Pigeon Wrangling

I am pretty sure that every teacher has that one class. The class that tries your patients and leaves you frazzled. For me that class is a fourth grade class. I am pretty luckily that of my twelve classes only one is a discipline problem. This class is one of my largest and there are three learners who cannot keep still, keep their hands to themselves, or stay quiet. Every time we meet it is a struggle to stay on task and get through the lesson.

On Tuesday two pigeons got trapped in the hall. We had finally closed the windows because of the cold and the pigeons were not able to get back up the hole in the ceiling. The birds kept flying into the windows and I was sure it was only a matter of time until they knocked themselves out on the glass, stupid pigeons. So most of my students would point at the birds and cower if they flew anywhere near us. But not my grade four class. The boys started chasing the pigeons and jumping up to swat them. I kept yelling at them to sit down but I should have saved my breath. Then I noticed that Tumelo had snuck away and was climbing up the mountain of desks and chairs piled up to the ceiling in the far corner of the room. The pigeons had taken refuge there but Tumelo was determined to catch them. I kept yelling for him to stop, all I needed was for the boy to knock over the tower of furniture and get buried underneath. The next thing I know here comes Tumelo with a bird in each hand. How he managed to catch them I will never know. I told him to take the birds outside and his friend released one outside. But Tumelo took off running before I could stop him. The children started laughing saying that he went to flush the bird down the toilet. I don't think it is even possible to flush a pigeon down the toilet but I didn't see what he did with the poor bird. On the one hand the birds were distracting and I was glad they were gone. On the other hand I was very upset that the children were not listening to me and we lost fifteen minutes of class time to catching birds.