crying and pennies

So today kicked off my class' study of Black History Month. I always start it by playing the In/Out Game for the first half of the day, and then having a long discussion at the end of the day. In the In/Out Game, for half of the morning half of the kids are In's and treated awesomely. They basically have the run of the classroom, and I treat them like kings and queens. The Outs however have to go next door to get water, if an In needs to get water or go to the bathroom, or in line for something, they have to let the In go first. I don't ever call on the Out's, I tell them they aren't working hard enough, scowl at them every time I get, you get the idea. At recess the game stops, and we start back up afterwards, and then finally stop it right before lunch. When I told Rebecca about it the first year I did it she told me I was getting fired and I should start looking for a job.

At the end of the day we talked about how it felt to be and In and an Out, and how I treated them both times. Then we talk about why we did this experiment, and I always apologize for being so mean. The absolute worst is when the sweetest kids cry the entire time they're an Out. My first group of Out's I had 4 criers. One cried the entire time, and the other 3 were off and on. (By far the most I've ever had.) When one of the In's was asking me a question he leaned over and said, "No offense Ms. Ewing, but it's not very nice of you to not call on the Out's. I'm just saying." He then gave me a look like I hope I don't get in trouble for saying that. One sweet kid was trying to get an Out to tell them the answer so they could say it for them. Luckily all my kids got what we were doing, and hopefully none of them will go home and tell their parents I hate them.

We are also doing a service project where we collect pennies for an organization called Pennies for Peace. One of my kids said their mom wanted me to email her to tell her a little more about it, so I decided to email all of my parents. I wrote this great email telling them all about the book and how inspired we all were. It was a pretty awesome email if I do say so myself. So I get a reply email back from a mom pretty quickly saying "This made my day. Look at your subject line, I'm sure it was a mistake, but it's hilarious!" Of course I hadn't written "Pennies for Peace" like I had planned and had thought. Nope. I wrote "Penis for Peace." When I realized what I had written I could not stop laughing! I was on the verge of tears I was laughing so hard that I had emailed all of my parents this email. I was going to email all my parents the mistake, but I'm curious to see who else actually reads my emails I send them.

So that was my day. Crying and "Penis for Peace" emails.