I didn't work at a school with a lot of overprotective parents. Mostly they told their kids to kick the asses of anyone who messed with them. We did have a few rules at recess, like no tackle football. Although I wouldn't say that these parents are the models for good parenting, it might be even more disturbing to hear about this kind of thing. No games at recess? Kids need games. And by the way, kids need to skin their knees. It builds character. And makes for good scars and stories later in life.
There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals. This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle. For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people. It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them. Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how
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