Full Moon Fever

8:45 am

“Good morning, Mrs. Scannell!”

“Good morning, Joe.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Scannell!”

“Good morning, Nate. Nice haircut.”

“Thank you!”

“Good morning Mrs… Hey, what’s this egg over here? Hey, everyone, look!” “Look, it’s an egg!” “It’s Rodger, Rodger’s back!” “Who?” “Rodger, you know, the egg!” “I thought his name was Bob.” “No, that was our egg last year, in second grade. This is Rodger.”

I did not have a clue what those children were talking about. But I was quickly figuring it out! Paul, our evening maintenance man, knew I would not be around to bring “Rodger” our  Egg Day egg back, so he brought Rodger back for me! (Please see my previous post, Traditions, for the full story) Paul has grown very fond of our “Eggy” visitor and was looking forward to his return this year. I realized I would not be in school the day spring arrived nor the day after due to a personal day so I chatted with Paul about the fact that this may be the year Rodger does not return. We were both a little sad so I guess he must have brought in an egg and tried it himself. There was a post-it dated March 21, 4:00!

Well, this was really exciting but let me tell you, it got the kids worked up into a frenzy. It took quite a bit of effort to refocus them and get them ready to go to gym. And really, usually all I have to say is, “We are going to be late for gym,” and they quiet right down. Not today.

Hmmm.

10:45 am

One of the children saw me printing out an assessment for reading.

“Oh no, don’t give us a reading test!”

“Why not?”

“We had one yesterday, we don’t want another one.”

Yes, I thought inside my head. She was right, they had taken an assessment of sorts the day before. I had left it for the substitute to administer. So perhaps I would put off this benchmark pre-assessment until another day. Today was not feeling like a good day to assess their strengths and weaknesses in reading nonfiction anyway.

“Ok, I’ll wait until tomorrow.”

“Really? Thanks!”

But someone had overheard the conversation and for the next several minutes the topic of conversation all centered on what everyone thought they knew as a truth:

“We are taking a reading test!”

“Really, we just took one yesterday.”

“I don’t want a reading test.”

“Did you hear we are taking a reading test?”

OMG!

“Boys and girls, we are not taking a reading test. Stop worrying. And stop listening to people who are repeating things they overheard! You are getting yourselves all worked up.”

They were really worked up.

Hmmm.

1:50 pm

I greeted the class after recess. We began our walk back to the classroom.

“Mrs. Scannell, Michael said some very inappropriate things to me just because I asked Mark to save my place in line,” Tom confided in me.

“Really? Ok.”

Inside my head I was thinking, “but what did you do before Michael felt the need to speak inappropriately?” I kept the thought in my head however, until we got back to the room and I could investigate.

Turns out Tom wanted Mark to save him a place in line but then Mark realized he and Tom are not supposed to be next to each other in line. So he asked Michael to move so Tom could line up away from him and that annoyed Michael because he was already there in line and…

You get the picture and it is not a rosy one!

So we had a class discussion and all kinds of problems had occurred while lining up for recess. The stories all started coming out. Then one of my girls started crying because a boy said she was trying to cut but really she was just helping someone else and people are always saying untrue things about her and then that boy got really mad because he was being accused of making someone cry but he was just standing up for someone else and…

Hmmm.

8:00 pm

“Is tonight a full moon?” my husband asked me as we settled down to enjoy a bowl of soup together.

Hmmm.

“I’m not sure but if it is that would explain a lot of things about today,” I replied.

And guess what!

Yup, the werewolves are out alright.

Tomorrow will be a better day!