When you give a moose a muffin

Some results should just be expected. When you hand five twelve-year-old students a set of papers to hand back, the return process will go quickly but not necessarily sanely. The sensible approach to returning graded papers involves designating two quiet girls to pass back finished assignments while other students carefully put those assignments in binders; that approach takes awhile though. Instead, I picked mostly boys on hyperdrive for the task. That left me to create another descriptive line for classroom management:

“Passing back papers is not a contact sport!”

Eduhonesty: I love those boys on hyperdrive. They make a classroom more fun. But I know why my husband is glued to the basketball game out in the front room. Sports are hard-wired into the DNA of some kids. Why would you drop a paper in the wastebasket when you could crumple it into a ball instead and throw it across the classroom? Obviously, paperwads can’t be flying across the room. I have my paperwads in control. I let the leash slip a little in paper-pass-back maneuvers today, though.

Most boys need to move around. So do some girls. Classes go better when they get the chance.