Well, if they hadn’t come home talking about it before this weekend, I’m sure they have now!
School is place where kids come to learn. This isn’t always the most fun thing to do. As teachers, Mrs. Lawrence and I take it upon ourselves to make it so that school is a place where the kids want to be. A lot of this is ingrained in our school’s charter. Learning through the arts always spices things up a bit, but from time to time, we feel it important to do things that work on the building of the community, rather than just the building of the mind.
One way Mrs. Lawrence and I have found to build this community among our classes is a little prank way. To be able to pull it off, there are a few things required: ground rules between the classes, and a group of kids in each class that we can trust to stick to those ground rules. So far, so good.
Lawrence’s class made the first move this year. They took over our classroom during lunch time and she was teaching them a lesson about Mr. Pratt as we walked in from our recess.
We then struck back. We staged a military style march through her classroom, and followed the call and response chant, “I don’t know but I’ve been told, Mrs. Lawrence is getting old. I don’t know but it’s been said, pretty soon she might be dead!” And then without waiting for a response, we continued marching right out.
Well, Wednesday, we received her retaliation. She decided, if she’s old, then I’m the baby brother, and her class threw me a birthday party. Apparently, I just turned two.
Pranks usually happen on average of every second week, and they only take a few minutes each, but little things like this are powerful in getting kids to enjoy coming to school. The more the kids want to be there, the more they’ll get out of it, so it’s worth it to take the time.