Short Stories from a Middle School Teacher: Gold Stars

Gold Stars

One of my favorite things to do my third year of teaching was team teach. The Civics and Economic teacher and I would put our classes together regularly so we could create cross curricular stations and activities for the kids. The arrangement worked out great because, even though there were more kids in the room, the kids were less willing to act up with two authority figures in the room.

One day the Civics teacher’s side of the room was going downhill and fast, while my side of the room was behaving like angels. Finally, he called out, “Whoever is being good will get a gold star!” (Amazingly 8th graders coveted these stars like none other).

The room got completely silent and without missing a beat one of the students on my side of the room said, “You mean like Hitler did to the Jewish people?”

I suppressed my laughter and thought to myself, “Yes, finally they are retaining true things about WWII!”

Then I thought to myself, “Too bad I don’t teach history.”

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