The Positive

I have been trying to see the positive in things, so here is a recent list:

1. My student from Kazakhstan called another student a bi#%h. I asked him if he knew what the word meant, he said no. I wanted to reward him because he used the word correctly (she kind of is one) but instead just scolded him and told him to not say that word at school.
2. One of my kids from Pakistan has said two funny things recently (be sure to read these with a thick Pakistani accent). 1). "Sometimes when I am eating my cereal, I imagine that my cereal bowl is a portal to Pakistan. I dive in and I am there!" 2. While reading a book about dinosaurs, he asks, "I don't understand: If people did not live at the same time at dinosaurs, how did they get this picture of dinosaurs?" I did a really poor job at explaining the difference between a drawing and photograph. Poor kid. He probably still does not get it.
3. We published the first (and last) edition of "The Fourth Grade News." I loved seeing all the kids really excited to receive their copy. I just had to stage this photo.
4. My students are really starting to love books. I recently stopped reading Esperanza Rising right at the good part. There was an uproar. "No!!! Keep reading! We have to find out what happens!" Very satisfying.
5. There are only 5.5 weeks of school left.

nonscents

About noon on Wednesday, I got whiff of an intolerable funk coming from the southwest corner of my classroom. After a while, when it did not go away, I confirmed the smell with the SPed teacher. We chalked it up to a student having bad gas (with 16 ten year old boys, these smells are not unusual) and figured it would go away at 3:30. But, after the students left, the smell lingered. I called a few other people into the room to make sure I was smelling what I thought I was smelling. They all confirmed that my classroom smelled like poo. But, nobody could find the source.
At this point, I have become obsessive. Where is this smell coming from? I searched every chair, under all desks, my own shoes (did I step in poo?) but I could not find it. Finally, the cleaning person came in and she said, "Yeah, it really smells in here." She started moving tables and..there it was. A turd-about the size of a baseball-under a computer table. I gasped and ran out of the room. Immediately, my mind fills with questions: How did the turd get there? Who put it there? Was it an unfortunate bathroom accident or a malicious act? If it was brought in to punk me, how did the student bring it to school? And, the biggest question of all, how did I not notice the turd being deposited in its current location?
So, I found the principal and she tells us to just clean it up and we will talk to the students about it in the morning. We are all in disbelief and yet, find the whole thing pretty hilarious. So, the next step is to plan the strategy to talk to the students. After much discussion (Do we come down hard? Scream and yell? Pull the old, "nobody is going anywhere until we find out who did this" scene?) we decided to not say anything. If it was an accident, that child does not need to be singled out. If it was done as a prank, that child wants to get a rise out of me so it is better to just let it lay low. I came into school in the morning and a fellow teacher gave me a card with a big ol' pile of poo on the front of the card. I strategically placed it on the bookshelf behind my desk so if any students were paying attention, they would notice it. And this is what I said to my students in the morning:
"I was here late last night dealing with the stinky thing somebody left in our classroom. If you did it and it was an accident, I am sorry that happened to you. If you did it on purpose, know this: you are a disgusting person. You know who you are and you are disgusting." So, of course the uproar starts: "what happened? who did what? What did you find?" I say nothing. About 30 minutes later, a student finds the poo card and says, "Who gave this to you?" I say, "Oh, Mrs. P. gave it to me this morning." When they ask why, I just shrug my shoulders and watch the chaos unfold. Somebody, somewhere, knows who did it and I will find out. Their little hearts can't keep this big of a secret forever.

untitled

Every day I hear a story from one of my students that blows me away. Recently I heard that one of my students does not eat dinner because her mom puts her in her room (with her two siblings) and shuts the door at 7 p.m. and then parties all night with her friends. My student's words were, "there is really loud music and my mom has a lot of friends come over." In the morning, she gets up with her two siblings and grandma drives them to school. She said, "it is too hard to wake mom up." She lives part time with mom and part time with grandma and it is no wonder she comes to school without her homework. Sometimes she doesn't even have her back pack-mom or grandma just drop her off with nothing.

Here is the other heart wrencher for the week: One student (who never confides in me) asks if he can talk to me in private. This student lives with his grandmother, and his grandfather just died (not related to his grandmother guardian). He has been having a really tough time. Not the kind of hard time where you cry and are sad. He is having the kind of hard time where you punch kids and rip up other people's papers.
We go outside the room and he says, out of the blue, "My auntie died in 2004. She was shot in the brains." I reply (as if I hear this every day), "Are you thinking about her because of your grandfather and the funeral that is coming up?" He replies yes and I say, "How does it make you feel?" He says, "sad." I asked him who shot his auntie and he says, "her boyfriend." I asked if they caught him and he said, "Yes. He is in jail for fifty years." And I am supposed to teach him long division.

Insults and Ignorance

Insults
After lunch, my students are incredibly squirrely. I am convinced it has to do with the preservatives, high fructose corn syrup and trans fats that are in the school lunch. Every day it is a battle when I pick them up from the cafeteria. On this particular day, one of my students could not get himself together: spinning in circles, hopping up and down, throwing his sweatshirt around, you get the idea. So, at the classroom door, I stop the class and tell this student for the billionth time to calm down, get in line and get ready to go back to class. He responds, "Aarrgh! Woman!" You know, with the lip pop and all. I almost lost my mind. Luckily I filled up on patience that day (the previous day I broke a clipboard by slamming it down on a desk-low on patience) and just stared at him with giant eyes for about 45 seconds while the rest of the class just stood and watched. At first he said, "What?" But when I didn't budge, he eventually realized that what he had said was not OK with me and apologized.
When I told my fellow teachers what had happened, they all said, "At least he didn't cuss at you." I am not so sure.
The sad part is that he hears this type of thing at home and thinks it is OK.

Ignorance
We have been practicing our state standard testing since we all get tested in March. The pressure is really intense as I am judged as a teacher on how well my students do on this test. One of the things that is tested is ability to respond in writing to a given text. So, we are reading a non-fiction story about elephants and how smart they are. The writing prompt says something like, "The author of this article thinks elephants are smart. Use examples from the text to support this idea." Well, it was written better than that, but you get the point. So, I am circling the room to see what my students are writing. The response should be at least two paragraphs in length and I notice one student has written four words-all of which I can't read. So I say to him, "Go back in the story and find a part that says something about elephants being smart." He responds, "But it doesn't say anything about that." I say, "Yes it does, go back and circle the sections that explain how elephants are smart." He says, "But in this story the elephants aren't talking." I then realize that he thinks elephants can talk. So, of course the elephants in this story aren't smart because they aren't talking. Remember, I teach fourth grade, not pre-K. I wanted to yell "Elephants can't talk!" But I didn't. I just walked away and watched my test scores go down the drain.
The kid watches way too much of the cartoon channel. And needs to visit the zoo.

Irony and Underoos

I had such a bad case of after school giggles today, I had to write them down. Here they are, in four acts.

Act one-Irony
It took my students 45 minutes to come up two flights of stairs. They were not following the school procedures for being quiet and keeping hands to themselves. With 16 boys, I know this is challenging but we keep working at it until we get it right. So after about 20 minutes of going up and down the stairs, I had lost the ability to speak and just watched them yell at each other. Here is a a typical interaction: "Shut Up! She's getting mad (meaning me)." "You shut up! Your the one that's talking!" "If you all would stop talking, we could go back to class!" And on and on.
Oh the irony...if they would all stop talking, we wouldn't be standing there. They just don't get it.

Act two-The Kid From the Former Soviet Union
After school, I asked the volunteer that is in my room how it went today with a student that I have from the former Soviet Union-I won't name the country. The school is just too small. He has very limited English. Her reply, "Not so good."
I say, "Isn't he supposed to be cutting out pictures of articles of clothing from the newspaper and labeling them?"
"Yes, but he just took the scissors and stabbed the newspaper."
Great.

Act three-Super Pencil and Backwards Pants
I pull a student out of my class to have a chat because he has had an especially hard day. At one point he had his "Super Pencil" (just a regular pencil that he has given super powers) duct taped to his forehead. In hind-sight, the duct tape had to come from my desk drawer. Interesting. How and when did he get it?
Anyway, I pull him into the hall to talk with him about the issues we have had today.
"What do you think I am going to ask you?" I say.
"If I took my medicine today," he replies. He is on ADHD medicine and I can tell as soon as he comes to school whether or not he has taken it.
"Well, did you?"
"Some of it," he lies. We have been through this before. Some of it means none of it.
I say, "Well, I can tell and I need to tell your mom that you didn't take it."
He thinks he's tricky and says, "Oh no. It's OK, I'll tell her."
Yes, my students think I am a fool.
Then I notice his pants look funny. I say, "Student Name, do you have your pants on backwards?"
Student replies, "Yes."
I am so used to the craziness, I didn't even bother to ask why. I told him to go to the bathroom and change his pants around. He asks, "What if somebody sees me?"
I respond, "Go into the stall." I can't help but wonder if his concern for being seen had anything to do with the underoos I noticed sticking out of is pants when I pulled up his shirt to see if my suspicions of backwards pants was correct. He thinks he is so tough, but now I know he wears underoos.

Act Four-Just Reading
Upon entering my classroom, I find that one student has moved his desk half way across the room and is just sitting there like nothing is wrong. He does this all the time. So, I take his desk and move it into the hall. Where I can see him, of course. He is bawling because I moved him. I mean, hysterically sobbing. Just one of four boys that cried today in my class. He eventually calms down and I find out later that when asked by a teacher why he was sitting in the hall, his response was "I just wanted to sit out here and read." Well....at least he's reading. Or is he?

What a Day!

It is difficult to write because I do not want to diminish the importance of today by the minuscule details of my own experience. I will say that I had an amazing day and am honored to have been here to experience the joy. I hope the pictures tell the story that I am unable to write at this moment. Plus, I would like to get back to celebrating with my friends. :)

On This Moment

Lincoln Memorial-closed as soon as I got there.

Frozen reflection pond.




Obama's viewing box for the parade.


This may be as close as I will ever get.

In front of the Capitol Building-where the action is going to be tomorrow.

1/19/09

I went down to the DC Mall to see what I could see. It was crazy. But awesome crazy. You can’t put millions of out of towners in one place and not have a little bit of chaos. I tried to go to the Lincoln Memorial, but it was closed. So, instead of battling crowds in museums or landmarks, I decided to just stay on the Mall and experience what was happening around me.
As I was walking around, I was overcome with emotion. I started thinking about the importance of this event and what it means for this nation and the world. The DC Mall is like a walk through American History-wars and presidents. And tomorrow, history will be made and all the millions of people that are in DC find tomorrow’s moment so important that they made the journey here to see it. Being here is more powerful than I imagined. I couldn’t help but think that I was part of something so much bigger than myself. It is almost too big to comprehend.
As the tears flowed and I looked at the World War II Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial, I tried to find the source of the tears. It appears to be very complicated, but this is what I have figured out so far:
Not since a small child have I felt proud to be an American. In fact, I often felt shame, especially when in the company of people from other counties. But today, I am proud of what my country has done. The load of shame-that I didn’t even know I was carrying- has slightly lessened. I think the tears were part of that release.
The tears were also spurred by my beginning to understand of the power of hope. For 8 years (maybe even longer) I have had little hope in the leaders of this nation-and some other nations for that matter. But today, sitting with all those people walking by, hope could be felt in the air. Adults were talking to children about history and political policies and people were dancing to the music from yesterday’s concert. I didn’t even realize what I was missing when I had lost hope. Is it Obama that has brought the hope back or is it the people?
The children dancing around made me think about my students and the other children in my life. What will this moment mean for them? My mind stumbled upon a story my cousin told me about going to vote during her pregnancy. After voting she touched her belly in a moment of hope for her unborn baby. Last week she gave birth to baby Rowan. We all know there continues to be atrocities and violent injustices in the world. But I can’t help but hope, because of this moment in history, the injustices that Rowan will experience will be a little less. And he, in turn, will never be without hope.

"Education Made Everything Possible." -Barack Obama

Currently listening to Ira Glass-all about Obama-and getting ready to head to DC tomorrow. I can't wait to feel the energy of the city. Unfortunately, this blog will be blocked on the school's network. So, my students will not be able to follow along as much as I had wished. I know some of my students will never get to DC and really wanted them to feel as much a part of history as I do. It will have to wait until I return.