Always Be Prepared.

For those of you that do not know, "Always be prepared" is the motto for the Boy Scouts.  This is the quote that came to mind when I was in my classroom this week. My CE was up at the front of the room teaching and then these two boys began to talk, not quietly either. She stopped what she was doing, which was rare because she usually reprimanded and continued on with whatever she was talking about. She then said "What's the conversation about?" They both stared at her for a second and one of them said "he doesn't have a pencil." She shook her head and said "so you're not prepared and you're disrupting my class? You can have silent lunch tomorrow." She then walked over and got him a pencil out of the pencil box she keeps in the back of the room. Also, the same day, the phone rang probably ten times and someone knocked on the door and came in 6. She said that her room was like Grand Central Station. She told me later that sometimes you answer the phone and the door more than you actually teach. 

This made me think about, what type of things will I need to be prepared for?  Murphy's Law says that "anything that can go wrong will go wrong" and that's what I need to prepare for, anything. I have to be prepared when students don't have pencils and when they are talking while i'm trying to teach. Any time there are 25 twelve year olds in one room, something you are not prepared for will happen. I decided that I need to keep an open mind and just roll with whatever punches I am thrown. My CE seems to handle her punches very well and I hope that I can do the same.