The Teacher is Punishing Kids for Coughing

My third grader gets tickets in class as a reward system which she can cash in for erasers and stickers and stuff like that which will end up in the car, on the floor, in the backpack, or in the toilet.

It’s cool. We get it. A reward system is cool.

Then she came home this week and said, “Daddy Ms xxxxx is charging us tickets if we cough now”.

Screech to a stop. I’ll call her Mrs xxxxx for her own protection.

What? Yeh, she says they’re being charged tickets if they cough. Apparently, too many kids are coughing in class so they’re now being charged some of those reward tickets if they cough.

I hate to break it to the teacher, but elementary school is a freakin’ petri dish of illnesses, boogers, bugs, and cooties. That crap breeds there like a sickly stew. The kids cough because they get sick from being in the class with forty other kids who sneeze into their sleeves and then share go-gurts around the table. If Ms xxxxx intends on charging each kid who coughs, I should charge Ms xxxxx for each time the kids come home sick. I’d be freakin rich.

Turns out, it’s never that simple with an 8-year -old’s story. One’s B-S-ometer must always be on alert.

The real story: there is a problem in class of fake coughing. Yeh, fake coughing.

How do people know it’s fake I asked my kid? And she proceeded to do one of those lungey, juicy, snorty coughs that make you want to throw up. Apparently that’s the fake cough and this is a way to try and curb the fake cough epidemic.

It’s gone so far that there’s apparently a ‘sick list’ Ms xxxxx keeps to keep track of who’s really sick and who’s just fake coughing, because apparently they get shits and giggles from fake coughing.

Okay so now I don’t know which side to pounce on. I was all ready to freakin’ pounce with my daddy blogger claws out, and now I don’t know where to pounce? I can only imagine the chorus of phlemmy coughs going around a class while the lady is trying to spit out a lesson plan without spitting up in disgust. My kid, who was charged tickets the first day for coughing, is now actually on the sick list so she’s not getting charged anymore.

Now, I might applaud Ms xxxxx for trying a creative solution to an annoying problem. But, I don’t know what to think except I might actually start charging the kids tickets at home for farting. And not fake farting. Real farting. Again, I’d be rich.

Pete Wilgoren is an Emmy award winning journalist who writes about his often surprising, embarrassing, and educational experiences surrounded by a wife and two little girls. Find Dadmissions on Facebook and on his blog Dadmissions.