Start a List with Carol and Stacy
A fun and lighthearted podcast between two long time friends that have been there, done that and bought the t-shirt! We love to share our funny stories from raising our children, being elementary school teachers and just day to day life. Listen in, grab a pen and "start a list".
Start a List with Carol and Stacy
Episode 25: Apples, Grades and Shade
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Stacy and Carol, retired elementary teachers, open by chatting about Stacy exercising and Carol’s late-night drive to rescue her son after an Uber broke down, then dedicate the episode to teachers as school starts in extreme heat. They reflect on unpaid summer classroom setup, annual packing and waxing floors, and how phone/email and parent messaging apps increased parent “over-connection,” including excessive non-urgent messages. They share common school frustrations like coats and lunchboxes in lost and found, gross forgotten water bottles, and unreasonable requests such as monitoring hydration for football practice. They discuss stressful parent-teacher conferences, parents denying behavior issues, and appreciating supportive, honest families. They recount escalating student behaviors (spitting, hitting, cursing), a biting incident involving police and a parent requesting an exorcism, children lying about incidents, and parents criticizing standards like cursive or dismissing handwriting expectations.
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Hey everybody, welcome to Starter List with Carol and Stacy. I'm Stacy. I'm Carol. And welcome back to I think this is episode 25. So we are so excited. We're moving and grooving.
SPEAKER_00And well, I have to say that Stacy Tanner is really moving and grooving because she has been going to the gym and exercising, and I'm very proud of her. She's been walking on the treadmill or doing weights or doing exercise classes, and I have yet to crack anything. So that's okay.
SPEAKER_01I haven't done it as much as I thought I was going to this week. It doesn't matter. But the week's not over yet. It's only Wednesday.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm very proud of her. She has really stuck to it. And thank you.
SPEAKER_01I know I do feel better physically. My hips aren't hurting as bad. So how has your um week been?
SPEAKER_00Oh well, you know, there's always something you can't make up that just drops out of the sky.
SPEAKER_01Um hovers around your street and just waits for a yeah moment.
SPEAKER_00My son had flown in from Alaska and they had a late flight, and I knew he was coming home, but he was just gonna come in and go to bed, whatever. Well, I had gone to bed early, and all of a sudden I woke up in the middle of the night. I thought it was about one o'clock, and I could see his location, and I thought, and he had said, you know, we landed, whatever, on the way home. And I thought, what are y'all doing? And they were stopped in the middle of the road, not in the middle of the road, but halfway down the highway out here on 109 near where we live. I thought, what are you doing? I said, Are you going? Where are y'all going? And he said, our Uber just died. And I'm like, What? It's 130. So I jump up and go down the road there. Thankfully it wasn't far and took everybody home and got him back home. But that was crazy.
SPEAKER_01Well, that jars you awake, and then you can't go back to sleep if you're me, you know. Then you're up, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, then I was just wired for sound. And oh, and then we get to my entrance to the um subdivision, and a policeman pulled him over. And I'm like, What? And so we pull in and it he was super nice. Uh, shout out to Lebanon PD. He just said, Hey, it's all good. Just let me know your bulb is out on the license plate, little bowl thing. But you know, that just jars you when you've been asleep, and then you wake up and you're like driving, and then the police are involved.
SPEAKER_01I mean, just getting I have to get out of the bed at 1:30 in the morning and get in the car and drive somewhere, that'll make you crazy. Yeah, it was crazy.
SPEAKER_00Got my cute little destination from the beach. Yes, I have been so thirsty today.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's because it's still so hot outside. It's terrible, terrible. All right, so speaking of hot, yes, we mentioned last week that school was getting ready to start back here, and it's always three billion degrees when school starts here. And for those of you that have been listening for a while, you know that Carol and I are both retired elementary school teachers, and you know, uh we are we had to do recess in August in the heat of the day and nearly suffocate. We would get warnings, uh, heat warnings. You can't see outside, but for so long because it's so hot, make sure the kids have water, blah, blah, blah. And uh, especially this time of year, we always talk about how happy we are. We're not having to set up a classroom or yeah, go back to school. So we uh started chatting, and this episode is gonna be dedicated to all our teacher friends out there. Shout out to all of you that listen. Um, but we're gonna do a um, I had seen a funny suggestion for a podcast title and made me think of something. It said Apples Grades and Shade. And I said, Oh, we've got to do something about all of the craziness and ridiculousness it is of being a teacher.
SPEAKER_00Well, uh it made me think about I really I mean, I can't do anything about it now, but I really regret the literal full days that I spent in the summer in my classroom getting it ready. Well, you have to well my point because we would uh hit the ground running and you never had time to work in your classroom. You were stuck in meetings and PD emails, and it was just insanity. So I have friends right now. May the may God be with each of you and the force and anything else you need because all of the good juju coming at you.
SPEAKER_01It's yeah, it's and I always tried to think of as especially as the years went on, and it got harder and harder because it wasn't always quite as hard as it was, I'd say, the last 10 to 12 years um that I taught is that, you know, I started looking at our summers off and our fall breaks and our spring breaks and our Christmas breaks. It's like my bonus, right? Like, you know, we're we are we're 10 month employees, we're paid to work 200 days out of the year. That is not lost on us. So, you know, everybody that says, you know, oh, teachers haven't made, they get a lot of days off. You are correct, we do. But we also spend a lot of those days off when we're not technically being paid doing things. And I thought I think there's a lot of people in the general population that don't realize that every year, at least that I'm aware of, you deconstruct your entire classroom, you pack the whole thing up, you move the furniture off the floor, you put everything on a shelf in a closet because they come in and they move all the furniture out and they wax the floors in the hallway in the classroom. And then you have to reset that classroom up every single summer, and it takes days to do it.
SPEAKER_00That is if you're not moving, and I moved more than I ever dreamed I would have to, and that would mean packing everything into a box that you could actually lift. Yep, and yeah, it was ridiculous, but um she's right. Uh, we we would have to literally, you would just have an empty room and you had to start over every year.
SPEAKER_01And you might not, unless you were moving, you didn't have to take things off the wall per se, but it's still a lot of work to put, you know, and everything's dusty, you know, there's not great ventilation in a in a classroom, and everything's covered in dust, and you gotta clean it, and you've gotta, you know, just to start from scratch every single year.
SPEAKER_00Um Well, I mean, yeah, there's that, and then there's I don't know, that that formula that they use to wax the floors will just knock you down. It smells like formaldehyde in there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It looks really pretty for about seven days and then it gets all scuffed up when the kids start showing up. But yeah. So, anyways, we thought we would just kind of tell some of our crazier stories um out there about a lot of different things. And um, are you ready to get started, ma'am? I'm ready. Hit hit me. Okay. Well, one of the newer things, I'd say, I mean, golly, probably half of my teaching career, we had technology, you know, and when when we got email, um, but when we got email, it wasn't as readily available as it is now because you didn't have it on your phone. So when people started having access to their emails on their phone and you could get alerts all day long, the game changed. Yeah. And we had emails, and then we also then had apps that parents could message us on. I preferred the app simply because I'm not on my phone email all day. I'm not in front of my desk all day checking email, but I could get an a it was like a text message. They did not have access to your private phone number, but they could text you and it would come through like a text alert on your phone or your watch. So I always felt better about that because if I had a transportation change or somebody had a quick need or something, I could tend to it. But this gave them a sense of uh what's the word I'm looking for? Entitlement. Entitlement sometimes. That just falls out of my mouth. Whoops. Over connection. Okay, like overconnection. And so I was thinking of one year I got a I and I taught kindergarten. I think most of the stories I'm gonna tell stem from my time in kindergarten because I spent a lot of time there. I had a mom, and granted, I know she had questions, and a kindergarten parent is a little different because most of them, it might be their first child in school, right? Right, right, but in one day, I got 13 text messages. Yeah, and none of them were anything life-threatening or urgent, urgent, yeah. Could have waited. You could have sent me just one big message with all thirty, y'all. Well, it's kind of like as it came to her mind, she would Yeah, and she had no other children, so she's just at home, she did not work. Um, and I remember thinking, holy moly, somebody needs to take this app away from her. Like she's just out of control. And you know, I if I had time, I would respond, but then I'm stuck, and you know, and it might be something as simple as please remind so-and-so to wear their coat outside, please remind so-and-so to uh bring their water bottle home, you know.
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, now granted, um, most of us that if you've ever if you've ever been near children and you're going outside in the winter, you normally say, put your coat on. Well, every time we would take them out and it was chilly or whatever, we'd ask them to put their coats on. Well, guess what? They did not want to wear their jackets. And those were the very children whose parents would normally email and say, please have them remember remind them to put it.
SPEAKER_01Damn a coat on a child. You can say, Okay, guys, I need you to put your coat on. And if they don't put it on, they they don't put it on. I can't force you to physically put your coat on, right?
SPEAKER_00And who knows, maybe they're hot, like they're pre-menopausal. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Well no, but another thing you would get an email or a message about is the kid would take said coat outside and you would tell them it's too cold, don't take your coat off. But somebody somewhere took their coat off somewhere on the playground, and then we blew the whistle to line up and get all the way across this the road, the parking lot, back into the building, and they go, I left my coat outside. And I'm like, Well, I can't go get it. I've got 21 kids.
SPEAKER_00I can't do six.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can't send you across the street alone. No, you're gonna have to get your mom to drive back up here later and go find it on the playground, you know, or don't take it off next time, like we said. And yeah, I'd get an email or message about that. So and so said they left their jacket on the playground and you wouldn't let them go get it. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00You wouldn't get well, you wouldn't go get it. Well, I taught my my stories stem from first through mostly fifth grade. Um mostly third, fourth, and fifth. But um when that would happen, the older kids normally thought it would be fun to throw them over the fence. Oh, yeah. So we usually had to try to retrieve them, I guess, through the back neighborhood. I don't know, but that was not in my job description. And yeah, but but we would get these emails saying I paid X number of dollars for that jacket, and I'm sorry, you know. I I don't know what to tell you. They shouldn't have thrown it over the fence.
SPEAKER_01And no matter how many times you tell parents to put your names on everything, put their name on everything, somebody else in the school is gonna have that jacket, I guarantee it. And then, you know, or maybe two people in the class have that jacket, and then they're both fighting over that it's their jacket, and we don't know whose jacket it is, right? So yeah, it's always a fun time.
SPEAKER_00I had one that's funny, that reminds me, I had one uh incident that similar to that, and it was the same jacket, you know. Let's just say it was a blue Nike jacket, okay, and there were two of them, and the kid comes up and he's like, This is my jacket, and the other one's like, It's my jacket, and they have it on, and I kid you not, the long sleeves. You're like, Literally, they're not yours, sir. Yeah, they're standing there, they have sending themselves into the packet. And I'm like, Honey, I don't think that quite fits you. Well, this is what my grandmama gave me for Christmas. I'm gonna get in trouble. And I thought, mm-hmm, because like I said, you shouldn't have thrown it over the pants.
SPEAKER_01And we're and we're saying all of this in jest, you guys, but also as a PSA to parents, don't email your kids' teacher and say, Can you help them find this or can you tell them to bring home this? Why don't you tell them to bring it home? Every day I say, make sure you have everything out of your cubby that you need to take home. So just yes, the children definitely need reminders, and we give them, but do they, if they don't listen to them, I can't do anything about that.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I know, I mean, think about being five years old in this world and all the distractions and all yeah, everybody, everything I can I it's I can't imagine, but uh the teachers, your your child's teacher is reminding them uh just like you are reminding them 80 times at the house. Yeah, that's just the nature of a child. But you were talking about uh, can you help them find this? Can you help them find that? We would have in our school a big lost and found parade day or whatever. And at the end of every nine weeks, we would all take a 10-minute break and go sit in the hallway. And I kid you not, either the teacher's aides were walking by with clothing or food. Yeah, they did. We would walk by this big table. It looked like you were shopping. Yeah, we would stand there and we'd say, Does anybody and I literally would take piece by piece, is this anybody's lunch box? And they'd all be laughing like it'd be a I don't know, a a My Little Pony or some kind of unicorn lunch box. And inevitably some kid would go, Oh, that's so-and-so's, you know, and it wasn't. Yeah. But they would just, and I probably would we would leave there with maybe one or two items, but rarely were we able to find the owners.
SPEAKER_01The thing that grossed me out the most about Lost and Found is we've I don't know, we might have touched this on the pat touched on this in the past, is kids now bring 40-ounce metal water bottles to school. Okay. They're like prepped for the day with a flip straw. And by the end of the first week of school, there'll be 400 water bottles missing in the lost and found.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And a kindergarten would go by and go, Oh, there's my water bottle I lost. And it'd probably been sitting there for who knows how long. And I would always look at it and I go, Maybe don't drink out of that till your mom has time to clean it. It grossed me out. Because first of all, somebody else probably picked it up and thought it was theirs and drank out of it. It's been sitting for a minute.
SPEAKER_00But that's milk. What if it had milk in it? Could be.
SPEAKER_01Level gross. That just makes me think. Before we move off of messages and texts, yeah. The water. I mean, they have all day access to water nowadays, okay? It's they all bring their giant water bottle or they bring a plastic water bottle. I mean, it's they're not getting dehydrated.
SPEAKER_00It's in the classroom. There's a water fountain in most classrooms and in the hall. Yeah. I mean, so they're not gonna dehydrate.
SPEAKER_01I had a parent in kindergarten. Now, mind you, we're not getting ready for the NFL. Ask me or tell me per se, I should say tell me at a conference that their child had intense football practice, let's just say Tuesdays and Thursdays, and could I please make sure that they were staying hydrated throughout the day? And I just looked at them and I'm like, okay. Okay, sure. I'll I'll teach them to read, add, subtract, learn their letters, sounds, how to behave, how to get along with others, and how the importance of being hydrated and and hygiene. Yeah, I'm like, who do not ask your kids' teacher to make sure they stay hydrated unless they have a legit medical need.
SPEAKER_00In 25 years, I had one medical need person, and it was legit, and she quietly, it was never an issue. She quietly had her little water bottle, she sipped on it every now and then. Every time I walked by, I would remind her, you know, it wasn't a big deal.
SPEAKER_01That is different. That's totally different. You're got football. How intense is your football practice?
SPEAKER_00Well, maybe they were doing the halftime show at one of the Titans games or something. I've heard I thought I've heard it all, which I'm sure something else came along after that. And well, speaking of parent-teacher conferences, um, those were always a lot of fun. That's a whole series we could discuss.
SPEAKER_01Fun if you like having your toenails ripped out one at a time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, true. Or your how about your eyelashes? Yeah, who's that who thinks that's fun? No, they weren't fun. I'm just being sarcastic. But here's the thing. I mean, I I would almost laugh out loud or burst out laughing because they would say, I don't know why he acts like that here. He doesn't do that at home. And I'm like, really? That's a standard right there. He doesn't act like that at home. And I'm thinking, and I so I started doing a mental experiment or a personal. I thought, I'm gonna just see what these people can come up with. And I would say, really? So what does he act like at home? And what I said, tell me Tell me what he does. Well, I mean, he gets all you know, and they would tell this beautiful. I mean, you would have thought they lived on Maybe in Mayberry. And I'm I'm like, Oh, okay, well, I I'm not seeing that. And they're like, Well, he says you always get on to him in the bathroom sometimes or at the bathroom breaks. And I'm like, Yeah, when he does he usually lick the water spout on the on the refrigerator where the water comes out because he likes to lick the water fountain at during bathroom breaks, and and they're like, No, no, no, like I said, he doesn't act like that at home.
SPEAKER_01And I'm like, oh well, he turns into a whole different person, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_00Yes, he does. And then then I would invite promptly invite them to come and um have lunch one day, and they can witness a restroom break, which I think they did, and of course, he was a perfect angel.
SPEAKER_01I was always about when I got accused of whatever, you know, or they say you're you're doing this, or they got in trouble for this. And like you said, they'll say they didn't they don't act like that. I was always ready with the we would love for you to come spend some time in our classroom one day. Ask me how many parents ever took me up on that offer.
SPEAKER_00I had probably well, I probably had two ever.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I had parents come in the room, but not with the specific. I would love for you to join us and come see what a day is like in here. Yeah, I would love for you to come see how XYZ is acting. And you know, nobody ever took me up on it because they knew they knew in their hearts they were telling a fib.
SPEAKER_00If you look at any reels right now on Facebook, the parents are going mad because they're still, and they'll it'll say, stuck at home with my child still, or can't wait for um, can't wait for school to start back. And I'm thinking, really? Well, why don't you pile you know 24 of them in your living room and entertain them all day?
SPEAKER_01And and to speak to the opposite of that, and this isn't a very funny podcast, I know, but it's real guys, it's real life. But to speak to the opposite of that, I loved when I got a very helpful parent that wasn't overbearing.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01And I also loved when I got a parent who had a child that may experience some challenges with behavior. Academic, whatever, that was a willing to work with me, work with the school, be honest and say, you know, we're having the same problem at home. As soon as I could get a parent on board with me, it just like a weight had been lifted. I was not fighting that fight, right? Like, right, right. Well, your heart was to help the children. Yeah, 100%. Right. And so I loved, loved when I got somebody that was willing to help me and I was willing to help them. That those are my favorites.
SPEAKER_00Well, in defense of the teachers now, we know that most parents, I guess back when we were teaching, most of those parents had parents who had a bad one bad experience with a teacher, and then that's all they heard. Yeah. It stuck with them. That's all they heard. I, you know, they ever and I understand that. I understand that. Yeah. Every Thanksgiving dinner. They grandpa told the story about the time he went up to that school and told that teacher, blah, blah, blah. And you know, and there's just a bad um relationship between families and teachers because they had a bad experience, and that's unfortunate. But I will say this there are more, there were more good experiences than bad. Absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Which is why we did it for as long as we did.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? You wouldn't have kept doing it if it wasn't.
SPEAKER_00Right. Thank you to those families who were supportive, and and you know, everybody's doing the best they can, including the children, including us. So it's just a tough world. It's a tough one.
SPEAKER_01You know, after a while, you have to try to find the humor in it, you know, especially after it's obviously it. And the last few years I taught, boy, I witnessed some of the most insane behavior. You know how they have those compilation shows, those police compilation shows are like October, Sarasota, Florida, 9:39 p.m. And they they do this, they have this whole thing, you know. I'm like, man, they should do one of ridiculous things that happened in elementary school. And the behaviors got to be more and more insane. I'm like, we need one of those compilation shows, and we can blur the kids' face out since they're underage. But I'd say in the last four years I taught, it ran the gamut of, and I realize there's other professions that this could happen to. Maybe you work in a hospital, you work in the mental health field, or whatever. But I'm just old Miss Tanner over there trying to get through the day. I had been spit at, which grossed me out. I had I've been hit, kicked. I've had their tongues stuck out at me, which I always thought was a super fun one.
SPEAKER_00That's my favorite.
SPEAKER_01Like I've had kids do behaviors and then go home and tell their parents lies on, which I can cover that in a minute. I've been given the middle finger by kindergartner, and I've been cussed out. Full so full on. Full on. So just simmer on that for a minute, people. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00And you know, that's so odd. I don't know where on earth they would have learned to do that.
SPEAKER_01Well, and you know, you say they really we don't say that at our house. Well, somebody said it.
SPEAKER_00They are they are watching something or somebody's watching them that they are picking it up from. Yeah. Well, um one of my I remember being well, we've all been thrown up on. I mean, that's just a given. I was I did get bit once, and it was a it was an unfortunate uh situation because the family was from a culture that believed that and this child he did struggle academically, and man, we worked with him so hard, and I think he finally was able to, you know, kind of turn the corner at least during that school year. So that was rewarding. But this one incident when he was coming apart and I got bit, and another teacher was got bit. And it wasn't like we were trying to help him or hold him. I mean, he just walked up and bit. And the the police got involved, and the parents said that it was just a single parent, and they said, We don't want him. And we were like, What? You don't have that option, and they said, No, in our culture, no, yeah, in our culture, he needs an exorcism. And we were like, Oh, okay, well, we don't provide that. And the police, the policeman was like, um Yeah, ma'am, ma'am, you know, or sir, you this is your responsibility. Uh-huh. And she did, she got in the car. Like they were scared of the child. Yeah, and they genuinely were. And and it was, it was cra I had never um experienced anything like that. But I don't, I don't think they had the exorcism. I think the mother did end up taking him home eventually, and all was well. But we were tipping tipping around the the next few weeks, like waiting on him to strike. Yeah, I mean, it it kind of got scary, but I felt really sorry for him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, to know that that's different.
SPEAKER_00That was different. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, we could go on for days, y'all. Like, I mean, we're trying to be pretty general here because I got some good stories. And if I had a um, if our platform had a paid in section where you could hear things, that's where we would put it. Because we've got we got a lot out there that we're not gonna talk about. Yeah. But yeah, what I was mentioning earlier that kids tell lies. I mean, just know that, okay? All kids tell a lie, okay. You did it.
SPEAKER_00Really, really, listeners. You know you told a lie as a child. I was the worst liar to my mother.
SPEAKER_01I'm not doing that. They all do it, okay? It's not the end of the world, but they do it. And I know your instinct is to believe your child, okay? I get that. We all want to do that. But when I tell you, one of the last years I taught, I had a little boy. English was not their first language, so I want to set that up. And he already had had some struggles because of that. And I got a message, I guess it was the next day, I don't remember. And they had come into the office, and the mother was very upset with me. And she had taken a picture of this little boy's finger and said when he got in the car after school, and I saw it because she said, showed the principal the picture. He had wrapped a string that I'm sure pulled off of somebody's shirt that he picked up off the carpet. Because that's what they do in kindergarten. They pick the carpet, unravel the carpet, and he had wrapped it around his finger so tight that it had gotten like embedded, and because the finger, the circulation was cut off to the finger and it was turning purple. Oh no. And I imagine when that happened, the finger swelled and he couldn't get that string off. I had zero idea that any of this had happened.
SPEAKER_00So let me guess, he never came to you and said Tanner, my finger hurts.
SPEAKER_01If I had seen that, I would have gotten the string off as any more nurse. Yes. And said, What in the world? And I'd helped get it off. So I said to the admin, I said, I had no idea that this child had done this because if I had, I certainly would have fixed it for him. You'll this is when we get called to the office, and the principal wants to talk to us about the mom would not let it go and said that they were not lying because they were Christian. So I'm not sure what she was implying I was. And they ended up moving him. I was like, I want him out of my room. Like, let's, I'm not gonna go through this all year. Well, because he got to my mind, he got scared and thought he was gonna get in trouble when he got in the car because his finger was purple because he had wrapped a string around it. So he thought, well, I'll just tell her Miss Tanner didn't take it off.
SPEAKER_00But you need to tell our listeners that it's not that one the oh, he wrapped a cord around his finger. I want him out of my classroom. It had been from day one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there'd been a lot of things, but like name it. Like I said, I'm not gonna be at this point held liable. You know, first of all, I feel like there's a uh breakdown in communication due to the language barrier. I'm not sure that he was even explaining what she thought he was explaining. And but, anyways, I mean, I'm like, so you know, that was just one of a billion stories I could tell.
SPEAKER_00But well, I remember having having a um parent. Uh, this is totally unrelated, but it just reminds reminded me of during we had a family night or a parent teacher night or something. I don't know what it was, but we were showcasing some of the kids' work and the things they had done. And at the time I was teaching third grade, and everybody at that time knew that when you got to third grade, you'd got to learn cursive handwriting. Well, this was right at the brink of technology uh becoming more a part of the education, and uh this uh kind father came in and was just berating me about why I was teaching his daughter cursive handwriting and he didn't understand, and that she's not gonna need it, and that he had bought her the most expensive Dell computer, et cetera, et cetera. And I just was looking at him and I listened and I said, Well, we actually have done a lot of research about why, and I will put together a packet for you and send it home. And we literally had deliberately studied about right brain, you know, using the right brain and the uh things that would help develop creativity etc.
SPEAKER_01At the time it was an actual standard, we had to teach. We had to they did eventually remove it, but it used to be a required skill, right?
SPEAKER_00So A, I'm not the State Department, you know, I don't education, I don't, I'm not in charge of that. B, I am following, I'm teaching what I'm required to teach. Yeah, and C, it was good for the kids. And when I tell you they absolutely loved that we did a 10 minute brain break. And I say that 10 minutes, I would set a claw, set a timer, and at the end of 10 minutes we stopped. But we would do these cursive handwriting exercises, and they loved it. They loved to practice writing their name in cursive, they loved to practice writing sentences. Oh, yeah, and then every now and then I would start to get their classwork, they would write in cursive because they were so proud of something they had learned. Well, he just told me how that that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard, and how can I be so backward? And I mean, he just went, he was very ugly, rude, so yeah, it was very unkind.
SPEAKER_01And so didn't you have another parent one time that I don't I don't know if you made a comment? We have four minutes. If you had made a comment or something about their handwriting being messy, and the parent came back with well, he's gonna be a doctor one day and it doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_00I was yeah, actually, I was teaching first grade, and I had I don't mind if you have messy handwriting, but I do need to be able to read it, read it to the point that I can see if you have the correct answer or not. And the father came in and he was let me just say, intense is doesn't even touch it. This kid is in first grade, and this daddy expected him to enter Vanderbilt University at age nine.
SPEAKER_01Fast forward, he did become valedictorian in his high school. I mean, nobody said he wasn't smart, but he had messy handwriting.
SPEAKER_00Very smart, but he I literally and he was always he was just in a hurry. And I would just mention, I didn't fuss at him, but I would say, Hey, it's really helpful. Look right here, you did such a good job. It I I can actually read it. Yeah, this over here is I'm having a hard time reading it. Can you tell me what this says? And he'd be like, No, yeah, he couldn't even read his own handwriting. I can't read it. Yeah, his dad came in and just said, Um, I want you to lay off a him. Uh he's gonna be a doctor, he doesn't need to know how to write neatly. And I went, well, okay. I said, Okay, thank thank you for letting me know that. And that was the end of it because I knew I was not gonna waste. Dun dun dun dun dun dun was my favorite thing to say.
SPEAKER_01No, my favorite thing you say is nope on a rope. Well, I stole that from another kindergarten teacher. Well, she started saying it and I grabbed it quick. I thought it was hilarious. Funniest thing I've ever heard. So shout out to Rachel Drake. That's her okay term. We gotta wrap it up here in a minute. But I used to say to my kids, like, they'd be like, Oh, my leg hurts, you know, and they're just nothing had happened or whatever. And I'll be like, Oh no, do we need to call the lambulance? And they would just fall out lapping, and they thought that was funny, or they'd have like a microscopic paper cut that was not even a quarter of an inch big. And they're limping. And I'm like, I need a band-aid. And you're like, Oh my gosh, you don't need a band-aid, you're gonna be fine. No, they're limping and their fingers. Yeah, my favorite was they'd come up, they'd have 14 kids carrying them. You know, they'd fall and okay, they're hurt. Oh, and they'd have, you know, a truckload of kids coming up helping them, and then they'd just insist they were dying, and then three minutes later they'd be out there running, you know, like uh whatever they had their posse deliver them. We have one minute, so we better wrap it up. But hey, good luck. Let us know how you how you make it. And if you're a parent, don't do any of these things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, stop. All right, don't make a fist, teachers or parents. Make make a list. All right, see y'all next time. Bye.
