Teaching infants re-invents your traditional communication channels and patterns totally. Especially in September.
Every sentence that is about to pop out has to be strangled back and re-shaped before it's let loose on the ears it's bound for.
Instead of "If you bang that car on the table one more time, you're for it", there's "Now, we'll all try to be quiet while teacher calls the roll".
Now, this sentence will have to be repeated three times in a row to be as effective as the first one, but it's a September sentence and it must be delivered with patience.
"Teacher gets very sad when we shove crayons up our nose" will soon be replaced by "If you ever do that again you're going to the office". But later, much later . . .
And then there's the voice change. The tone becomes sweeter, quieter, more cajoling. "Tara, come down from the windowsill and you can paint next." And "Rory, I know you're a good boy so I'm going to wait for one more minute until you get out from under the table." But their day will come!
And when you have junior and senior infants in the same classroom, the older ones think teacher has either undergone a total personality change over the summer or has finally lost it.
One way or the other, they soon see a window of opportunity, i.e. teacher will not/cannot lose her cool just yet. Therefore, they soon have a go at some of the things they haven't got away with in a long, long time.
Now, there is some chance of calling your neighbour a b******s when you're still wet behind the ears, but when you're an old soldier of the senior infants variety, forget it!
And so rather than risking traumatising these newcomers to our establishment by letting them hear their kind, calm teacher in full flow, we have decided on a rather shaky Plan B.
The teacher next door will be called upon in moments of dire need to instil fear and caution into the hearts of the errant ones. She will arrive, deliver terrible warnings and threats like an Old Testament prophet of doom, then disappear just as quickly to leave the infant teacher to resume her mild, gentle cajoling for another while.
Oh, but now it's October . . !
