Учительница из Вашингтона ввела строгие правила: не завязывает обувь и не режет торт

For years, Ms. Bunny had dutifully crouched down to tie her second graders’ shoes, only to discover that the laces were inexplicably wet — and that it had not, in fact, rained. So she made a rule: She doesn’t tie shoes. That is just one of the policies Bunny, a Washington, D.C., second-grade teacher who goes by Ms. Bunny Teacher on social media to protect her privacy, has adopted over the years. Some parents might call them unreasonable. Bunny calls them boundaries. And after nearly a decade in the classroom, she has decided she is entitled to a few. Bunny recently shared her policies on TikTok, where the video quickly resonated with other teachers who had plenty of their own. First up: shoes. If a child can’t tie their shoes, Bunny says, parents should send them to school in shoes without laces and work on the skill at home. There are exceptions, of course. Bunny is happy to help a child who genuinely needs it, whether because of a disability, sensory issue or occupational therapy needs. One teacher responding to Bunny’s video said she had become so tired of tying shoes that she created a “shoe tying club.” Students who could tie their own shoes could join, and eventually children began asking club members for help instead of their teacher. Next: the enormous water bottles that have become ubiquitous in elementary schools. Bunny says the 32-ounce Stanley-style cups are too loud when they fall off desks, and the spills can turn into “giant floods” when students don’t secure their lids. Now she prefers a small plastic bottle or the water fountains in her classroom. Then there are birthday treats. Bunny wants parents who send cupcakes to provide enough of each flavor for every child to have a choice, or send just one flavor. Ten chocolate and 10 vanilla cupcakes for a class of 20, she says, isn’t enough. Her preference: 15 of each. Or better yet, one flavor. The policy came after a parent once sent cupcakes with several different flavors, including specialty cupcakes. “Everybody cried that day, including me,” Bunny says. She also doesn’t cut cakes. A few years ago, a parent sent in a full Cookie Monster cake, leaving Bunny to divide a small round cake into 24 equal pieces. And she has one more food-related boundary: She doesn’t open anything that has already been chewed. If a student hands her a container or wrapper with a half-eaten snack inside, they’re on their own. Teachers had plenty of birthday-treat stories of their own. “My whole district doesn’t allow birthday treats period and it’s amazing!!” one commenter wrote. Another teacher said a parent once sent an entire watermelon to school — uncut. Bunny says her rules aren’t just about convenience. A big part is fairness. When it comes to food, Bunny doesn’t like the idea of telling a child, “You get what you get.” “I believe in that when it comes to like toy preferences,” she tells TODAY. “Like if I was going to pass out pens, yeah. But with food, I really try to avoid that because we know there are too many hungry kids.” Teachers don’t necessarily know which families are struggling with food insecurity, she says. More broadly, Bunny wants her students to become independent. She noticed after the pandemic that some children were missing basic independence skills. She remembers students bringing her trash and asking what they should do with it. Her response: What do you think? Usually, they figured it out. “I’m teaching reading. I’m teaching math,” Bunny says. “But I think independence is such an important skill.”