Teacher Tidbits

Before I developed a long-term illness, I was a teacher and lecturer.  During term time I worked as a primary school teacher, and in the school holidays I lectured at a local university on how to teach English as a Foreign Language. I taught a whole range of age groups during my 12 years as a full-time teacher, finally finding the age group that made my heart sing when I was given a reception class of 4 and 5 year olds.  They creased me up.

I've never spent so much time counting heads.  Small children are fast on their feet, and frankly, pretty slippery.  I was determined to have the same number of heads at the end of the day as at the beginning.

The children made me smile, were playful, fun-loving, and unendingly curious about life, why they were here, and what the world was all about.  What's not to love about being around little people like that?  (OK, there was an inordinate amount of vomit and more than enough toilet accidents to go around, and a very unfortunate incident with a child who released the most enormously gassy emission on the OFSTED inspector and apologised to her with "I'm awfully sorry, I'm just a bit windy today", but hey, you get the rough with the smooth.)

One of the funniest things that I ever experienced as a teacher was with a little guy we'll call Roger. Not his real name.  One afternoon, as the school day was winding down, we were all sitting on the story carpet as I read to the children.  Roger politely put up his hand and told me he needed the toilet.  Off he went to the boys toilets, at the other end of the corridor from our classroom.  He was cool, calm and collected, and wasn't particularly in a hurry to get to the loo.

I carried on reading to the children, and after a good few minutes became aware that Roger hadn't come back. He was perfectly safe as there was no way he could get out of the building, but I wanted to be sure he was OK.  Just as I was getting up to go and seek him out, the classroom door was flung open and Roger nonchalantly sauntered in.  He smiled broadly and walked in a bit of a wonky manner onto the carpet where he'd been sitting.  He didn't sit down.

Instead he put all his weight on one leg, lifted up his other leg and gave it a really good shake.

With a lovely little thump, a perfectly formed lump of poop dropped out of the leg of his trousers and landed on the story carpet.

Roger smiled and uttered words that will stay with me forever...

"Oh, there it is!  I wondered where that had gone cos it wasn't in the toilet when I flushed it."

Frankly, you would think that carpet cleared of children pretty quickly wouldn't you?

Nope.

Every kid wanted to take a better look at what Roger had left for us.  One child even started building a little castle of books around it.  Creativity is a wonderful thing.

How Roger walked back up the long corridor with that gift rattling around in his trouser leg is beyond me.

The reason for his delay?  "I spent quite a long time looking for my poo Miss cos I couldn't find it nowhere and it wasn't in the toilet."

Very fond memories. ♥

In honour of Roger's fantastic nonchalance, and the unending enthusiasm of the children I taught, to be fascinated with everything, I've painted a picture of butterflies and birds.  Not poop.




Do you have any "funny children" stories?