Class Rules: The 5 P's

Has it really been three whole weeks since school got out for summer? I thought about this when I was cleaning out my car today for the first time since... I moved out of my classroom. I had to take a lot of the supplies, posters, etc. home with me so they wouldn't get vandalized over the summer, and some of those things have not yet made it from my car to my apartment/storage yet. (Side note/Life tip: Apparently if you keep your car tidy and don't use it as a storage space, you can save about $50 a year on gasoline! Probably means that skinny people like me also pay less money for gasoline. I don't buy it. Pun intended. Get it? "Buy"? Gasoline? Never mind, that wasn't a good one. Still, can't resist a pun.)

One of the things that has not made it to my apartment yet is a poster of my classroom rules, also known as "The 5 P's." The P's stand for: prompt, polite, prepared, productive, positive. These rules may be considered less than successfully executed, as I look back on my first year of teaching middle schoolers. Here are some things I might reconsider when introducing these rules in the future...

PROMPT: If you are not in your seat when the bell rings, you are tardy. Saying "I'm not tardy" does not make it true. Boys, if your skinny jeans are hanging below your butt, you will probably not make it to class on time. Also, if I say, "You have five minutes to complete this assignment," it doesn't mean, "Think about starting this assignment in five minutes."

POLITE: At least don't use bad words when you're standing right next to me or actually speaking to me. There is no way you will not get a referral. (You'd think they'd learn this by eighth grade.) A bad word is when you know exactly what someone is saying on Jersey Shore, but they beep it out kind of. I know it's confusing, but you can't just leave off the last letter of the bad word. I am an English teacher. I know what you're saying.

PREPARED: I've given up on this one. Next year I'm taping a pencil on a string to each desk. Strike that. Five pencils.

PRODUCTIVE: Note to self: eighth graders have NO IDEA what the word "productive" means. "Productive" means that you can't use the bathroom until you finish your assignment and it's 100% correct.

POSITIVE: When you walk into class, it's not a good idea to say, "This class is so boring," before you even sit down. How do you know? You just got here. What do they do in their other classes to make my class so boring? (I have actually asked them this, and they say, "In Mrs. [X]'s class, she doesn't make us do anything." When did "boring" start meaning something other than "not doing anything"...?)

Is this whole "reflecting on the past year" thing funny yet? Or just painful? I haven't decided yet...