He Did What

LAST FRIDAY YOU CAME home with your class behavior chart for the new school year & it reminded me of your chart from last year. Last year the color-coding was; Purple (highest ranking) - following all directions, Blue - one warning for not following rules (maybe talking out of turn, etc.) = 2 minute lost at recess, Green - two warnings = 5 minutes lost at recess, Orange - serious rule violation = no recess (one) & a call home to parents, Red - an even more serious rule violation = no recess (all), a call home, & a trip to the principal's office. I am happy to report that you had purple almost all days, for all weeks, for the entire school year with only two blues (which I was fine with). However, there was one orange. I was horrified to see the note come home & subsequent phone call home later that night. When I saw the note I thought, "Tanner, he is not an orange kinda kid. He generally makes good choices". Then my mind wandered to wow, what possibly could you have done that was so horrible to warrant being orange carded as orange signified a "serious rule violation". Flipped off the teacher? Destroyed school property? Stole something? I didn't know, but none of those were you! Then the call home from your teacher..."Mrs. Bourlier, we have a very serious matter on our hands"..."OK" (here it comes)..."Your son & another 1st grade boy were in the bathroom"...(oh goodness, what WHAT, is my son on the path to juvie)..."& they were knocking on each others bathroom stalls & telling jokes to each other"..."Rude or inappropriate jokes?"..."No, but we take school rules very seriously & their focus was lacking in the bathroom & violates school property usage & student privacy space"...."Uh huh, so were they destroying anything in the bathroom"..."No, but you need to hear me. We take student behavior very seriously & we just cannot have kids telling each other jokes in the bathroom as it's a very inappropriate & deceptive use of the bathroom & school facilities"..."I see. Well I will definitely handle this very important (in my best disguised sarcastic tone) matter with Tanner"...."Thank you. The school appreciates your commitment to addressing the seriousness of this matter with Tanner. It is important to address such intentional disregard for school rules at an early age"..."Um, OK. Click". Dear Tanner, if telling goofy knock knock jokes between stalls is the very worst thing you ever do, I am grateful (& relieved). I seem to remember doing this myself all through elementary school, even passing puffy Smurf & scratch 'n sniff stickers between friends under the stalls. In fact, we very rarely asked for the hall pass to actually use the bathroom as a bathroom. It was our meeting place to laugh, talk about boys, pass notes & make plans for what we were going to do after school. Thx for being a purple kid most of the time, but thank goodness you have a bit of silly being-a-boyness in you too...& for taking your punishment in stride for your orange card.