Pouting Master

I met her today. And the performance was quite spectacular!

But let's back up a bit to the beginning of my day. I was sitting around being lazy this morning because I couldn't quite get the energy to actually get ready when I didn't know if I was going anywhere. Unfortunately, this usually backfires on me. You'd think I'd learn, but no, I don't. So I got a call at around 8:15. The job started at 8:15. It's in Keizer and I'm in my pajamas. So I got dressed faster than a superhero and ran out the door. Made it to the school around 8:50. The kids are already there and the principal is leading a reading group while the other kids are reading by themselves or with another group led by an assistant/parent volunteer. The principal was very nice to give me a few minutes to get settled and look over the plans for the day. After that I took over the group.

Shortly into the day I learned that this was a very immature group of 1st and 2nd graders. There was a lots of tattling, whining, pouting, name-calling, and just general belly-aching among them. I found myself often lecturing them on not "acting like babies". It was about 30 minutes into my time with them that the Queen Pouter made her appearance. And that is our story for tonight:

This little girl came up to me with a book during their silent reading time and asked me if she could read it. I said sure. (I mean, it's a book, what do I care?) But another girl in the room who decided she needed to police everyone turned around, outraged, and exclaimed to me that the first girl could NOT read that book because it was a yellow dot, and that girl can only read the red dot books because the yellow dot is too hard and she can't read them, she needs the easy books. The first girl protested, and the second girl argued back with her. I basically had to yell at them to get their attention again. I clarified that I knew what their problem was and then told the second girl I didn't really care about the dots today and that the first girl could read it if she wanted. (This was an unpopular judgement for girl 2 who was pretty sure I'd just destroyed the world by not following the system.) However, the first girl was so mad at the butting-in girl that she was pouting. I mean, full arms-crossed, bottom lip-out pouting. I tried to give her the book, but she just scowled. So I said, "Ok, nevermind then" and threw the book on my desk. This activated the "turbo pout" and my little pouter ran over to the corner of the room, knelt down, then bent over herself, started rocking and sobbing and huffing about. It was ridiculous. I just left her there. Then, upon noticing my lack of attention, she got up and walked over the the door near the desk where I was sitting. She crossed her arms again, (bottom lip out) and faced the door. I still ignored her. She started softly banging her head on the door. I ignored her. She kept banging her head and started huffing/growling again. At this point I told her, "If you'd like to come talk to me like a big kid and not a baby about your problem, I'll be happy to listen to you anytime." She begrudgingly came over and told me that she COULD read that book, and that the red books were too easy for her. So I pulled it off the desk and told her I was going to give it to her earlier but she was too busy pouting. I then opened and asked her to read a page to me. And yes, she COULD read it! In fact, she read it very well. There were some hard words in it and she sounded them out perfectly. I told her she needed to talk to her teacher about the red books being too easy. I gave her the book and told her that if anyone tried to tell her she couldn't be reading that book to tell them to ask me, and not to argue with them herself. She went off to read and that was the last of the pouting for the day! Yay!

Not to say that the tattling, whining, name-calling or belly-ached stopped, but hey - one problem at a time! We still had lots of that, but they got better as the day went on. It was busy, and tiring, but not as terrible as I feared after that first hour or so.