Rain.
Everyone who knows children well, knows that rain brings out the most bizarre behavior in even the most reserved children. This morning it rained. It rained a lot. My class was...active, to say the least. But there were other factors working against me, besides the weather. We have been building "ecocolumns", which are cylindrical tubes containing a self-sustained ecosystem. Aquarium habitat in the bottom and terrarium in the top. It's actually quite impressive. Anyway, yesterday we added some critters. Some snails and guppies went into the aquarium, and crickets and roly-polies went in the terrarium. How did this add to the mayhem, you might ask? Well, we were attempting to sex the fish (that is, determine the gender of the guppies--don't be freaking out on me), when one of my groups noticed that their fish was dead. Of course, no one has EVER seen a dead fish before (and no one believed me when I jokingly told them that their fish was sleeping upside down...without breathing), so the entire class had to rush over to inspect the fish. Then they couldn't believe their ears when I told them that they couldn't remove the dead fish. I was going to make them leave it in there for day, so they can observe the effects of decay in an ecosystem. Hello!!! It's science at work! The circle of life! Even better, I got to witness a classroom full of children freaking out when their snails decided to chow down on the dead fish.
"No, you can't take the fish out. No one digs all the dead fish out of a lake. This is a life cycle, people!" A learning experience. For everyone. Except I don't think I was learning the same thing they were.
All the while, it was raining.
And then the pigeon landed. Right outside my classroom. Right next to the sidewalk. There was no avoiding it.
"There's a huge bird outside!!" All the children rush from the dead fish to the windows and door. We are in a pre-fab, so our class is located outside the main building.
"It's a pigeon," I tell them.
"But it's HUGE! And it has a red tag on its leg," one boy tells me.
Then I took what we educators call a "teachable moment" to teach them about homing pigeons. The bird really was huge. Like a chicken. And so very tame. Way too tame. And of course my classroom is in a central location where all the other kids have to walk past my room to get to their classes. Therefore I became the pigeon police. And suddenly everyone had a reason to leave the room.
"I have to pee! REALLY BAD!!!"
"I need to go to the office."
"I have to go to the library."
"Can I get a drink?"
"Can I catch the pigeon?"
My class was overly aware of everyone else who passed by.
"It's a homing pigeon," they'd call out the window or door to a curious on-looker. "Don't touch it. Just keep walking."
At last, I was able to get everyone sort of quietly back in their seats, only to have the peace disturbed just a few minutes later.
"There's a kid trying to touch the pigeon!"
*Sigh* "It's a bird. It will fly away if it feels threatened."
"It's on the roof now!!!!" And of course, all the kids flocked to the windows and door, because they have obviously never seen a bird on the roof before.
Giant facepalm. Today was completely shot. But hey, they all learned something. Either what a homing pigeon was, or that snails are vicious, vicious scavengers who feast on dead fish carcasses.
