Chaos in the Classroom

Today was the first full day back, and by full I mean FULL! We had three sixth grade classes, a meeting with Ms. Wu who is observing me at the elementary level, lunch, percussion class, one fourth grade class, three second grade classes, then two percussion private lessons after school!

Despite all of that, the day ran pretty smoothly. I taught some of the kinders and first grade classes the Star Wars version of the Fast Food song, and apparently word has been spreading around school! They've been singing the song in their classes and at lunch, so the sixth graders asked that I teach that to them too. It worked perfectly since we've been working on part singing the past few weeks and that was able to become a round with nice harmonies! Since they were older, I challenged them to the ultimate task: combining the two versions while doing the round!

In case you don't know the songs I'm talking about, the original Fast Food version goes like this:

A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a Pizza Hut (x2)
McDonalds, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a Pizza Hut (x2)

Seems simple enough, and the actions go along with the words. Next was the Star Wars version:

A Jabba the Hut, a Jabba the Hut, Luke Skywalker, and a Jabba the Hut (x2)
Hans Solo, Hans Solo, Luke Skywalker, and a Jabba the Hut (x2)

Again, the actions fit with the words and include turning your arms into Jabba's mouth, Luke's lightsaber, and Han's spaceship.

Finally, combined is much more difficult, even just with the words!:

A Pizza the Hut, a Pizza the Hut, Luke Skychicken, and a Pizza the Hut (x2)
McSolo, McSolo, Luke Skychicken, and a Pizza the Hut (x2)

It was really neat to see how focused even the third sixth grade class was, and they are usually the most unfocused with the "just try and teach me" attitude. Ms. Wu and I left the room and set the dates for my observations, and that class will be my first observation next week, so I am just going to need to make sure I plan my lesson to keep them intrigued.

The fourth graders received their orange belt in Recorder Karate today and made it halfway through the green belt song. Green adds an E to their first three notes (B A G), and I discovered that having them show me the "peace" sign with their first two fingers on their right hand works perfectly for what they need to add on!

Last classes of the day: second grade. Yikes. Second grade, up until today, was the only class I hadn't taught yet, and it seemed like the first class was testing the water a little. When I asked them to, they got pretty quiet, and we made it through most of the lesson. The second class...not so much.

In second grade, we've been doing a world tour with previous stops in North America and South America, and today was Africa. We listened to a song to figure out where we were and then moved up front to read about it on the screen. After that, we all got up and learned a traditionalesque dance to go with the song, and that's when things started heading downhill in the second class.

One little boy apparently had been having a rough day in his classroom, but I didn't know anything had been happening. As I was teaching the different moves (while Mrs. Stamer was out somewhere in the hall or in another room), he started making his own moves up VERY LOUDLY. When we stomped our feet twice, he stomped them twelve times. When I asked everyone to make sure they were following directions so we would be able to dance with the music, he got even more out of control so I simply asked him to sit down, without making a big deal out of it. He sat, then decided he wanted to get back up and keep dancing. When I asked him to please sit down again, he shouted NO! and kept on distracting those around him.

At this point, I chose to ignore him to hope that he would behave with the lack of attention. Boy, was I wrong! We sat back down and learned our next song: "Sorida," from Zimbabwe. When we started learning actions for this one (with Mrs. Stamer still out of the room), he started shouting "If You're Happy and You Know It" and "Patty Cake" at the top of his lungs. I kept going with the lesson and turned the music up so we could try and hear it over him to no avail. The rest of the class was awesome and tried to pay attention to me and the lesson despite the noise, and this little boy was NOT ok with that.

He decided to take off his ring and chuck it across the room at another boy. I simply walked over, stuck out my hand, and the second boy gave it to me. The first boy was FURIOUS. He started screaming, "It's MINE!" and quickly turned around and lunged at a boy behind him. He pushed the boy over to the ground and started choking him. At this point, I'm getting really stressed and kinda mad at the situation myself, going over in my head what I must have done to make this happen! I gave the boy his ring back in hopes that he would calm down and tried to keep going.

*ENTER MRS. STAMER*

She walked in and asked how everything was going and I just looked at her and said, "not well." She must have seen the panic in my eyes and asked what was wrong so I told her the Cliff Notes version. She told the boy to go speak with her out in the hall, and he gave her the same "NO" answer he had given me earlier in the class. She started walking towards him and he stood and sprinted to the back of the room towards the percussion instruments. She went towards him more and he started running in circles around the room, singing a mantra to the same idea as the Gingerbread Man. He ran by me and she told me to grab him, so I reached out and got his arm. She caught up, picked him up, and carried him all the way to the principal's office.

Holy. Cow.

The rest of the kids in the class were completely awesome. After that final distraction, we were able to continue where we were and still got through everything we needed to for the day. The last class was awesome as well, and that ended out the day. Once all the kids had left, Mrs. Stamer and I talked about what had happened. She told me she had just been in the hall talking with the classroom teacher and they thought everything was going great because they couldn't hear anything off task through the door. That made me feel good that I wasn't raising my voice or drawing too much more attention to the boy than he drew to himself. At the beginning of the last class, she had noticed I was still at a high-stress level because of the incident, so she whispered to me that it was ok and I just needed to relax. I didn't realize how apparent my thoughts were, but that simple comment cleared me up for the rest of the day.

After everything is said and done now, I feel pretty good about the way I handled the situation. Let's just hope there isn't a repeat any time soon!!!