third grade: the talking year (or: be glad you are not a pencil).

I have survived. I did know that I would; I just like to be melodramatic in times of drastic change and upheaval. Please make a mental note to yourself right now about this: if 2012 does turn out to be the end of the world as we know it (r.i.p., REM), do not (I repeat: do NOT) ask me to be one of your Post-Apocalypse team mates...unless you're okay being eaten alive by apocalyptic humanoid cannibal zombies in mere minutes.

So I've been a 3rd grade Science/Social Studies teacher for 2 weeks now. So far, I've taught 2 weeks of Paul Revere, briefly wondering to myself (often out loud) while concocting lessons (and I also did this while developing lessons to teach 1st grade English language learners about odd historical figures like Annie Oakley and Davy Crockett--gun toting sharp shooters, precisely the two people I instantly think of when making American heroes connections to 6 year olds--Abraham Lincoln?? George Washington?? Psh. These are 21st century kids, homies!)...I kept thinking: why THAT guy? There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of people throughout the annals of American history to pick from but we go with the shotgun girl, the raccoon hat dude (or was that Lewis and Clarke? No matter, 1st graders learn them as well), and the guy who didn't actually make it all the way to Concord, MA because some British soldiers took his horse? I don't see the connections behind the why's. I think I get the how's and what for's. I'm just still working out the why's. In my head. Sometimes out loud. But never in front of children. Blatantly.

But then. I'm not in charge of Curriculum & Instruction, Common Core Standards, etc., now am I? A good thing, because I promise if it were up to me, there would be whole sections on end of year high stakes tests with subject headings like: Compare/Contrast the Mental Health Benefits of Chocolate Kisses vs. Chocolate Ice Cream, Math Problems Using Calculators, and Awesomely Astute Harry Potter Quotes. For extra credit (and fifty teacher pet points), students would be able to write a persuasive essay to Gerard Butler (of 300 fame, a movie several of my new friends have indicated to me they are totally obsessed with--as well as Bride of Chucky, a horror movie involving axes and hockey goalie masks, and some movie about drug lord warfare) to implore Mr. Butler to be our Mystery Reader for One Whole Week at our school. In my classroom. All day long. Followed by power dinners out. (What? What? If J Lo happened to be in Atlanta and happened to need to access Medicaid insurance information and happened to need to access Medicaid insurance information in our area of town, I'd totally understand if C called me up to let me know he wouldn't be home for dinner.) (I bet outrageous rambling what-if scenarios like these are exactly why famous people feel pressured to hire armed bodyguards.)

Okay, moving on. Here's what I've learned so far about 3rd grader psychology:

1. They're basically just 1st graders, in larger packages. They still like to give hugs and get stickers, and they respond in very Pavlovian ways to these types of candies: Starbursts, Skittles, and Jolly Ranchers (Jolly Ranchers having the most peculiar effect: 3rd graders all over the world will give erratic screams of delight upon finding them in a candy jar). Which is so totally awesome, because of all the candy in the world, the three I'm not drawn to are Starbursts, Skittles, and Jolly Ranchers. If they insisted on mini Snickers or 3 Musketeer bars, I'd have to seek other employment.

2a. But they're savvier in that I can see their little 3rd grade mind gears constantly turning, always trying to trip me up, back me into some corner they've painted, hoping I didn't notice it was there. Like, I let them know I only have one rule in my class and that rule is: You can do anything (ANYthing?? they said with incredulous tones. Yes, ANYthing, I said) in my classroom.....melodramatic pause for giant effect....as long as it doesn't bother anyone else (including and especially me, The Teacher) or mess up anyone else's learning (and/or my ability to teach). Can you hear the disappointed "Oh."s? There were about 100 of these when I exposed the last half of my One Rule, and they came out in a very a Row Row Row Your Boat type of choral round.

Later that week (okay, fine, the very next day), every class had at least 15 kids who did something annoying, who then immediately attempted to invoke the: "But you SAID we could do ANYTHING we wanted..." defense. Behavior clips were pulled, thunderous "oh man!"s echoed throughout the trailer classroom (which, I would like to note for further effect: noises in a portable classroom are exactly 10 million to the 10th power times louder than in an indoor, regular classroom. This noise level alone causes at least 6 clips to be pulled in my most talkative groups, on a daily, thunderous basis.)

2b.But I have to give it to them: so far, out of the almost 100 people I see all day, two have very narrowly and successfully mentally maneuvered me into a corner they've painted that I didn't see was there. And good for them! Those little problem solvers! Good for them. Because when I see decent problem solving, I don't care what the circumstances are; those people always get a big high five and a jolly rancher from me on their way out the door. Even if I have to pull a clip while high fiving them.

3. Third graders like to talk. Third graders like to talk and they don't care what it's about or who they're talking to, as long as they get to talk. If a third grader was sitting by him or herself in a white padded cell with no windows or doors, that third grader would talk to the white pads on the wall, just so she or he could make sure his or her vocal chords remained in good talking condition. Also, they might hum. And if there was something to tap nearby that would make a satisfying and highly annoying to everyone else tapping sound, they would tap it. For hours.

4. Third graders have a visceral need to be entertained, at all costs. This can be exhausting.  But then again, this is also partly just teaching in general--my first graders always demanded entertainment, too (and don't we all?...for example, I just finished the latest PEOPLE magazine plus one OK! U.S. edition C brought back from an airplane trip and TMZ.com comes thisclose to getting bookmarked on my computer every other day).

This is what teaching is to me: is a little bit of disseminating information, a good portion of cutting and pasting and running off copies, and great deal of acting as a way of keeping pinging neurons focused. There are days I get into my car and I'm all, "When are these non-teachers going to stop complaining about all the things they don't know anything about, and just frickin' broadcast the first annual Teacher Oscars?" Or, at the very least, give me one more pay raise before retirement. Is all I'm asking for.  Oh, and maybe less testing, too. A teaching Oscar, a modest pay raise, and less testing. Teachers really don't ask for much. ....okay, well. I was actually pretty serious about Gerard Butler being a Mystery Reader at my school for a week. In my classroom. Including power dinners at swank restaurants after.

5. Third graders are to pencils as zombies are to the living. In first grade ESOL, every beginning of the school year, I'd buy 4 boxes of pencils. Sometimes just 2. And I'd always have at least one whole box of 24 pencils left over at the end of the year. Because I guess 1st graders simply don't write as much? For sure they don't eat pencils. Which is so odd to discover, because when I think "pencil eaters," I don't think of people finishing up their first decade of life. I think of people who've just recently left toddlerhood.

Clearly, something is happening between the time children leave 1st grade and arrive in 3rd. Some type of physical and/or psychological shift which causes a child to take out all of his or her passive aggressions on the poor pencils of the world. Two weeks ago, I began my career in 3rd grade with exactly 50 pencils. Fifty shining, perfectly formed, happy new pencils. Two weeks later, I have lost 30 of these pencils and the 20 who've somehow survived the battle are sitting, unsharpened and mangled, in my classroom as I type this. They are chipped, they are stained. They are missing limbs (erasers), they have been chewed on, they have been shredded. They have been stripped of any dignity they had left, and some of them are now nothing more than the nubs of pencils they once were. To be a pencil in the hands of a 3rd grader is to know the true cost of a bloody battle to the death, to be at the mercy of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for decades to come.

And last and most important:

6. The coolest thing I've discovered about 3rd graders is this: they can do stuff. When I say "stuff" I actually mean: mostly follow directions. Like, in 1st grade, I would say something like, "Okay, friends. Everyone put your paper under your chair and look at me." And then I would say that last sentence in various other forms again. For 5 more minutes or 200 times, whichever came first. In 3rd grade, I only have to say that sentence about 3 or 4 times and it gets done. I mean, it's not perfect; nothing in Life ever is. You have your stragglers. You have your boundary pushers. You have your tired, your poor, your hard of hearing, and your what-did-you-just-say?-because-I've-been-tapping-this-chewed up-pencil-and-talking-for-the-last-twenty-minutes-so-I'm-not-really-sure-what-I'm-supposed-to-be-doing-right-now-much-less-where-I-am...where-am-I-again? people. But generally speaking, you say it once, and about 60% of the class does it. By the second time, 80% is with you. On the 3rd try, you're really only looking at about 3 people with your best and hardest Teacher Stare. It's like...it's like....it's like this. And friends who know kids well will understand when I state: that is all good.

So basically, I'm okay. There have been some sketchy moments; I'm still clueless about grades...not necessarily what to grade as much as when and how. And I'm up late a lot, looking for cool stuff to show them or do with them with whatever new thing we'll be learning about next. .....Okay, fine. I'm up late a lot just trying to educate myself on whatever new thing we'll be learning about next. Like, when we were doing Paul Revere, I kept getting the lanterns mixed up--how many if by land vs. sea? Which totally could have ruined the whole Revolution thing for us if Paul's friend in the Old North Church tower had been, say, me.

But I'm really starting to love this. Because you can still do incredibly fun and exciting and cool stuff with 3rd graders while imparting the vast amount of informative knowledge testing gurus insist is necessary for young children to be able to spew. I am fine with this, as long as I can find ways to (a) make it fun so it actually does stick in their heads (even if sporadically and not for very long) and (b) make it fun so I don't stab myself in the eye with a pencil nub suffering from PTSD. Third graders have to do a lot of note taking, and 3rd grade is where school gets serious. But I long for the days school wasn't just testing and information pushing--I miss the fun projects. This is the 21st century; surely projects are the old new wave of the future, right? Please say yes, testing gurus. My pencil nubs are nervous.

I am also spending some money--this is nothing new for me, to pull out cash (or, in my case, AmEx) for my job and not ever be reimbursed. And I know I don't have to do this because very kind people at school have given me a plethora of lesson plans/ideas. But that's just me. I'm sure it's a weird version of retail therapy...some people shop for shoes. I shop for teaching supplies.

I'm also on a lot of teacher blogs. Who knew?! Did you know? Not me! Holy pencil chips: there is a veritable plethora of minions of teachers out there in the blogging world who (a) are not using the blogging platform simply as a way to publicly expose their melodramatic accounts of stuff Life flings their way while occasionally overanalyzing the psyches of 8 year olds as well as their almost-3-year old child (who is becoming more and more neurotic about the dark and things that go bump in the night...I suspect one too many Ghosthunters episodes while she was gestating are to blame), and (b) are using blogs as platforms to share and connect with other education professionals....and, you know. Maybe also give themselves the pay raise all 50 state congresses are clearly reluctant to give. Between teacher bloggers and amazon.com, I just know I'm going to be broke by December (hi, honey! if you're reading this...please send all complaints to Governor Nathan Deal c/o Sonny Perdue and maybe some fat cats on Wall St.).

But don't worry! I could be rich by the end of this summer! Because--and I don't know if you guys know this about me or not--one of my most favorite things to do, second only to procrastinating which is third only to napping, is to create educational powerpoints. And once I get this Promethean board in my room (which I lovingly refer to as my %$#$@!*&^ board, since it takes exactly 10 minutes or 500 unpluggings and repluggings of the usb cord, whichever comes first, to try to convince the laptop to talk to the board--did they have some kind of a fight before I moved in? Who knows why technology does anything it does) ...once I get my %$#@^%!^ board figured out, I'm positive I'll add creating active board flip charts to my hobbies as well. This could be quite lucrative, if a little time consuming.

If the teachers paying teachers thing works out, I'm definitely spending at least one summer in the near future world traveling, on a Gerard Butler hunt.

Gerard Butler would look totally natural in this environment.