If Peeing Your Pants is Cool, Consider me Miles Davis...

Hello again to all. It is extremely hard for me to believe that I have been teaching 4th grade for seven weeks now. I am happy to report that the more time that goes by, the more I "get" them and the more I enjoy it. I have never been with a group of kids who are this honest. "Mr. Jooooon...you need to get some gum because your breath always smells like you are drinking coffee! Why do you drink so much coffee?" said one of my wonderful students this past week. I just let it slide and said that I like drinking coffee and I need to not drink as much. However, when I was told this I really wanted to reply, "Look, I don't want to mince words here Emilia but you're drivin' me nuts. Maybe I have to drink so much coffee so I can keep up with 15 nine year-olds for five days a week...ya little shit!" :) Hahaha. Seriously, these kids have so much energy that at times I feel old at 25. However, one of the things that I am learning quickly is how to run learning centers/stations. For reading, writing, and math I have 3-4 stations set up that helps improve skills. Each group of 2-4 students is told to start at a station and they rotate every 10-20 minutes depending on what we are doing. Once I get all the materials needed for ths stations, the most work that I do in that 40-minute period is say, "ROTATE!" Needless to say, station days are great.

Now that I am done rambling on about my class and how it is going, I need to tell this story. This event is one that I don't ever think I can or want to forget. In science we I planned a unit on "living things." We are talking about cells, fruits, flowers, plants, animals, and fungi. We get to the part of the unit on fungi and I plan a fun experiment for the students to do and get a chance to look at spore prints of different mushrooms. So, I go to the store and buy two different types of mushrooms to use for this experiment. So we start the experiment and it goes very well and the kids really enjoy it. One of the questions that I was asked was, "Mr. Jon, can't you get a poisonous infection if you touch mushrooms?" I just about replied, "Yes! That is why I am having you touch them. I don't like a single one of you," but self-control got the best of me. Instead of saying that, I had to reply, "If they are wild mushrooms it is possible, but I bought these from a store so you don't have to worry about anything." So we continued the experiment for the rest of the hour and it was just about time to end the day. "Fourth graders!", I said loudly. "Before we get ready to go home, everyone needs to go to the bathroom and wash their hands!" One of my students also asked if he could use the toilet as well. I said yes but he has to make it fast because it is time to go home. Now, this child is a nine year-old Indian boy from Bombay. His accent is the thickest, funniest, and cutest accent I have ever heard. Every stereotype you have heard when it comes to an Indian accent he fits to a T! However, this child is very gullable (you can imagine that I have quite a bit of sarcastic fun with this one). All the kids go wash their hands and come back into the room. I am standing outside the door trying to hurry them along when all of a sudden I see a small Indian boy with tears in his eyes as if he found out the world had just run out of Indian food. I also noticed that the front part of his uniform shorts were a little darker then the rest. The first thing that came to my mind was that this kid had pissed all over the front of himself! "Aaksh, what is wrong buddy? What happened?", I asked him. " He replied with the tears slowly flowing down his face (please picture this response with thick Indian accent), "Mr. Jon, I was going to toilet and then I got done with toilet and then someone told me that if I touch mushroom and then touch veener that I would get poison infection of my veener so I take spryer and spray off my veener!"

For the next 30 seconds I could respond. I was just appalled and stunned. All I could say was, "It's ok buddy, I am just glad it isn't pee. I mean, I am not saying peeing your pants isn't cool, look at me. If peeing your pants is cool, then consider me Miles Davis!" He looked at me after I said this as if I was speaking a different language. The good thing was that he pretty much forgot about his situation because he was trying to figure out what I meant. I am just glad that I didn't have to talk with a parent about the situation.

Well, that is all for now. I hope that everyone is doing well and that any Bears fans out there that read this start getting used to what happened last Sunday because it gonna be happenin' all year long. Until next time, remeber that if peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.