As part of the celebration of the end of the school year, the students are given time to go to their new classroom, see their new classmates, and meet their new teacher. The veteran teachers assured me that it was something that wasn't given much thought to, but my inner greenie-teacher was nervous. What if they hate me? What if they're crazy? What if they throw desks at me, rip up all the papers, and escape out the back door???
Thankfully, they filed in quietly and took their seats at the very back of the classroom, filtering their way forward as the seats were filled. A third of my students were missing (with peer-offered excuses ranging from "absent" to "he cut his leg real bad and it was bleeding and he had to go home" to "he disappeared a few months ago... but we think he'll be back next year!"). We talked for a bit about the things they'll be learning next year and their suggested summer studying. Most of them seemed excited about math and science so I'll have to spend the summer looking up experiments for them. One little boy, who immediately earned the mental nickname Pop Quiz, was very disappointed that I wouldn't engage in an immediate lecture on "the little exclamation point that goes by numbers" and later showed concern that we wouldn't be studying factorials.
I then opened it up to them to tell me a little about themselves and what they thought would make their fifth grade year perfect. My favorite responses:
The boy who put "micro-engineering" as his favorite subject and wants to "blow stuff up in chemistry". He also wrote some of his answers backwards and the other side of the paper said "Why Santa is Dead. Ho Ho KaBOOM. Bye Bye Santa."
Another boy also wants to "destroy stuff" but he's willing to fix it too.
Two girls wrote that they were interesting because they were "flexible". Surprisingly, not the same girls that want to hold singing and dancing contests in class.
The overwhelming majority of them just want to "be involved in class". Can do!
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