National Thank You Week

I'll be honest... today was not nearly as interesting as yesterday at school when I had a student ask me "...if girls could be gay in Afghanistan." BUT, that is a tough one to top, I admit! (-:

It has been decided amongst the other sixth grade teachers that I am a passive teacher. I say things to the kids like: "please take out your books and begin reading silently." Apparently this gives them a choice of whether or not they want to take out their books and begin reading silently. Like they could say, "No thank you" if they felt like it. Or, another example might be, "Johnny, would you like to stop talking to your neighbor and join our class discussion?" because in all likelihood he could retort with a "no thanks. It's more interesting over here." So, I'm working on being an assertive teacher. This teacher sounds more like: "it's time for reading. Take out your books and turn to page 57." etc... no pleases or thank yous. (bummer man, because it's National Thank You Week this week!) Anyway, I decided to try this new found attitude on some friends last night:
"We are going to get ice cream, now." (so now if the person decided to disobey this DIRECT COMMAND, there will be consequences.) "Okay, you've chosen to not follow directions, so these are your options. You can either take me to get some ice cream or you can stay here while I whine about it all night." See how effective that is? You can really use this knowledge in MOST situations, and so far it has proven to be pretty powerful stuff.
Because of it's success rate in my own life I decided to pass it on to you. Now I'm off to bed to rest up for another fun day of being an ASSERTIVE 6th grade teacher.