When we last left our hero, Mr. Shaggy, he had just made a narrow escape from the clutches of a crazy class of 2nd graders. As he left the school for the day, Mr. Shaggy was heard to make a rash remark, something like “Send me back with the kindergarteners before I do that again!”
You asked for it, Mr. Shaggy.
The following day, a Tuesday, mere hours after his encounter with second grade, Mr. Shaggy once again went through his morning routine. Wake up at 5:00? Check. Catch the bus? Check. Walk into the principal’s class for assignment? Nope. You see, as soon as Mr. Shaggy walked into school, he was greeted by a slightly frazzled looking man from the administrative office, who told him, “They need your help in Classroom 4B.”
Mr. Shaggy stood for a moment, gathering his resolve. He had been in 4B before. It was the natural habitat of a particularly rowdy group of young kindergarteners. It was a challenging assignment, but at least he knew and liked the teacher in this classroom.
Mr Shaggy proceeded down the hallway, walking quickly, as the administrator had made the need for help sound urgent. Mr. Shaggy opened the door and found…
His teammate Taylor.
“Looks like we’re the teachers today!” She said.
Mr. Shaggy banged his head on the wall. “This is not what I meant when I said I’d rather go back to kindergarten!” he prayed with some frustration.
So here our hero was again, subbing in a classroom, this time with 4-year-olds. He knew for a fact that they knew almost zero English, and he knew for another fact that there were several troublemakers in this room. And, as he also had suspected, there was no lesson plan of any kind for them to use.
The day started quite suddenly when Mr. Shaggy and Ms. Taylor realized that the children were supposed to go into the hallway for prayer. As quickly as they could, they rounded up the children and led them into the hallway.
Ideally, the kids were supposed to stand straight and still. In reality, Mr. Shaggy saw no less than three of his students engaging in various forms of violence against other students. As he was breaking up these scuffles, Mr. Shaggy received looks of sympathy from the other teachers. They all knew he was in for a long day.
Back in the classroom, the first class of the day was writing class. Today, the kids were learning to write the letters “D” and “E.” Mr. Shaggy was surprised. The kids actually sat at their desks and wrote their letters in silence. (Relatively speaking. Silence is basically non-existent in a room containing fifteen 4-year-olds). Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
After writing class, it was snack time. True to his cartoon namesake, Mr. Shaggy appreciated anything involving food. He only had a banana with him today, but he still looked forward to eating it.
The banana would soon be forgotten.
First, the kids were supposed to line up to wash their hands. When Mr. Shaggy and Ms. Taylor instituted a rule that pushing would result in relegation to the back of the line, they soon realized that the front of the line consisted of the kids who had pushed other students the least recently. Oh well.
During snacktime, one little girl apparently transformed into a T-Rex, because she ran around roaring and pushing other kids’ food on the floor. As Shaggy and Taylor worked to rectify this situation, some other children must have been offended by some of the class decor, because they started ripping them off of the wall. At the sane time, a man with a lawnmower passed the window several times, and the children began to fight over window space to watch him. (Didn’t know you were a celebrity, did you Mr. Lawnmower Man?)
Having somehow managed to quell all three of these potential disasters, a little boy politely informed Mr. Shaggy in Spanish that another boy (who had already been in trouble before class for hitting and spitting at his classmates) was eating lunch, not his snack. Upon arrival, Mr. Shaggy discovered that the mostly eaten lunch did not, in fact, belong to the student, but to a young girl who could only watch the massacre of her meal in petrified horror. Saving what little remained of her lunch, Mr. Shaggy resolved to remedy that situation later.
A few minutes later, the little boy who had already been in trouble for hitting and spitting, as well as lunch thievery, had changed into some kind of a monster (They’re Shaggy’s nemesis, you know) and clamped his teeth on his classmate’s chest. Rushing over, Mr. Shaggy yanked the two apart. Letting the bitten boy go, he knelt and looked the other child in the eyes. “No more” he said. “Yes, more” said the boy. “No, no more” Mr. Shaggy tried again. “Yes, more” the boy repeated.
Frustrated and determined to get his point across, Mr. Shaggy walked to the class discipline board and moved the boy’s name from the happy, green section to the yellow “Warning” section. It was a rather weak consequence, but since he lacked the ability to say “Don’t you dare even think about biting one more person today” in Spanish, he had to get the point across somehow.
Promptly, the boy began to cry. Mr. Shaggy watched unsympathetically. Seeing that crying was not having the effect he desired, the boy began to move his lips. Mr. Shaggy didn’t need a crystal ball to see that a face full of saliva was in his near future. Quickly, he turned the boy around, and the spit fell harmlessly to the ground. Seeing that this plan had also failed, the boy turned and wordlessly bit Mr. Shaggy’s arm. “Stop,” Mr. Shaggy said, more or less keeping his cool. The boy clenched his jaw as tight as he could in response. After several more seconds, he finally complied. Leaving Ms. Taylor in charge, Mr. Shaggy decided it was time to take his friend to the school counselor’s office.
After a lengthy regaling of the tale, answering a few questions, and showing the counselor his fairly gnarly bite mark, Mr. Shaggy left the boy in her care for awhile.
Although Shaggy didn’t believe the other boy was seriously hurt, he took him to the nurse’s office at the counselor’s request. His suspicions were confirmed when the nurse asked the boy what was wrong, and he just shrugged his shoulders, clearly lacking any clue as to why the strange American had suddenly decided to bring him to the nurse. The nurse gave Mr. Shaggy a very confused look as they walked back to class with a clean bill of health.
By this time, the kids had just finished Spanish class, which was again (thankfully) taught by an actual Spanish speaker. This brought the class to lunch time. Mr. Shaggy still hadn’t eaten his banana, and he also had two peanut butter sandwiches. They would remain untouched for awhile longer.
Once again, the kids lined up to go to the restroom and wash their hands (How do they even get so grimy? On second thought, don’t answer that). Once again, standing in a line transformed every child into a mixed martial artist who had to take out anyone in his/her way. Finally, the kids went into the restroom, but since they all ran (despite Shaggy’s useless instructions to the contrary), they got to the bathroom slightly before he did. And somehow, in the extra ten seconds it took him to get to the bathroom (Shaggy still isn’t sure how this is physically possible), one of the students found a giant bottle of purple cleaning solution, opened it, poured it all over the floor, and turned the bathroom into his own personal skating rink. Anyone want to guess who the culprit was?
If you guessed the kid who had just come back from the counselor’s office, take this banana as a prize. Shaggy won’t be eating it any time soon.
After informing a longsuffering custodian of the situation, Shaggy thought he might get to eat his sandwiches. But after arranging for a school lunch to be brought for the girl whose lunch had been stolen, he became occupied with breaking up fights, keeping lunch food with the student who brought it, and taking away a marker from a kid who had decided a stuffed animal from the classroom needed its fur dyed blue.
Then it was time for reading class, but by this point, the class was so rowdy that bringing more than 3 students into one place for storytime proved to be about as likely as Scooby-Doo showing up to accompany Shaggy in the classroom.
Literally at their wits’ end, Shaggy and Taylor grabbed a laptop and turned on a movie until the end of class. Even this only partially quelled the madness, as some students continued to run around like banshees, and others fought over who got to sit in which identical chair. On the plus side, Shaggy finally did get to eat his long awaited peanut butter sandwiches.
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So usually this is the point where I would bring the story back to its moral. But what is the moral of this story? Kids are crazy? I already knew that. Mr. Shaggy isn’t called to be a teacher? Knew that too, though this experience further confirmed such. I suppose it was a lesson in patience and making the most of bad situations, and perhaps looking back at failures and just laughing about it. Regardless, this isn’t an experience I will soon forget.
Bonus Content: Here’s the little rascal who caused the majority of my headaches (plus a sneaky photobomber). Don’t worry. We’re friends now. He was sad that I left (or at the very least that he couldn’t drive me crazy anymore).
Also, there’s this one. Make of it what you will.
