It is truly my fault.

#thatswhatshesaid

Seriously. You’re a child.

However, there are days where my problems that happen in my classroom are my own.

When the song Happy (by Pharrell Williams) was popular back in 2014, I would play this song constantly to drive my youngest daughter crazy. She’d get angry and stomp her little foot and it was just a fun little thing to do. Now, you say, “You’re a child,” and I say, “You aren’t wrong.”

And of course, this behavior transfers directly into the classroom. I will mess with my students on silly things. Yesterday, we were doing social studies work and I’d posted their questions with directions on Google Classroom. The directions were fairly simple and straight forward. A student asked if they had to do something that wasn’t part of the directions, so my reply was, “The rest of us won’t have to, but because you didn’t read the directions, you do.”

#deadsilenceandmouthsopen

Now, of course, she didn’t have to do the extra work, but that’s part of the fun of middle school, being able to have them on the edge, then bring them back with a (masked) smile and a laugh.

Now, the slice!

Going back to the above song, a couple years later, I discovered this gem: 24 Hours of Happy. What is this you might ask? It’s exactly what it says, 24 hours of this song Happy! Pharrell Williams has created a whole bunch of videos with him doing his thing. There’s also a ton of everyday people singing the song Happy as well. It’s just seriously, 24 hours of the song.

#whatdidyoudo

I played this during one of our classes. It took the kids about the fourth time time through to start looking around with that “What the hell is this” look on their faces. Me, I gave up nothing. The song reset and they were like, “Ok, what’s going on now?” And the next time the song reset, I got a very vocal uprising.

#ha

So I showed the kids the site and again, brought them back with a masked smile and a laugh.

The kids were not impressed, but yet, thought, “Ok, that was kinda cool.” So the behaviors that happen in my classroom, sometimes, they are my fault.

Why? Because I’m just a child in a grown up body.

Just the way I’d want to be! 🙂