PBS, A Hot-Button Issue Among the Elementary School Set

Overheard while my students were arriving for drama class...

student 1 (a 2nd grader): if you could vote, who would you vote for?
student 2 (a 3rd grader): romney
1: do you watch PBS?
2: yeah! i watch it after school all the time.
1: you know if romney wins, he's gonna shut down PBS. forever.
2: but that's STUPID! we need that! well, never mind. who would vote for that? does he hate kids?
1: he might. he seems kinda jerky...

My Awesome Dancers

i love these girls, plain and simple. they're funny, they love to dance, and they work hard (most of the time). this is a routine they'd been working on for only 2 classes at this point; which means when you factor out warm-up time, bathroom/water breaks, and occasional silliness, they'd probably only spent about 60-70 minutes learning and practicing this. which is pretty awesome until it all falls apart. :o) i'm so proud of these kiddos - and hopefully i'll get them doing the full thing later this week...

update: i can't get the video to upload so i'll try to get a video on my phone this week...

Kindergarten Insight

to be honest, i’m really not cut out to teach little kids. i MUCH prefer my high-schoolers, thank you very much. i do, however, readily admit that little kids can be a great source of amusement. These are some of the things posted on the walls of the kindergarten/first grade pod at one of our “science club” schools.

first, sing with me now: "one of these things is not like the others..."

"oh, one of these things just doesn't belong..."

(“um, i kinda misunderstood the assignment…”)

and i love the reasoning behind their choices. for example, these may seem reasonable and obvious enough:

and then we have these:

simple, honest, and to the point. love it.

Thank You For Being a Friend...

conversation with a 6-year-old last friday:

child: i'm going to oma's [his grandmother] this weekend!
me: cool! what are you going to do there?
child: oh, i usually chase the cats. but there's just one now.
me: yeah? what's its name?
child: blanche. she's still alive! the other one died, though. she was old.
me: what was her name?
child: rose.
me: [stifling laughter] of course it was. did she have another cat named dorothy?
child: nope. [pause while he tilts his head at me.] but she has a dog named dorothy!
me: [breaking into giggles] of COURSE she does! have fun with 'the girls'!

hilarious....

Quote of the Day

via amy, who is an elementary music teacher:

from kindergarten... upon hearing that we'd be singing/ reading the book "Puff the Magic Dragon" again, little girl says to her neighbor... Puff the Magic Dragon! That's my JAM!

pure awesomeness.

From The Small Obnoxious Girl Today:

"yo, yo, yo! my name is jo*, i gots a 'fro**, i wear my pants down low. wooooooooooooorrrd!"

*incidentally, her name in not "jo"

** nor does she have a "fro"; she is korean, so she has the standard "long, black, shiny" 'do.

I Have a Little Student... She Is Small and Very Funny

if you've never seen the kids show "charlie and lola", well, you should.  it's supercute and clever and funny - the kind of show parents actually like watching with their parents. (or the kind jen and i watch even if gray isn't in the room...) anyway, one of my kindergartners reminds me so much of lola that i've actually started calling her that, which is ok by her since she "loves that movie".  (actually, when i called her that yesterday, she said - hands on hips - "actually i can't be lola.  i don't have butterflies in my hair!") she doesn't have the british accent, but because she lived in the u.k. and went to pre-school there, there's an english formality to her phrasing and cadence. she's pretty awesome, and she entertains me daily.  and for those of you not in the know, here's a little glimpse of the kind of shenanigans i get to witness daily...

Things I Learned While Subbing For an Eighth Grade History Teacher

1. 8th graders make me alternatively giggle and want to throw things at their heads.

2. in primitive west africa, yams were so important to their livelihood that committing adultery in a yam field was considered a criminal offense to traditional Ibo law. Here's where i get slightly confused - notice the "was" in the previous sentence. from that, i assumed that we were still dealing with primitive west africa. however, the next sentence after that was, "adultery occurring elsewhere is a civil offense." does this mean these laws are still in effect? stay away from those yam fields on dates, people...

3. you know those those stuffed animal things that are made to look like a sleeping dog or whatever, and they have a motor in them so that their stomaches rise and fall like they're breathing? this teacher had one on her front podium. they are creepy; the end.

4. apparently the new fad amongst middle school boys is to buy glue sticks - preferably the purple kind - and pull off chunks and throw them at each other. really? chucking glue chunks at each other? how do they come up with these things? and how do they convince others that this is a good idea?

5. "sleep tight" came from using ropes pulled across a bedframe to support the mattress. you had to pull those ropes taut every couple of days or the bed would sag and you'd end up on the floor

6. the quote of the day came when four students (all boys, of course) had to borrow paper to do the assignment because they had none. when i asked how they expected to get through school without paper, one of the students claimed he was too poor for that. before i could reply, a girl on the other side of the room said, "you're too poor for paper, but you got fresh kicks every day? shoot. you're a liar, boy." well said, my friend, well said.

You Know, Sometimes I Worry

i overheard a discussion between a few of my children today. and that's what they are: children. most of them are only 14 or 15 - which is why it bothered me so much to hear this conversation.

one of the girls was telling another that it had been 3 months since she last had sex. the other girl replied that it had been 2 weeks and 2 days for her. one of the guys threw in his stat of a couple of months.

wow, really? i remember being in 9th grade. i remember being 14 or 15. i don't remember discussing casually in a classroom the last time i had sex. in fact, the couple of girls who were rumored to have slept with someone (at least the ones not in long-term relationships) were gossipped about mercilessly. the guys too, to some extent. there's always been a double standard there, but for the most part we seemed to understand that something that big was a little beyond what we could deal with emotionally. i think that what bothered me the most today was not the topic, but the blase way they talked about it. it was no big deal; clearly, everyone around them had had sex, so it was an easy choice for a topic.

i wonder if it has to do with sex education, or lack thereof. in the 5th or 6th grade, the girls and guys were separated and explained the basics of puberty and periods and whatnot, but in jr. high - in our gym classes - we had a whole unit on sex education. we're talking a 6 week, in-depth, mortifyingly detailed unit. we learned how and why people have sex; we learned the pros and cons; we learned about std's and issues that people have dealt with; we learned about disease and problems that can lead to death; we learned about birth and how it works and how a baby grows. basically, we learned that it was an important subject, one that had weight and needed to be thought about. i asked some other teachers at lunch (who used to work at k-8 and elementary schools) what kind of sex ed kids get now. apparently, they just get the hormone talk. i truly wonder if this lack of detail is part of what leads them to take sex so casually. i'm sure media and adverts don't help; and compounding these images on top of not taking sex seriously make for a very dangerous lack of morals. or even the concept of what morals are and how to uphold them.

two students i had two years ago are now pregnant. they're 16. there are at least 4 other girls i know of at school that are pregnant. it's not even a big deal anymore. a girl in my class got pregnant my junior year - it was a big deal. her parents had to agree to take care of her son while she was in school, and to support both of them. It was something that was taken seriously, whether or not you supported her. Now it's just casually mentioned. "oh, you remember sabrina from last year? yeah, she just had her baby." "hey, kelly's pregnant, did you hear? she and jorge are moving in with his parents." and it's not that there's a 40-year gap, either; it's less than 15.

are we really raising a generation of kids that have no concept of consequence? that scares me a little.

The Latest Fad - And I Swear I'm Not Making This Up...

the latest fad on our high school campus? no, it's not what the teens are wearing, it's something they're playing with. you may ask, is it a new cellphone, perhaps? nope. a new high-tech mp3 player? not even close. the newest craze - to the point that i have to tell them to put it away because they need to do work - is the rubik's cube.

what's that, you ask? have we somehow landed in 1983? (it wouldn't be hard to draw that conclusion given the footless tights, day-glow shirts, and ballet flats that all the girls are wearing, but i digress...) no, it seems that since these kids weren't alive in the 80's, they missed out on the entertaining and puzzling color cube. they have now found it, and it's the latest thing to see how long it takes you to solve it. they have races. i am not making this up. and these races are not being done by the nerdy social pariahs. oh, no, these are the normal, fairly popular, main-stream kids.

it just boggles my mind.

English 1 - Open-Book Quiz: Question 16

Please complete the "Quickwrite" on page 220 in your textbook.

Quickwrite: What is your most prized possesion? What is most important to you? If there was a fire and you only had time to get one thing out of your house, what would it be and why?

there were lots of garden-variety answers...

"I would save my photo album of all my friends and family."
"My family is most important to me, so I would make sure I had them first."
"I'd save my cat (dog, bird, etc.) first."

there were some sweet, sentimental answers...

"I would save my gold necklace that my grandma gave me because I don't get to see her very often."
"I would take the photo of me and my sister - we'll probably never be as happy as we were in that picture because our lives changed shortly after it was taken."
"It might sound weird, but my cellphone. My cousin gave it to me, and he died a few months later."
"My blankie. I've had it since I was a month old and just having it in my room makes me feel better. We've been through a lot together."

some were practical...

"I'd take my laptop, because first, it has all my pictures and music on it, and second, because it was expensive and my parents would kill me."
"I would grab my cell phone because that way I could call for help."

and then there were these two...

"I would make sure to save my dog because I love him. (But my most prized possesion is my PS2)"

...and my favorite...

"My most prized possesion is my Xbox. Without it, I wouldn't be able to play Halo 3, and then what would I do?"

well, at least he's honest...