Is it bad to lie to your students. The class just earned goldfish as a class pet on Monday. Today, one of them died. The students were pretty good about the fact that it died (many of them had pet death stories of their own). So I decided that during lunch I would throw the fish away. I didn't want the kids to know that I am insensitive, so I wrapped the sucker up in lots of paper towels and throw it in the trash can. Of course the first student to notice the fish gone, asked what happened. I simply told him I buried it (buried in paper towels right). He looks outside and asked if I buried it in that rock garden, since the rest of the area outside is cement. Sure why not, so I told them that was the place. The kid raced outside and started upturning the rocks to find the dead fish. They are so gullible, even when they didn't find him, they still believed me. Hopefully that isn't a too big of a sin.
No joking, ten minutes after I threw away the first fish, the second fish died. I tried to explain to the class that it died of a broken heart. The student feel fed them this week felt like he killed them and started crying for the next 15 minutes. I am just grateful that I am not in first grade. We would have a lot more tears.
1 comment:
You were a little older than a first grader when I flushed your fish down the toilet. Just before it made that final turn down to the sewer, it started swimming. We could not catch it in time. Now that was traumatic. But then, maybe it swam all the way to the ocean and became a mighty fish of the seas!!!
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