Somedays I take any success that I can get it. Somedays I will do almost anything to insure that success.
In my afternoon class the other day, the class with the older kindergartners who are as smart as whips, we were playing "Running Man"- Hang Man is too violent. We start with the head and then add all the elements to the stick person in running shorts. They win if they get all the letters in the word before the guy is completely drawn. If they don't, I win. They got the word "Thanksgiving" and celebrated raucously; rolling back and kicking their feet while high-fiving each other and hurting the kids around them, as usual.
To show them who the educational leader is in MY classroom, I had to come up with a word that would insure a win for me. This group is so smart that I don't tell them the word so they can just sound it out. There is always some smarty-pants 5 or 6 year old who can actually spell correctly, so they just have to guess what it might be. I blame parents who actually read daily with their children and have elaborate conversations with them for this mastery of our language and its mechanics.
I love seeing these guys think about what it might be. They cock their heads to one side like little puppies and kind of narrow their eyes in concentration. They might make me crazy sometimes but ask any teacher, this is the best moment of every day and it makes up for everything else.
We haven't talked about shy Q who never goes anywhere without his best friend U and they haven't figured out which letters are rarely used in our language, so I was certain that I'd beat the pants off them. It seems desperate I know, but I invite you to visit one day and stay the whole time without trying to fake a small illness or your own death just so you can cut out early. I thought about what the word would be while they were belly bumping each other and came up with "quonset". I've only heard of quonset paired with hut. I decided to not use hut because I'm the boss applesauce and was only interested in asserting my waning authority, not accuracy.
I won, of course. Early on I added the large hand with the enormous fingers because, "He's high-fiving you guys on his way to the victory line. Boom!" Don't judge me. It's been a long haul from August 15th to this point and we're just a day away from a week off. They groaned and tried harder. I was in exhausted teacher heaven.
As I put the finishing touches on my sad attempt to bolster my self-esteem and the bell rang. Thankfully they were more interested in going home than asking me what the word "quonset" meant. I'm not sure what it means either, but that's beside the point.
Per our usual routine, we all got our open backpacks on and ran across the room with papers flying everywhere, crashing into each other, using our outside voices and fighting to be the first one in line. This time I let somebody else be the line leader. It was the least I could do.