Made Up My Mind For Me

        Book companies will sometimes send me boxes of books to preview for purchase.  The other day I got a preview box in and started pulling out the books.  I was a little concerned because one set of books was about WWE wrestlers.  Our school doesn't really allow anything to do with wrestling.  Our kids are not allowed to wear wrestling shirts or bring wrestling toys to school.  I know that the kids, boys expecially, would really love those books, but I just couldn't decide if I was going to buy them or send them back. I left all the books stacked on my circulation desk that the kids walk by when they come into my room.           That day I had my worst 4th grade class.  It is almost impossible to work with this class.  It feels like it is all boys and everyone of them has a bad attitude.  I rarely make it through that class without writing someone up or sending someone to the office.  One of my trouble makers walks right by my desk as they come into class and knocks the entire stack of wrestling books off.  I could see the look of excitement in his eyes as he bent down to pick up the books and realized what they were about.  As he picked them up he asked if he could check one of them out.  I told him that they were only preview books and that I had not bought them yet.  But if he promised to treat them gently, I would let him look at them during class that day.           By the end of that class I had every one of my trouble makers in a different corner of the room looking at the wrestling books being as quiet and good as can be.  I didn't have a single bit of trouble that day.  When they finished with one book, they would quietly exchange it with one of the other kids, until they had looked at every book.   That day I made up my mind.  I will DEFINITELY be buying the wrestling books!