Laughter

Today I had a para in my room for part of my math time, so I had her work one on one with a student who is really struggling, and really can only work when someone is sitting right next to him redirecting his attention to what he's supposed to be doing every minute or so. Meanwhile, I was doing calendar, or what my brother calls "a scary game show", with the rest of my class.

They were working on some subtraction problems, and during the time they were working together she went over to get some manipulatives to help him understand the problem better. During this, she picked up a box and the lid came off and about 200 blocks tumbled everywhere. It was really loud, and I lost the few kids who were actually paying attention to me. I asked a few students to go over and pick up the blocks, so she could go back to working with the student.

While I should have thought of it beforehand, the students I sent over were two of my noisiest students, who were incredibly amazed by the fact that some of the blocks had spilled underneath the shelves, and the more the found the more excited they got. This was the point when every teacher's worst nightmare comes true; I had lost control.

I couldn't help it, I had to laugh. It was all too funny. The blocks spilling, me trying so hard still to teach in the chaos, and the noisy helpers picking up the blocks. Laughter is so contagious, and after I was laughing, so were my students, who as I'm sure you've guessed, were no longer paying attention.


Sometimes it's good to lose control.