by Ryan Crawley
St. Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. This holiday is much more
than a way to make single people hate their lives. With it comes memories from
my own childhood and past years of teaching. One rule I do have in all my
classrooms is there is absolutely no glitter allowed. It gets on everything, and it never comes off. Next thing you know you
are grocery shopping and the cashier asks if you realize that you have glitter
all over your face. Anyway… you never know what will happen in elementary
school classrooms, especially on this holiday. Once Cupid and hearts get involved, anything is possible.
I remember when I was in 3rd or 4th grade and I was all about cutting
corners. I wanted to spend the least amount of time possible with the mundane
things. One thing I hated taking time to do was filling out Valentines for my
classmates. I would start with a bunch of random Valentine cards. Then I would
have to sign my name on the actual Valentines, place it in an envelope, lick it
close, and then write down the student’s name it was going to on the front of
the envelope. I figured I could at least eliminate one step in this process. I
chose to not write down any of my classmates’ names on the envelope. I was
freestyling this Valentine’s Day.
As all my classmates started handing out their Valentines the next
morning at school, I was still patting myself on the back from my great idea
the night before. I walked around the classroom throwing out envelopes on desks
like I was delivering newspapers. I was able to sit back down in my seat a full couple minutes earlier than
everyone else. That is when I quickly noticed my plan was extremely flawed.
As other kids started opening their Valentines, I started getting
questionable glances from around the room. I felt like all eyes were on me.
Then one of my girl classmates approached me smiling in an evil sort of way. She was holding up one of my Valentines.
“Ryan,” she said with no mercy, “I didn’t know that you loved me so much.” The
Valentine’s card that I sent her unknowingly declared on the front that I would
love her forever. I unwittingly played Valentine’s Day Russian roulette by
handing out my cards without any clue of which ones went to which people.
As I slowly sunk deeper and deeper into my chair, a couple other girls
came up to me giggling. Then a couple of the boys in the class were wondering
what I meant exactly with the cards they had received. It was not one of my
best days in school. By the time I climbed on to the bus at the end of the day,
I had three new possible girlfriends and a few other classmates that didn’t
want to speak to me. As a nine-year-old kid, these were all things I never
wanted.
Imparting My Wisdom
Once I started teaching elementary school, ironically 3rd through 5th
grades, I started sharing that story with my students a couple days before each
Valentine’s Day. Since they were my target audience for this story, they really
enjoyed it. They could definitely identify with it. It was sort of a Scared
Straight program (without the use of prison inmates) for little kids about the
possible outcome of cutting corners in life. Every year we joked around a lot
after I told the story, and then later I would receive funny Valentines from
most of them in return. Many of them covered in glitter. Those kids…
No comments:
Post a Comment