Reply #83: Reminds me of one of the bad groups I had

[proud2BlibKansan]

I got sick of talking to them about self-control and their failure to exercise it. So one day I brought in one of those huge bags of candy. It was 5 or 6 pounds and had a great mixture of everyone's favorite. I had the kids count it first thing in the morning. We also did some sorting and graphing. (Had to bring in the Math activities:) )

Then I poured it all into a great big bowl and put it on a desk right in the middle of the classroom. I told the kids we would count it again at the end of the day and if all of it was still there, we would divide it up and they could take their share home.

Talk about self-control!! This was a special ed class. One of these kids was wearing an ankle bracelet and went 'home' to a juvenile facility every night (he was a 9 year old arsonist); a couple of the others were 'BD' kids (Behavior Disordered, but we used to say it stood for 'bad' without the 'a'. Another one was just returning to school after a 6 month suspension for threatening to kill his teacher.

And those children didn't touch that candy all day long. My principal told me later that she thought I had lost my mind but was amazed at how that class calmed down after that day. All I had to do was remind them that they had proven they had self-control and should quit acting like they didn't.