All Over the Place: A Sunshiny Day

From My Teaching Book

By Michael H. Brownstein

The sky is blue, no clouds in sight—the perfect way to begin a sunshiny day.
    My class began to work on graphic novels. Five weeks more of school, it’s time for a break.
    When two boys start to think to fight—and my students never fight (at least not in my room)—I did the only thing possible. (You can only ask for them to sit down and separate three times. If they can’t listen, well....)
    I knocked the garbage can down. The noise startled them into sanity. They sat then.
    And the rest of the day—peace and quiet and quiet and peace—with the exception of one student who so badly wanted to fight one of his classmates that I kept the child with me even though neither he nor his classmate belonged to my room, and that just shut off the valve for more craziness.
    And then we did something fun and enjoyable and the kids really enjoyed themselves:
    We dissected a sheep’s eyeball with new dissection tools.
    How can it not be fun and enjoyable?
    The next day?
    Sunshine and more sunshine.
    A few field trips (so I’ll probably be holding a half-dozen not nice children), a few teachers away on in-servicing, and I’m sure I’ll have to deal with a few irate parents when they find out their children were not allowed to go on the trip.
    Oh, well.
    Another day, another fifteen cents.
    But everything has been quiet, learning has been going on, students are actively trying to get hundreds, and the stem-cell research project is on course and doing well. Our study of graphic novels ends today, and I believe my students really enjoyed reading them. I purchased a few sharks for dissection, and we may try to work on them this afternoon. No fights after school or before—just a lot of kids being kids and playing well together.
    Someone stole the basketball hoop from our playground, so football and baseball have taken over. This is a good thing—playing other sports, not the stolen basketball hoop. My reading scores came back and everyone improved. This, too, is a good thing.
    And the sunshiny day continues!

Copyright © 2022 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.