. I always win. Especially since, as I suspected all along, none of the boys really wants to be known as the child who got the most negative points ever. One came close, last year, until it was pointed out to him that his father would likely ground him if he got any more points (we were on our way to negative fifteen, and he was lying on the floor underneath the table, kicking his legs in glee every time I raised the point score).
The boys in my current class happen to be of the generally well-behaved variety. One of the girls likes to be a wiseass, and has come very close to being the first in the class to get a negative point, but a side-effect of having zero negative points has arisen: Nobody wants to be the first one to get a negative. The mere threat of that brings instant good behavior.
I have sweetened the pot by awarding them five points for every month they go without a negative. Eight months of class, five points per month, and that’s the equivalent of one free prize per student. This is probably the best the system is ever going to be, and a year for the record books. I know the children in third grade; no way is it going to be a negative-free year next year. So I’m enjoying this class while I can, and, well, I’m enjoying them very much.
Since yesterday really wasn’t an easy class day, we did a lot of review, some game-playing, and had a bit of free time. I gave them the last few minutes of class, and they wanted to sing Chanukah songs. They started singing the Dreidel song (with the multitude of verses we learn in music class), broke down quickly, I started to help, and then they improvised. Instead of “I had a little dreidel, I made it out of clay,” they started using their names, which gave rise to the problem of things like, “What rhymes with Ben?” Before I knew it, I was making up rhymes for one of them, and suddenly each of them stood in front of me in turn, jumping up and down and saying, “Me! Now me! Do my name!”
And they discovered another hidden talent of Ms. Yourish: She can improvise rhymes with very little effort. I have a habit that very few people know about. I make up lyrics to various tunes that pop into my head, and the lyrics will not only match the task I am currently doing, but will rhyme as well. And I sing these songs out loud. The meter isn’t always on, but Tig and Gracie aren’t very critical. Neither are the children who have been privy to my improv routines. In fact, my students loved being the stars of their very own dreidel song rhyme.