Kindergarten Highlight

Okay, please comment and tell me what to call this segment. I realized that "Overheard in Kindergarten" doesn't really work since most of the hilarities are directed straight to my face. Anyway, here is a gem!

• It's RED RIBBON WEEK the week designed for teachers to threaten their students not to ruin their lives with stupid substances. Yesterday I made the little muffins swear not to do drugs. Today we talked about smoking. We looked at a picture of normal lungs and smoker lungs and discussed some of the effects of smoking. To illustrate, I read the kids a version of the 3 little pigs in which the Big Bad Wolf is a chain smoker. When he goes to blow the house down, he huffs and puffs, but just ends up coughing and hacking. The straw house never moved. Afterwards as the kids were getting ready to go home, Alec says to me, "Teacher, I haven't been smokin'--but guess what? If I laugh real hard, I still cough."

[Side note: its rather striking for me to compare the kids in my class this year in a relatively affluent area in Layton with the kids I taught on the west side of Salt Lake City. I celebrated Red Ribbon week with both classes and in Salt Lake each kid had a drug bust story (often in their own home!) whereas in Layton only one kid had a dad who smoked cigarettes. I wish that kids never had to experience horrible things.