Reason #15 They Turn Twenty Cents Into a Priceless Artifact

The year has started in full force and is proving to be every bit as vibrant, infuriating, and delightful as the past six. The cast of characters is different, but the archetypal eight year old personalities remain. Three days into this year the tattling had already started full force.

My approach to dealing with tattling has evolved over the years. In year one, when all was fuzzy and dark, I generally told my students to work it out on their own. And they did. Generally with fists.

I quickly realized that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is a big deal to a third grader. If a sheet of paper crosses from a neighbor's desk onto your desk, it is cause for Cuban Missile Crisis level stand-offs, the fall-out being as potentially nuclear.

My next phase was me playing the role of Hebrew Judge, spending the better part of each day mitigating the grievances each child held against the other. Like Moses, I found that I was unable to make fair assessments of the whole tribe on my own, so something new had to be done.

My kids were my next inspiration when they invented bully tickets, which were essentially papers they turned in to catch other people in the act of doing anything they didn't like in that moment. Our classroom was whipped into shape. Average students were transformed into vigilantes set on ridding our classroom of bullies. However, since we only revisited the bully slips weekly, the feedback loop got a little long. By Friday Alison had forgotten that Michael had stared at her for too long during reading, and frankly what had seemed like a big deal then was not very interesting anymore.

Enter this year's brilliant idea. Notebooks. To my students I call them "SPIRALS" (in all caps, because I do make it a big deal) since every other notebook they use is a black and white. However, the working name is Tattle Books.

Tattle Books are a place where a child can write me a note about anything, turn it in during any transition in the classroom, and get a response from me in writing within 24 hours. It may seem like a lot of upkeep, but it is significantly less work that listening to four different kids tell you how DeAngelo was picking at his socks during the reading lesson instead of listening when at the same time you are trying to choral a class of mostly crazy hooligans into two straight, tall, happy, silent lines.

To date, and yes, the date is very early in the year, Tattle Books are a huge success. No one comes up to tell me things, and when they do I look at them with a very serious face and say, "Is this something that should go in your spiral?" Then they gleefully head back to their seats and start writing! HAHA! It's writing, relationship building, and management all rolled into one twenty cent notebook.

A fringe benefit is actually reading the letters, which is best done over a glass of wine at the end of the day. Surprisingly tattling is much less annoying and much more amusing then. Some samples:

One child let me know that Jerry was bothering her, and if I didn't do anything about it she was going to tell her mom and tell the principal. She ended the note by saying, "Will you get Jerry? Check yes or no."

Another girl told me about how sick and tired she was of the other kids in the classroom wasting her time for the past three years. "Could you please, please do something about it, Mrs. Swanson?"

I watched another student writing furiously in her notebook. As I got closer I saw her writing "Jacob ______________________" "Jacob _______________________" "Jacob _______________" on page after page of her notebook. Apparently she is setting up the sentence stems for all her future tattling this year, not wasting even another minute on writing Jacob's name; darn sure this tattle won't be the last.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this evolves over the year. Hopefully it will translate to angelic students who are Newberry Award Winning Authors. Or at the very least give me some more material for my blog. In the meantime, you can catch me most nights sipping a glass of wine and laughing.