I'm with you!

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Home : 2002 : February : 14

I'm with you!
By Cindy

Do you remember how you loved all those holidays when you were a kid? Now you are a teacher and you hate them! I think that is true for all teachers. I think Halloween is the worst because they all run around acting like
monsters and ninjas all day!
With 5th grade are you getting into all that boyfriend/girlfriend stuff? That is why some of our upper grade teachers don't even recognize Valentines Day because it brings on another mess of problems that lasts longer than one day.
When I first started teaching I thought parents would come in and help and organize the party because well its fun and I have

enough to do planning the academic part of the day. What I found was the parents showed up after recess (leaving an hour left of the day) and stood in the back of the room shooting me dirty looks because the party wasn't fun enough! I learned my lesson. I decided future parties would be about 20 minutes. We would pass out cookies and punch, eat, clean up, and go home with whatever goodies were left.
I tried to ease the "When's the party?" question by telling them the day before that it will be at the end of the day and that I won't answer that question tomorrow. Anyone who asked it would get the answer from another student. Then I would try to do fun but academic activities in the morning like graphing how many colors of conversation herats were in a box, reading holiday stories, writing letters or cards, and making holiday artwork.This way they were in the spirit and somewhat in control.
One more thing. I designated one or two parents for cookies or cupcakes and one for juice and cups. That's it on the sweets. The rest of the parents brought in items for goodie bags like pencils, erasers, plastic toys- no candy. It actually turns out well because they have something to keep instead of candy to rot their teeth or throw away! I guess I needed to vent too!