Off task, with love

So I was having this conversation with a fellow teacher, Ed U Cater, on Friday after work. He is a fourth grade teacher, and so I frequently bequeath him with my former students. We were discussing a few of those former students, with him asking if they were nearly as ditzy in the third grade as they seem to be now.

He told me a story about one girl in particular. All of the fourth graders took a practice TAKS writing test on Friday, and this girl finished early. However, instead of checking, editing, and revising her work as she was instructed to do, she took out a piece of paper and began to draw.

Ed noticed that the little girl had drawn a picture of a cute, cuddly teddy bear. Right before he took the paper away from her and ripped it in half.

After school, discussing this at the bar during our community outreach volunteer program activity, and was agonizing over his action, feeling he had been a bit extreme.

I imagine a scene where the little girl stared at him in horror and asked, "Why do you hate love??"

His story actually brought back a memory from last year, with one of my little girls who was frequently off task. We were doing a whole group math activity, when I noticed that this little girl was drawing on a piece of paper.

I said to her, "Put that away! Why aren't you doing your work?"

She looked at me in shock and answered, "But I'm making you a Best Teacher card!" Completely with a look and a tone of voice that said, "When we came in this morning, our two choices were to pay attention and do the math work or to draw a Best Teacher card, and I made my choice!"

Just a bit nonplussed, I responded, "Well, that's a very nice, but you need to do that home!"

At least I didn't take the cart away and rip it up. But then I'm just not a cold, heartless bastard.

Who hates love.