So I thought that because I teach older students I wouldn't have to deal with things like puke and kids peeing in their pants..... Well, apparently that is not necessarily the case, even with 6th graders. I definitely had to deal with some gross bodily secretions today. And I didn't just have to deal with them......no, no, no. I had to deal with them ON me! Let me explain....
During my second period class today I was up in front of the class getting ready to go over a worksheet with my students. I was standing in front of the desk of one of my students waiting for everyone to be ready. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him fling something to the ground. I thought it was just a spit wad or a piece of crumpled up paper. Regardless, he threw something on my floor, so I gave him "the look" so he knew he'd been caught. He said he was sorry and then looked down, somewhat embarrassed. This student can tend to be chatty, but he doesn't purposefully cause mischief on a regular basis, so I figured a stern look was good enough for the first offense.
I began walking around the room and happened to look down at my leg. Guess what he had flung? I'll give you a hint, it definitely WASN'T a spit wad! I wish it had just been a spit wad. Stuck to the leg of my pants was a big, giant, nasty, juicy, slimy BOOGER!!! It was seriously DIS-GUS-TING! The thing was like an inch long. It would have been one thing if it was just a dry crusty booger, but this was no dry booger, I assure you....otherwise it wouldn't have stuck so firmly to my pants! I immediately began yelling about the booger on my leg. I wasn't yelling in a mean way though because I knew he hadn't done it on purpose, it was more like in an "Oh my gosh there's a booger on my leg!" kind of way. Clearly, I wasn't being that mean, because all of my students were laughing at the situation.
I told the student that he needed to come here right away. I asked him why in the world he had been flinging a booger on the floor, because even if it hadn't landed on my leg, he shouldn't have been flinging boogers! His response was: "It was hard to get off my finger." (This student can be a bit aloof at times.) I told him that boogers should go in tissues.
After my brief clarification of the situation, I held my leg out and told the student that he needed to get a paper towel or a tissue right away to wipe the booger off my leg, because I sure as heck wasn't going to touch it. He did as he was told, but after he wiped my leg off, there was still some leftover booger residue. So I promptly proceeded to the classroom sink where some of the girls helped me to get a wet paper towel and soap and more thoroughly clean off my pants. After I was done scrubbing, they held out the hand sanitizer for me to disinfect my hands. It was actually very sweet of them.
After the booger was removed from my leg and my pants were as clean as I was going to get them without a washing machine, I returned to the front of the classroom. Before proceeding to the lesson that we were about to begin before this whole ordeal had happened, I got up on my soap box and gave a little lecture about the proper place for boogers and what a tissue is for. I repeated multiple times that when you have a booger to get rid of it should go in a tissue, NOT on the floor. I purposefully directed this lecture at the student who had done the booger flinging. It wasn't like the whole class didn't know he had done it anyways, so he really wasn't that embarrassed by it. (I have been discovering that the kids in Chevak don't have the same embarrassment level about bodily functions as other kids I have met.) Plus, he was laughing along with the rest of the class, because, let's face it.....if you think about it, it was pretty funny. I can't say that I want it to happen again, but it certainly gave me something good to put in my blog :) I guess it's good to be able to laugh about these situations.
Oh, and those pants went straight into the laundry basket when I came home.
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