Honesty

I'm pretty impressed by the honesty of my students. Here are some examples from today.

At one point, during a bible 'sword drill' where the class races to find the bible verse and whoever finds it first and stands up may read it, there was a tie between two of my boys. Well, soon after about 6 of the kids were chanting the name of one boy. This made me pretty mad, and after I asked how they would like it to have the class rooting against them, I called the few whom I had certainly seen to turn their cards.
Well, I didn't notice all of the chanters, because soon I had a few students saying, "I did it too, Miss Peterson." "You forgot me". As they walked to turn their cards.... shame faced. Well, hopefully. :) It was hard to stay mad after that.

Ok, second example. This week the third graders had exams in Spanish class. Today was their History of Jalisco test, and from what I could tell by their anxiety, it would be hard. When I came back to the room after the test and asked how it went, most said pretty well. But one student, who is of my funniest boys but also the one who gets in the most trouble for talking/playing around, told me he things he got a zero. When I asked why he said, "Well, I was looking at Yuri's paper and Miss Charo saw me and told me I would not get all my points". and I asked, "Was it an accident, were you just looking around, or did you really look at her answers to copy them?" and he said, "No, I was really looking at her answers."
tear. He didn't seem to have a great deal of remorse... but he was certainly honest about it. (He assured me he would never cheat in my class.... I'll be seeing about that..)

Oh.... Even though it has been a super crazy, tiring, weird week... I love my kids a lot today. And that makes up for it all.