Class President

Alyssa is all about rules. She loves them. She told me so when I posted a list of "guidelines" on our arts and crafts cabinet. They were simple things like: share the supplies, ask before you take out paint, clean up when you are finished, don't use the scissors on your hair etc...I didn't call them "rules" on purpose because I didn't want to stifle the girls' creativity by putting a up a list of regulations in a place where I hoped they would want to create art.

They were definitely interpreted as rules. This was made evident by Alyssa writing on the list I had so painstakingly created with cute little clip art images, "Follow the rules. It's Fun! I love rules!" Anyway, she appreciates order which leads us to an assignment she had at school a couple of weeks ago...
 She had to write a speech and design a campaign poster to run for Class President. It was just an assignment, and there will not actually be a president elected, but she gave it a lot of thought nonetheless.


She presented her speech to us and I was impressed, it was so "Alyssa" with her high regard for rules and structure in the classroom (you can read her little notecards below).
 When she gave her presentation in class, she got laughed at. It made me question if I should have said something beforehand. While I loved her little speech and thought it was sweet, I could have predicted a less than favorable reaction from her classmates based upon her platform of minimal distractions in the classroom, a reasonable amount of homework, and appreciation for the education they were receiving being that it would prepare them for their future careers.

Thankfully, the more we talked about it, I realized she didn't take their laughter personally and she wasn't hurt by it as much as she was irritated. She said that she and one other girl were the only ones who took the assignment seriously and that the kids were making campaign promises about bringing in big screen TVs and video games and having (2) two hour long recesses each day. She was appalled by those ideas, and asked me why she always has to be the serious one in her class. I told her she didn't have to be...she chose to be, and I was very proud of her ideas of what would make a good class president and the hard work she put into the assignment.

The fun of navigating through the fifth grade world ~ and I'm sure it doesn't get any less complicated from here. :-)