Santa Bats

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but shortly after I moved into my current classroom way back in 2008 (or was it 2009....), the room became known as The Bat Cave.

It might have been because the room  is hidden away in a secret location. Or it might have been because it is sort of dark with a lower ceiling. Or it might just have been that I was being a bit goofy  (I know, it's hard to imagine, but I do get a bit goofy on occasion)on the way back from the computer lab and hollered out, "Kidlets... To The Bat Cave!".

But WHY the room is called The Bat Cave isn't really important right now.

Right now, all you need to know is that the room is in fact know, in certain circles, as The Bat Cave. Got it? Good. Then let's move on...

About two years ago, a teachers who doesn't feel the need to hang on to every piece of paper that crosses her path, was going to toss out some old Halloween decorations. These doomed decorations happened to include a bunch of construction paper and clothes pin bats and, having heard my room referred to by its nickname a time or two, decided to pass them along to me.

I instantly fell in love the dorky little things (kind of a pattern in my life) and had them nest in my ceiling during Halloween week.

Last year I took them down as soon as November arrived, but this year has been a little bit busier. By the time I got around to thinking about taking them down, I just couldn't do it. The little guys had grown on me. So I left them up, which was cool with the kidlets...until they returned from Thanksgiving.

Having Halloweenish decorations up during the Christmas season apparently offended their sense of propriety (Yes, the children whose main source of humor is bodily functions and who sometimes accidentally put their t-shirts on backwards, have a very strong sense of propriety). For almost two weeks, I listened to them voice their dismay at having Halloween decorations up in December.

So, because I am the sort of teacher who cares deeply about her student's opinions, I came back to school last Saturday and fixed the problem.

 The kidlets were pleased with the bats' new holiday wardrobe, until they noticed that not all of the bats were wearing Santa hats.

I thought about telling them the truth... that I have, like, 20 bats hanging from the ceiling and neither I nor my student aides wanted to take the time to make that many tiny hats. But then they would have felt bad for the bats that didn't have hats, which would have led about half the class to volunteer make more hats instead of working on their study guides. Then, if I were to tell them "no", three or four of them would wait until the lights were turned off during a Smart Board activity and would have tried to make the hats anyway, utilizing the same under-the-desk-dexterity that allows them to text messages longer and more complex than the Magna Carta during class on their cell phones when they are supposed to be taking notes. That would have led to me catching them, which would have led to an awkward conversation about bat hats with our assistant principal, so I decided to go another route.

Instead, I explained to them that the bats without hats choose not to celebrate Christmas. I told the kidlets that the hat-less bats celebrate Kwanzaa instead, which ended up bringing the subject to a successful close for everyone involved...

...Except for the librarians who had to deal with kids standing in line at lunch to use a computer so they could Google "Kwanzaa".