Year One

Upon completing my first year of school I was feeling oddly…unimpressed. I had completed some of my year end goals, and in fact was still working on my last one, the school journal. But the end of the year seemed to come out of nowhere. How would I mark the occasion? I figured that a fun lesson involving the free flow of stickers would lead to some entertaining antics.

The lesson was simple: I wrote what was essentially the final exam up on the board and we would fill it in together. I would give stickers for any correct or semi-correct answer. Was their thirst for stickers was quenched I would leave a hero.

But once they realized that stickers would be happening with more or less reckless abandon their incentive to stay focused and attentive dissolved. Once the seed of chaos is sown in a room full of preteens it is all but impossible to expunge it. It spread like a flame. They were running up to the board, oblivious to my demands of quiet hand-raising, grasping for chalk to scribble some approximation of English on some random patch of blackboard to feed their addiction to stickers. Seeing order running away like a freight train I boomed for order, commanded the kids to their desks and for a moment it looked as if everything would be ok.

But Durao, the elected class leader, made a break for the board. I told him to sit down but he ignored me and started writing. The class fell quiet as they watched to see what I would do in the face of such open disobedience.

When I put Durao in a headlock the class exploded into a frenzy. All hope was lost; the students leapt from their seats, grasped the stickers from my hand and generally did whatever they wanted. Durao struggled to get free, but my godlike teacher strength held him there as the only proof of my (former) position of dominion over the class.

I don’t know where my stickers went. There is nothing more wild than the uncontrolled, sugar driven frenzy of young people, and it never ceases to entertain me. Happy one year Colin Jones.