We’re almost there, we're almost there! As I’ve been thinking about what I’ll take with me from this school year, when I’m at my most positive (which is rare, especially these days to be honest!) I find myself holding onto the goofy moments of community with students. We’ve written about simulations we’ve designed to discuss inequity or how we incorporate representation into our curricula... but today I wanted to just highlight some foolishness we’ve done in the past, which are some of my favorite memories.

1. The Annual Birthday Prank

To be perfectly honest, we keep kid birthdays low key. They become difficult to keep up with and there’s always the issue of off school year birthdays or inequities or over the top parental moves. However, we like to model how fun it is to celebrate others together. Our tech director is someone who helped everyone out, is a delightful human being, and we felt was often under acknowledged. We made it a tradition in our classroom to birthday prank him every year and it was always so fun. My favorite was when we made up this slideshow lesson we wanted to show the students and he helped us set it up before his birthday. On the day of his birthday we called his office alarmed that it wasn’t working OH NO PLEASE COME HELP! The students all hid in the classroom and we turned off the lights and when he walked in we turned on Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday, the kids shouted Happy Birthday, and projected a Soul Train dance line video that we all danced around to for 5-10 minutes and hung out. It was simple, free, and a blast.

2. Twin Day Prank

We loved our principal’s assistant/ front desk extraordinaire/ receptionist. Twin Day during Spirit Week often comes with bumps and bruises with hurt feelings and left out moments. We guided our class (and made it seem like it was their idea, to be honest) to agree to the whole class being a huge set of ‘twins’ (I don’t know what you call 30 twins). We brainstormed what we could wear and how we could ALL match. The catch: we were all going to be our front desk extraordinaire. I know printing can be a pain at schools but this was worth it. We printed her face 34 times and each student wore a black top (some inside out) and sunglasses. We all fastened her face onto the front of shirts and surprised her in a big walking line of mini-mes to the front office. We took a group photo with her laying down in front like the queen she is and all of her ‘twins’ and it was hilarious and so memorable. She still has that photo framed to this day.

3. The Surprise Class Pet

I don’t know why (I do, I’m weird) but I love a quirky purchase (sigh, capitalism, I know I am working on it)! It has its perks sometimes though and that includes bizarre purchases that have resulted in memorable ‘class pets’. We never wanted to deal with changing the water for a fish or animal care in general but a class pet can be tons of fun. The image for this post is similar to what I brought back from a trip to New York one time. It was named and beloved. It was laid on, read to, had stories practiced to it during our storytelling unit before performances, was recreated in classroom art, and was the subject of a ton of jokes. We also had a large wooden painted parrot I brought back from Nina and my trip to the DR which was a hit and a fun class pet one year, too.

4. Pomelo hat type challenges

Challenges with no point (I mean, there is always a point, creativity, flexible thinking etc.) are a great punch of foolish fun. After sharing pomelos for Lunar New Year we had a tradition similar to Whose Line Is It Anyways of students trying to wear the Pomelo peels in the most fabulous way. Everyone got their picture taken with their style and neighboring teachers participated too. The creative ideas were endless and that class ended up liking those pictures so much they were their photos for most things that school year. There is nothing quite like a low stakes unconventional who wore it best or how can you use this prop challenge.

Bonus Small Foolishness

Tape in the door - a piece of clear tape across the door in the morning or at the end of the day and so foolish but also fun. Someone will walk into it. Someone will have a giggle.
Surprise guests - inviting a special guest, someone special to do the read aloud (a favorite old teacher, a teacher of a different subject, an older student they all love, an author you’ve read the books of) is such a fun surprise treat. We are big on preparing our students for success with expectations etc, but sometimes these surprises are really worth it.
Googly eyes.. Everywhere. I know this can be chaos. I will say though, that it makes a classroom a lot happier and kids will come up with added challenges for finding all of them or earning ways to add another one somewhere where other students have to find it. You can choose of course how to roll this out and think through the ways it will and can be a distraction, but I’ve had a blast with a very googly eyed classroom a few times.
Food or art treat/party - especially at the end of a read aloud! Food is love! Food is memories! Food can be complicated money wise and allergies wise (and now COVID times wise) but even if it is just everyone getting a piece of fruit that was mentioned in the read aloud and eating it together, it can be a great memory to eat together and talk about food. We have also used this in the past as a way to put eager parents to work (have them go pick up food/bring in food and help with set up and clean up) and as a way to expose kiddos to a range of communities and cultures.
As the year wraps up- making room cleaning (and having them help!!) fun. Music, raffle for classroom signs and posters etc for them to take home.
Music in general - Like food, any memorable songs or class songs for a year create deep and lasting memories. Every time you hear that song or the kids do, they’ll remember that class or that moment. Dance parties, morning music, morning or closing meeting music, an original class music video (we’ve made a few of these, hilarious and worth it) all become soundtracks to your year.

Potential Fun for Next Year

Kudos - we’ve done kudos at the end of each day as a way to celebrate one another. You can have yours be teacher led, choose one student to shout out whomever they want, or choose a few people, you know your class and what would be best management of course. We have a clap we do at the end that makes it feel a little more celebratory (ie: “I’d like to give a kudos to Ms. Sethi for helping me with my Math. Kudos on 2, 1-2”. Everyone together: *clap clap*)
Class Logo - we’ve done this as part of our classroom contract at the beginning of the year along with redesigns and personal logos. Art is another way to have some fun and connect and having a class logo is something a few of our more artsy classes have taken pride in (and even put the class rules/values into)! One year we had kiddos so into it they asked us to make copies and then they all had them on their computers and in their lockers. Who needs a Nike swoosh when you have original awesome art like that?