Sitting in bed tonight, a memory from last year (my first year of teaching) popped into my head. All of a sudden I remembered the spring day when a bird flew right into our classroom during math. There went my lesson! Nine year old students are ABSOLUTELY incapable of focusing when there is a bird flying (& scatting) all over the room. You would have thought there was some sort of natural disaster occurring . . . students were under their desks, covering their heads, squealing in fear. We opened up all of the windows and the door, turned off all of the lights, and attempted to actually learn some math, all the while watching the bird, ducking when it darted from wall to wall, hoping that it would escape safely, and expressing our disgust when it decided to do #2 (that's the 4th grade term) all over the cupboards, backpacks, desks, floors, you get the idea, I'm sure.
When the bird still had not flown out by lunch time, I called for help in the form of a parent who apparently is well-known for being able to get birds out of classrooms. Who knew this was such a common problem? Needless to say, only about fifteen minutes later, this woman had managed to get the bird safely out of Room 9. Too bad there isn't a parent designated for cleaning up the aftermath of such a situation! That job was left to me.
