8:00am. kids roll in, exciting about showing off their jammies to each other. rolling on the ground, high fiving, giggling and laughing. kids are running up to me to hand me homebaked cookies to bring to santa, milk, their books for the gift exchange, and excitedly tell me stories about how they chose their outfits.
pretty soon i have one boy ask if he can go to the bathroom. he wants to go with his bookbag (never a good sign), but all of the high-fiving, giggling and somersaults distracts me from saying no to his weird request. we have to leave to go meet santa. we leave and i try to tote about 8 bags of groceries to meet santa. (it takes a lot to feed 18 first graders) : )
the kids line up to sit on santa's lap while i snap pictures of them. hyperactivity ensues.
i forget to grab plates and napkins and send my intern and a student to go back to get them and also realize my bookbag bathroom friend never returned so i send my intern to look for him. he's escaped to the bathroom (a bathroom in the high school wing), locked himself inside and was crying because he thought someone was making fun of his jammie slippers. my intern tries to coax him out, but to no avail. i have to leave my 17 hyperactive first graders to go out to find my runaway student (the parable of leaving the 99 sheep behind is so much more meaningful to me now). after about 8-9 minutes of coaxing, i get my runaway to follow me back to meet santa. when i return my kids are hyper, jumping around, milk is spilled on the ground (cue for me to start screaming or just cry). my teaching style then closely resembles a traffic directors, waving my arms here and there, guiding kids to grab napkins, etc. i'm saying things like, "Don't eat food off the floor!" , "Quiet!", "Stop running! Stop jumping! No tackling!"
when we returned to class i looked at the clock and said, "we've only been in school for 45 minutes?" :/ one of my students overhears my mumbling and replies, "woah! it feels like we just got here!" me: "honey, you have no idea."
You would think being so near Santa, their conscience, or rather their desire to receive gifts from the man himself, would have created more self-control. nope.
they did calm down eventually post-santa, post-cookiesugarhigh. *sigh* it's a good thing they are so cute.
