Having been teaching some of my students about Thanksgiving over the last several days, today we inadvertently recreated black Friday.
We’ve been giving out “alligator bucks” – kind of a classroom currency based on an idea I’d piloted during my summer camps classes – as rewards to students for good behavior, etc. And we’ve been opening an “English Store” every few weeks on Fridays to sell them things using the currency: some candy, some stationery and school supplies.
Up through the last time we opened the store, it wasn’t that popular. But a lot of alligator bucks have dropped into circulation, and the consequence was that today, during lunchtime recess, our English classroom was mobbed by students desiring to purchase things from our store. It was exactly like pictures you see of Black Friday shoppers in the US mobbing stores with sales. It was very funny.
Here are some pictures of the mob. It was friendly but impatient. There was a lot of good-natured pushing and shoving. One small first grader, who had alligator bucks that had been given to him by his older sister, was allowed through unharmed. I worked crowd control, feeling like a bouncer at a night club, so the tables with the merchandise wouldn’t be overrun.
And here’s a picture a student took of me with my camera the other day when we were practicing a dialogue memorization for a test.
