Lessons Learned

In the afternoon, I happened to look out the window of my office as one of my fifth graders decided to flick off another student.  It was very dramatic.  He was on the second floor and the other student was already halfway across the field.  It raised his right arm high and stuck up that special finger.  Nice.  I casually exited the office and entered the student’s classroom where he had returned to finish packing his bag.  “Can you explain what you were just doing outside?”  He looked up with a shocked expression, “I wasn’t doing anything”.  I repeated myself, “What just happened outside?”  Again, “Nothing, I don’t know what you’re talking about”.  “I saw you.  Are you saying that I’m crazy?”  (very possible)  His reply “I didn’t do with my hand what you think...”.  Haha! Caught.  He still refused to confess after a minute of back and forth (I don’t have much patience).  I told him his lying was much worse than what he had done and left the room.

In the evening, I received this:

And the message that followed was:

Sorry for saying you lies. I did the finger rudness to JOHN DOE cause, few minutes before you came, he jus kick me without reason. I'm very sorry for saying you lies about that. I already reflect about that was not the method to solve this problem. I hope you understand my situation cause I was really, really mad with him cause he sticked a kick over my leg and got running.

Please note the faux New York Times cover story with a picture of me, a picture of Pinocchio, and some other messages about lies being bad, truth being good, and the student being sorry.  Too cute!  God knows we’ve all reacted in anger without thinking before but this student went home and made this after thinking about what had happened (I like to think that he truly regretted his actions and learned from his mistake but he was probably a little scared as well because he never gets in trouble).  Perhaps I shouldn’t be so delighted by this but it was just so darn adorable, don’t you agree?