(All day long, I am thinking of ironic mini-stories. Here’s one.)

The cell phone distracts the teacher.

The teacher neglects the students.

The students pass the note.

The note announces the party.

The party swells the house.

The house reeks of alcohol.

The alcohol dizzies the student.

The student drives the car.

The car speeds toward the intersection.

The intersection looms ahead of the teacher.

The teacher reaches for the cell phone.

The cell phone distracts the teacher.

Dear Students-of-This-Year’s-5th-Grade-Class:

I wish you were not using facebook. Maybe this opinion proves I turned into a fuddy-duddy the moment I turned 39. Maybe it is a result of the Santa-fiasco.

We were discussing the Boston Tea Party in one of my classes when a student became skeptical. “The tax rebellion, I understand,” he said, “but adults wearing Indian costumes? That is stretching it.”

I assured him that the account of the Boston Tea Party, including the disguises, we know to be accurate. It is “not merely an American cultural myth like Santa Claus,” I said. That was it. We moved on. The “Santa” vein of the discussion did not continue.

A myth like Santa Claus. A simple analogy was the nail in my proverbial coffin. Parents wrote me disappointed emails. There were phone calls. There was crying. One parent said I had “ruined Christmas.” Yikes.

Dearest students, there is a great quandary about Santa Claus going on behind your backs. Parents don’t know what to do. Through sites like Pinterest they post various options of how to handle “the reveal.” They forget that you are still supple in body and thought, and the younger you are, the more supple you are. They forget that right in the middle of any kind of make-believe, you have always been able to say, “Wait, ‘tend like I’m not a little blond girl named Rose who travels with the circus! ‘Tend I’m a mommy and I have a husband who is off at war. And I live on a farm! And I have to take care of the crops all by myself! And I have eight kids at home!” Then you can seamlessly resume the imaginary scene, as if this revisioning were only a hiccup. They forget you are reading books like The Lightning Thief, Eragon, Warriors, and Inkheart, and have no trouble at all popping back from a fantasy world to eat your supper or do your math homework.

The reason the adults in your life struggle? The older people get, the more difficult it is to move in and out of make-believe. No wonder you consider adults in Indian costumes to be “stretching it.” Grown-up imaginations grow stiff, less limber. Listen, my two year-old nephew can put his toes in his mouth. But if I tried to put my toes in my mouth, someone would have to take me to the hospital afterward. Imaginations are like that; the older they get, the less they can stretch. Adults shouldn’t wait too long to tell you the truth; it might hurt you to stretch. I think adults should tell kids from the get-go that Santa is a fun pretend-game that the whole world plays every December. That’s what my mom told me. My childhood was delightful, and I never once thought Santa was real. It’s enough fun to pretend he is.

Believe me, it is not as if I am to out to ruin the Santa-thing for everybody. That is not my place; beliefs of all kinds are a family decision. But I think parents are assuming a great deal of risk these days if they intend to be the primary source of information but then send their children off to school or let them engage on the Internet. Eventually there will be a slip, and more than likely not by a teacher. Trust me, children hear about a lot more than Santa from their friends at school. In fact, I am still wondering how parents think kids are NOT going to hear about Santa if they have a facebook or Pinterest account, as that is where the major discussion seems to be.

Kids, your parents mean well. They want you to remain a kid as long as possible. Hey, I do, too. That’s why every time one of you “likes” my page on facebook, I slap my forehead and groan. If you are in my class this year, you are 10 or 11. However if you are using facebook, you checked a box that said that you are 13.

Don’t let yourself grow up so fast. By putting an age limit on social media, adults are not trying to withhold fun from you. There will be a right time to enjoy the fun of adult/young adult privileges. Yet, I promise you, it will not be fun when you grow up and realize you hurried your childhood and can never go back.

Besides, checking a box that says you’re 13 when you are actually 10 is lying. (Confession: In the past I had my 6th graders using goodreads when most of them were only 12. Sure, I had a stack of signed parent permission forms in my hand, but I also had a tug in my heart when I said, “Just check the box that says you’re 13. You’re almost 13.” You’re almost 13. Ugggh. Sweet kids, your teacher wasn’t almost lying. I was lying, while urging 75 young people to do the same. There is a terrible fate for people who lead children the wrong direction, so I don’t do that anymore. I wish I had never done it in the first place. More than anything, I want to be a person of truth. Let truth be the example I set, nothing less.)

As a teacher who loves you, I am going to ask you to do something that will take a great amount of courage: tell the truth. Deactivate your facebook, instagram, goodreads, twitter, and any other accounts until your 13th birthday. Then go play. Enjoy your childhood. You only have a year and a half left. Soon you will be a young adult; school activities will become more difficult and less free. Growing up is great fun, too, but there is something so wonderful about your first 12 years that you really can’t afford to miss a minute of it. Besides, your social media accounts will be found exactly as you left them when you finally turn 13.

I realize that this call to quit facebook will not be popular. But I don’t care about being popular. I care about you.

Rest assured, when you grow up, you will still play pretend. In fact, facebook is the biggest pretend-game of all. But that is another post entirely.

I couldn’t be more excited about this wonderful book review in the October 2012 issue of Fort Worth, Texas Magazine!  Would you believe it took a friend from Arizona to find it and let me know about it first?

My idea with this wall was to cover it with a constant rotation of butcher paper, upon which would be scribbled our thinking maps, graphs, word studies, predictions and blah, blah, blah.

I was going to need so much butcher paper, I thought, that I didn’t want to be walking down to the office/workroom every day. No, I decided I needed an entire roll of butcher paper to myself to keep in my room! But I was too cheap to buy a $35 roll at my local TeachMart, of course, so I went to Home Depot and bought a $9 roll of builder paper. Same thing as butcher paper, right? In fact, it’s better because there are more feet on a roll and the craft brown goes with my color scheme. Cute. Cute. Cute.

Nope. Nope. Nope. I hung one length of builder paper on the wall one time. It is twice as thick and heavy, so rolling up blue painter’s tape behind it did not hold. Neither did pasting the painter’s tape across the paper in front. Neither did pushpins, which popped out of the wall. Neither did alligator clips hung on nails, which somehow let go of the paper, it was so heavy.

So I had a blank wall for six weeks. I never went to the office to get my trusty butcher paper; I was too mad. I am going to make this work this six weeks, I don’t know how!

Because a banner like “Our Thinking” hanging over a blank wall, is just too much.

You may have seen countless versions of this chart in rainbow colors and with basic categories (Outstanding, Great Job, Ready To Learn, etc). I made mine with the earthy colors I have in my classroom and with old catchphrases that I like. One teacher on my hall used an Olympic theme on her chart (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Qualifier, etc). Another teacher on my hall used NASCAR categories, and another used a baseball theme.

When I was a kid in elementary school, I talked during class. A lot. I must have thought all those Ns on my report card just stood for Nika. Teachers wrote my name on the board with multiple checks everyday. I never recall a single conversation with any teacher about my citizenship grade. The only conversation came from my parents when they saw that disappointing N on my report card. I would shrug, “I like to talk.”

One time I was absent, and the other kids told me later that my math teacher wrote my name on the board anyway. She was working a problem with her back to the class. When she heard kids talking she said, “Niiiikaaaa …that’s a mark!” and without turning around, she wrote my name. It makes me laugh; I’m sure I deserved it for all the days I didn’t get caught talking.

Marks, checks, names on the board, signatures in the book: None of that archaic junk works, and I am living proof. Getting my name on the board only made me want to talk more. So much so that now I make a living by talking. I have a full-time talking job, and a part-time talking job.

But it’s a new day and age in the classroom! Yea-double-yea for my Pinterest-inspired behavior management system. If you are not currently using this type of chart in your K-5 classroom, you still have five marking periods to enjoy it. Don’t waste another expo pen endlessly writing names on the board! Don’t waste another minute trying to explain to parents how you arrived at a citizenship grade! This works better than any measure I have ever used. If I had to, I could even think of a way to adapt it into a mature feedback system for secondary grades.

How it works:

• The top two squares are E+ and E (Excellent), the middle two are S+ and S (Satisfactory), the bottom two are N+ and N (Needs Improvement).
• Everyone walks into the classroom everyday at S+.
• When I see or hear behavior I appreciate, I say, “Please step up!” and the student moves his clothespin up a square.
• When I see or hear behavior that needs correction, I say, “Please step down,” and the student moves his clothespin down a square.
• In the last two minutes of the class period, the student records the final location of his clothespin on this data chart, which they keep with them at all times
• On the last day of the marking period, I have one-minute individual conference about the choices they have made. We agree together on a citizenship grade for the report card.

Some end-of-the-marking-period conversations are quick and fun. Previously, I would enter an E in the gradebook and neglect to thank the student. Now, EVERY student enjoys an eye-to-eye conference filled with my compliments and gratitude for a job well done.

You can see that this student had one day of outrageous behavior on 9/20. That student went berserk! It resulted in a conversation in which we both agreed that the behavior was literally off the chart, and we agreed upon a daily grade of U for Unsatisfactory. Our end-of-the-marking-period conference was marvelous, however, because we discussed the behavior on that old U-day and how behavior improved in the days and weeks afterward, ensuring an S for the final grade. S for SUCCESS, I would say!

Why it works:

• Kids love feedback. This system is dynamic, and children will work hard to see their clothespins move in the right direction. One quiet student who usually receives Es, went home and happily told her mother, “I am noticed now.” Constant feedback from her teachers helps her to gauge her contribution to a class instead of just staying “low maintenance” for the teacher.
  
• Choices are not fatal. Students may behave inappropriately, but then they have opportunities to improve before class is dismissed. I have seen kids turn atrocious behavior around so completely, that by the end of the class, I am complimenting them on their self-correction and recovery.
• There are no favorites. To me, “just keeping your mouth shut” does not mean you deserve an E in citizenship. Some kids are naturally quiet and never disrupt … but they also rarely participate actively in discussions. Just because they are being quiet does not mean they are paying attention. Daydreamers are very quiet, in fact. With this system, there are no “good kids” who automatically get an E. Everybody has to work for an E by getting started on the warm-up immediately, staying on task and focused, participating in class discussions, contributing significantly to a group, etc. Being a good citizen in real life is not defined by being quiet. Sometimes it requires speaking up. Often, schools default to an erroneous lesson through citizenship grades.

Here is my dearest story about this chart:

While we were working noisily on group work, I saw a student walk over and move his clothespin down two squares without being asked. I called him over and asked why he had moved himself down.

“I just told an inappropriate joke,” he said with tears in his eyes, “I don’t want to tell you what it was; it was bad. As soon as I told it, I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I figured if I corrected myself right after the joke this time, maybe I will remember to correct myself before I tell a bad joke, next time.”

Talking a lot is not bad. Being loud is not bad. Being hyperactive is not bad. There are many jobs in this world that only highly energetic, loud talkers will be able to do for us. When a child’s giftedness toward a profession emerges in school and is immediately labelled as poor behavior, we are not helping them develop their life skills. Conversely, when we reward inactive silence, I fear the message we send.

Teachers, as you work double-time to cultivate the strengths hidden inside your disruptive students, smile inwardly: Your Heavy Talker will probably grow up to be a teacher and will finally get it when she has a student just like herself.