Do You Really Think I'm That Stupid?

Today, I was a substitute teacher for a music teacher / intervention teacher. Most of the morning was spent with small groups of second graders, a half hour at a time, doing a lesson on comparing and contrasting two different things. 

The lesson was fairly simple. The teacher had blank chart like the one here.

The students were to fill in in something like the one below.

 She had inserted each chart into a plastic sleeve so the kids could write on them with a dry erase marker and not waste a lot of paper.

The first two groups went very smoothly. When I picked up the third group of kids at their classroom, I could see immediately that this group was going to be a handful. The kids were a bit rambunctious as they lined up at the door. Cute...but rambunctious. One blond-haired, blue-eyed boy named Patrick took his sweet old time coming to the door and sulked all the way up to the intervention classroom.

The kids sat down and I introduced myself. I then passed out the papers. One of the girls gave the very helpful suggestion that they all write their names on the top of the plastic sheet, so I would know what their names were.

Great idea, I thought. I quickly noticed something odd as they wrote their names. They "couldn't" seem to remember what their names were. A name would be written, then erased and replaced by another name. 

One of the kids would say something like: 

"No, he's not James! He's Dalton!"

"No, he isn't! He's Dustin!"

I didn't say it, but I thought, "How stupid do you kids think I am?" The name-switching was just so blatant. The funny thing is that they thought they were being so clever.

But the funniest thing of all...the thing that kept me chuckling to myself the rest of the day...was when blond-haired, blue-eyed Patrick tried to pass himself off as Roberto. 

Yes, I know it is possible that the parents of a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy just happened to like the name Roberto. Possible, but not likely.

Well, I got control of things pretty quickly. I knew from the other classes that the kids looked forward to getting a stamp on the back of their hand if they did well in class. The solution was simple. I let them know that there would be no stamps for anyone unless all the names were straightened out immediately. It worked, and we were back on track.

Well, that's it for today. Nothing deep. Nothing profound. Just a light-hearted anecdote from real life. I hope it gave you a smile.