The Solution

This year, due to budget cuts, we can't afford to hire another teacher for fourth grade. So, each of the three of us has thirty-three students in our homerooms. I've never before had more than twenty-seven students. Usually, I've had between twenty-four and twenty-six. Thirty-three is really just a lot of bodies in one classroom. It means that the number of "difficult" students is higher in each of our rooms, because we cannot divide them into more classes. And when you have a larger number of students who are always pushing the limits, then there will be more of those students who are easily influenced and will follow the example of the rowdy people, so you get a decline in their behavior, too.

Today, following a three-day weekend for our students, each of us had four absent students in our homerooms. It was such a pleasant, calm day. Weird. One of the absentees, a particularly out-of-the-box person, is apparently not coming back since mom came in later in the morning and un-enrolled him. Maybe they had to move. But, at the end of the day, we three teachers met in the hallway, and realized what a pleasure it was to have only 29 students instead of the 33 we had all been dealing with so far this year.

So, a new plan has formed. We will write to our parents and have them sign up on a schedule for a rolling absence. We'll arrange for at least four students to be kept at home each day so that we can have the relative serenity we experienced today on a regular basis. Now, how to get this plan approved by the administration...?  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!  But wouldn't that be cool if we could pull it off?