Four Feet More

Yesterday morning, I received a call from the office telling me that I was getting a new student. The boy, who I'll call Peter, showed up to class and seemed pleasant enough. At first. Not 30 minutes had passed before I caught a glimpse of something flying across my room. I knew that it came from his general direction, but since I was writing on the board at the time, I couldn't be sure that it was Peter. This process repeated itself a couple times - when my attention was directed to the board or overhead, a paper missile would fly across the room. Finally, I caught Peter in the act. He had been using his pen as a slingshot to fling an eraser across the room.

On the way to lunch, I had a chat with Peter (away from the other kids). I explained how that was disruptive and not OK to do in the class, and that while I knew he was trying to make an impression with the other kids, this was not the way to do it. He tried to tell me that the paper just "slipped" from his hand. This made me laugh, it was so ridiculous. "It slipped 5 times?!" I said. "I'm not buying it." Then I benched him for his afternoon recess, and hoped that would discourage any future object hurling in class.

Well, it didn't. After lunch, I gave a brief lecture, and then asked the kids to get together to do some group work. During this time, Peter came up to me with a sheepish expression on his face. He said, "I don't know why, but for some reason, I decided to make another slingshot out of my pen, and when I went to fling something, the pen broke." That was when he showed me his hands. They were covered in blue ink, as were huge patches of his lower arms. The hem of his shirt (in which he had been hiding his hands) was now revealed to have an intricate spattering of blue all over the lower 6 inches. It was like Jackson Pollack had spewed blue ink all over the boy! I smiled and said, "Darn those natural consequences!" Peter smiled back and said, "Yeah. Um, so can I wash my hands?" I shook my head, still smiling, and said "No. Get back to your group work now. "

The poor kid was blue for the remaining hour of class! Hopefully that will give him another reason why we don't use pens as slingshots in the classroom.