Winged Distractions

Birds used to (and likely still do) fly into the big living room window at my parents place often. They just thought inside looked super inviting I guess. Never have I ever been in a classroom when a bird has wanted to get in there though. What this says about my classrooms I'm not sure... I guess they weren't very bird inviting?

That is until the other day.... I'm going to leave out the grade level and we can all play a fun little game where we try to guess what grade I was teaching.

So we are all quietly doing our work when all of a sudden we hear a bang at the window. A couple of heads turn around and I ask "did a bird just fly into the window". That's when nearly every student in the room instantly got up and dashed to the window. The window in this particular room wasn't even very big.. so kids were sitting on the counter, standing behind the counter and then standing on chairs just to catch a glimpse of the outside world and the bird that may still be there.

Turns out it was a bird that flew into the window... or at least they found one on the ground (I'm assuming the two instances are related). Of course, when you see a bird on the ground your first instinct is to go out and help it out. Numerous students then asked me if they could go outside. I told them they couldn't because I didn't want them picking up the bird. They also asked if they could bring the bird inside... I definitely told them no to this because I didn't want to be the one responsible for a bird flying around the school. Eventually though a couple of very concerned girls didn't care and rushed out there... the rest of the class looked on from inside.

About a minute later one of the students from inside told me that one of the girls was now holding the bird... great I think to myself... so I go outside and see her stroking the tiny bird's head. Eventually the vice principal happened to walk by and I told him what happened and he convinced the girls to put the bird back on the ground (apparently it fell right over as soon as they put it down) and we all got back to the classroom.

This was when everyone had to share their bird stories.

"Once a bird flew into our window"

"Once a bird flew into our house!"

"Once I had a pet bird"

It went on and on... in typical grade 1 fashion. Only this wasn't grade 1... it was grade 8.

I guess you are never too old to share related stories when something exciting happens.