Considering that over 20% of my life has been spent in an elementary school, I find that I am uniquely qualified to give suggestions as to what would make elementary schools better. Here is my almost sickeningly logical plan.1. Replace Valentine’s Day with Candy Day.
I touched on this earlier, and how it is weird that kids are supposed to give a valentine to every other kid in the class, even if they don’t, in fact, love them. The only reason little kids like the day at all is because it means they will get a lot of candy. I know teachers struggle on days when their kids are all amped on sugar, so instead of creating a separate Candy Day, we just replace Valentine’s Day, and save parents the money and hassle of buying that pack of 30 valentines. And there’s less trash for the janitors to pick up. Plus, the very concept of Candy Day is just going to be exciting for the kiddies.
2. Add Lots Of Bathrooms. Everywhere.
Little kids need to go to the bathroom at erratic times, and they are so focused on playing and candy that they often don’t go to the bathroom when they should. No kid ever “kind of” needs to use the bathroom. Either a kid doesn’t, or he REALLY has to go. Storytime: in third grade I was granted the “privilege” of leaving class 10 minutes early to work in the snack bar. (In retrospect, this was really forced child labor, as my only payment for about 45 minutes of work was a 50 cent ice cream bar or bag of chips. But I digress.) Anyways, this one woman walked us to the cafeteria and asked if any of us needed to use the bathroom, and we all said no. About 20 minutes into my shift at work, I really had to go to the bathroom. I tried to hold it, but after 10 minutes I couldn’t take it anymore and jumped out the snack bar window and sprinted a good 200 yards to the bathroom – I made it just in time. When I came back, there was this very angry line of like 30 kids waiting to buy snacks, wondering why no one was behind the counter. After this episode, it was mandatory that we stopped off at the bathroom before working our cafeteria shift.
I touched on this earlier, and how it is weird that kids are supposed to give a valentine to every other kid in the class, even if they don’t, in fact, love them. The only reason little kids like the day at all is because it means they will get a lot of candy. I know teachers struggle on days when their kids are all amped on sugar, so instead of creating a separate Candy Day, we just replace Valentine’s Day, and save parents the money and hassle of buying that pack of 30 valentines. And there’s less trash for the janitors to pick up. Plus, the very concept of Candy Day is just going to be exciting for the kiddies.
2. Add Lots Of Bathrooms. Everywhere.
Little kids need to go to the bathroom at erratic times, and they are so focused on playing and candy that they often don’t go to the bathroom when they should. No kid ever “kind of” needs to use the bathroom. Either a kid doesn’t, or he REALLY has to go. Storytime: in third grade I was granted the “privilege” of leaving class 10 minutes early to work in the snack bar. (In retrospect, this was really forced child labor, as my only payment for about 45 minutes of work was a 50 cent ice cream bar or bag of chips. But I digress.) Anyways, this one woman walked us to the cafeteria and asked if any of us needed to use the bathroom, and we all said no. About 20 minutes into my shift at work, I really had to go to the bathroom. I tried to hold it, but after 10 minutes I couldn’t take it anymore and jumped out the snack bar window and sprinted a good 200 yards to the bathroom – I made it just in time. When I came back, there was this very angry line of like 30 kids waiting to buy snacks, wondering why no one was behind the counter. After this episode, it was mandatory that we stopped off at the bathroom before working our cafeteria shift.
3. Create Economic Incentives.One of my 5th grade teachers, Mrs. Bernard, used to keep everyone completely focused with a reward system based on jellybeans. It was a two-tiered system with crappy large jellybeans (the kind you wouldn’t really eat on your own nowadays) and glorious Jelly Bellies. This is equivalent to giving kids cash, but since society finds that practice odious, this will work as a substitute. After all, if you give a kid money, what is he or she going to buy? Candy. Money is candy, candy is money. Though genial by appearance, Mrs. Bernard actually ruled with an iron fist, threatening to dole out punishments like the “red card” or the dreaded “black card”, which Rich got once for calling a very slightly larger girl “King Kong.” Mrs. Bernard was crafty – she didn’t want her students hopped up on sugar, so the reward for like 30 minutes of good behavior was sometimes literally only 1 or 2 jellybeans. But nonetheless, our class was the most obedient I had ever seen. See, kids need only two things to learn. One is fear (which Asian parents understand well), and the other is economic incentive (which American parents understand well). Mrs. Bernard combined both perfectly, an ideal fusion of east and west.
4. Dramatically Increase Lost And Found Resources.
Little kids lose things constantly, I lost my two favorite jackets because I put it down to play, and then forgot about it later. Then when I went back to the spot, someone had taken it. At my imaginary elementary school, every recess period will be followed with a “street team” which will pick up all items and move them to lost and found. A similar team will work the after-school daycare shift. Don’t act like you didn’t lose stuff too. You totally did.
5. Cleanliness Is Friendliness.
Each classroom will have a sink in the front (should be easy with all the additional plumbing I’m installing for the extra bathrooms) and Purel, and every kid is required to wash their hands and use Purel every time they come back into the classroom. Kids are germ magnets. They get sick all the time, and get other kids in the class sick too. Also, tissues will be widely available. Children have runny noses, but I found in elementary school that it was not always easy to get hold of a quality tissue – oftentimes we would hurt our noses trying to use those rough brown paper towels. Or worse, use our sleeves. Don’t get me wrong, kids are always going to be dirty, but this is a really important item, as I will soon explain.
6. Artificially Generate More School Pride.
We try to teach children to get along with all types of people. Nothing unites disparate people better than a common enemy. I always felt that in elementary school, we didn’t spend enough time being competitive and asserting our dominance over other elementary schools. My school would have an aggressive propaganda campaign about how much better we were than all the other nearby elementary schools. For instance, I would print up fliers saying that other schools had rats in their cafeterias. This will work well, because young minds are especially affected by propaganda.
You may be asking yourself how I am going to finance some of these improvements. Well, I have a lot of methods for that too. One is the cleanliness program, which will mean fewer sick kids and therefore higher attendance. Higher attendance means more funding. Also, when kids are absent, we hire midgets to pose as students for 30 minutes, or whatever the minimum time requirement is to get funding for that day. But the big cost saver will be selling off computers. I hate hearing how schools need a lot of computers. They need a lot of math. And books. And desire to do math and read books. I roll my eyes whenever I read that someone plans to improve a schools’ performance by adding lots of computers. Computers don’t make me want to do math, they make me want to play games. Anyways, by selling the computers, we’ll get cash. Then, we’ll save on the space the computer room is taking up. Then, with better math scores on standardized tests, we’ll get more federal funding and potentially donations from parents who have seen what an awesome job we are doing.
This plan makes so much sense, I frighten myself.
4. Dramatically Increase Lost And Found Resources.Little kids lose things constantly, I lost my two favorite jackets because I put it down to play, and then forgot about it later. Then when I went back to the spot, someone had taken it. At my imaginary elementary school, every recess period will be followed with a “street team” which will pick up all items and move them to lost and found. A similar team will work the after-school daycare shift. Don’t act like you didn’t lose stuff too. You totally did.
5. Cleanliness Is Friendliness.
Each classroom will have a sink in the front (should be easy with all the additional plumbing I’m installing for the extra bathrooms) and Purel, and every kid is required to wash their hands and use Purel every time they come back into the classroom. Kids are germ magnets. They get sick all the time, and get other kids in the class sick too. Also, tissues will be widely available. Children have runny noses, but I found in elementary school that it was not always easy to get hold of a quality tissue – oftentimes we would hurt our noses trying to use those rough brown paper towels. Or worse, use our sleeves. Don’t get me wrong, kids are always going to be dirty, but this is a really important item, as I will soon explain.
6. Artificially Generate More School Pride.
We try to teach children to get along with all types of people. Nothing unites disparate people better than a common enemy. I always felt that in elementary school, we didn’t spend enough time being competitive and asserting our dominance over other elementary schools. My school would have an aggressive propaganda campaign about how much better we were than all the other nearby elementary schools. For instance, I would print up fliers saying that other schools had rats in their cafeterias. This will work well, because young minds are especially affected by propaganda.
You may be asking yourself how I am going to finance some of these improvements. Well, I have a lot of methods for that too. One is the cleanliness program, which will mean fewer sick kids and therefore higher attendance. Higher attendance means more funding. Also, when kids are absent, we hire midgets to pose as students for 30 minutes, or whatever the minimum time requirement is to get funding for that day. But the big cost saver will be selling off computers. I hate hearing how schools need a lot of computers. They need a lot of math. And books. And desire to do math and read books. I roll my eyes whenever I read that someone plans to improve a schools’ performance by adding lots of computers. Computers don’t make me want to do math, they make me want to play games. Anyways, by selling the computers, we’ll get cash. Then, we’ll save on the space the computer room is taking up. Then, with better math scores on standardized tests, we’ll get more federal funding and potentially donations from parents who have seen what an awesome job we are doing.This plan makes so much sense, I frighten myself.
