“I thought it was chocolate!” the young man protested loudly as I motioned him towards my desk.  “He tattled on me!”  One of his classmates had walked to my desk during class with a look of slight horror on his face as he told me about the incident.  This same classmate promptly kneeled in front of my trash can as though he was going to be sick so I immediately sent him to the bathroom.

But back to the mud eater.  This was a child who knew better – I think – but he kept swearing that he thought it was chocolate.  It is that time of year when kids are tracking in mud caused by the little spring rains and after choir this morning, it was already all over my carpet.  I had thought about grabbing a broom or perhaps vacuum but decided it wasn’t that big a deal.  Apparently I was wrong.

It was a day for weird behavior.  I’m pretty sure I spent most of my day either processing with children, usually asking why they thought they were doing whatever it was they were doing, or I was walking them down the hall to the gym or the office to think about what they were doing.  Thank goodness I didn’t have to teach as well! (And that I have a great student teacher!) Lately I feel like the behavior I’m dealing with is pretty blatant, either refusing to follow a direct instruction or just not bothering to listen to anything at all, talking over any instruction the teacher is trying to give.  I don’t want it to sound like it’s every child because it certainly isn’t, but it does seem to be a larger percentage than ever before.

Even my best behaved students, the laid back kids who good naturedly follow directions and have fun were doing strange things like yanking each others arms or smacking each other with whatever they had in their hands, whether it was sheet music or their pink jacket.  I watched on the playground as one little girl, smaller than the male classmates around her, was systematically running them over and smacking them with her jacket because they had told her she couldn’t do something.  Boys were getting each other in headlocks and throwing each other around and kids were leaping off of the playground equipment with abandon.  It was like a tiny Lord of the Flies.

And then there is the inertia.  A dry erase marker runs out and four kids stand around looking at it trying to figure out what to do. I never give them an answer, I just tend to question back, “what do you THINK you should do?”  Uh, get a new one?  Could be. The kids seem to be in one of two camps – they either don’t do anything you ask (and don’t care) OR they’re afraid to think for themselves because they’re afraid they’ll do something wrong, neither of which is healthy.

All this to say that I’m betting there’s a heck of a front coming through tomorrow, which of course will bring some rain.  Which will make mud that the kids will track in again.  I’m just hoping that nobody will try to eat it again trying to convince me that it’s chocolate.