12:52pm January 29, 2010
Well I have had some fun today! Silly string is fun and not fun to clean up , but once it dries not too bad!!! I did a lesson on initiative today in student government where I sprayed silly string on everyone, then gave all of them a can to spray on each other. Everyone was saying “This is the funnest day I’ve ever had at school…” Then we before we cleaned it up, we read this story called “The Dog Poop Initiative”. It is a story about some man walking his dog, he poops and everyone avoids it but doesn’t clean it up. They just point it out and say, “Watch out for the poop” during the soccer game etc…well, no one does anything about it, but point it out and complain about it. Then this man and his son come to the game and simply get a piece of paper or cardboard and pick it up. There isn’t a big hoorah about it, but they just keep playing and no big reward is done for the guy who took the initiative. I was trying to teach them that we all have choices and some have good consequences and some have bad and some just have regular ones like picking up poop and no one really rewards you, but you feel good about you, cause you helped out. I told them, “Now we have this whole classroom full of silly string, I initiated it, knowing that I would have to clean it up and I invited you guys to join me, but you didn’t have to and you don’t have to clean up. Life is all about choices. You can choose to help or you don’t have to…but we are leaders and even when there isn’t going to be a reward we should dig deep down and not only do the fun part (spraying silly string everywhere) but we should do our part to clean it up, even if it’s not fun. Like everyone wants to help set up for the dances (we have one this next Friday) but no one wants to stay behind and clean up…the choice is always ours…I hope you guys will be leaders and take the initiative, even when it’s not fun and there is no reward…pick up some poop!” They all got right on it and we cleaned.
2 periods later my room was clean, like no silly string had ever been in here, and then I was innocently teaching and Mr. G came in with his own can of silly string and sprayed me down! Little did he know that I still had like 30 or 40 cans (from the last dance) in my room! I told my class it is now retaliation time! We all got armed with 2 cans each and after getting locked out, my hand slammed in the door and laughing like crazy (it was the hardest and most I have laughed in a long time) Mr. G learned to not mess with someone when you only have 1 can of ammo and you don’t know how many cans of ammo the other guy has!
After they cleaned up, I saw one of my students with a homemade hat made of a Styrofoam bowl that said, “I cleaned up poop today!” Now, that made me feel good!!! And so the dog poop initiative lives on! Thanks Jenni Call for giving it to me!!! And thanks Mr. Ettinger for not being too upset that we got silly string everywhere! It’s all cleaned up now, cause we all picked up some poop today!! And thanks Mr. G for being a good sport when you didn't know how much amo I had!!!
