November 2007 Archives
A few weeks ago two of my girls discovered a tiny frog hopping into the girls' bathroom. They came into class all excited, so I called the custodian to tell her about it, and to ask her to let the kids have a look if she was able to catch it. 15 minutes later she came down to my room with the critter in a little plastic ramekin with holes punched into the lid. Predictably, the kids went nuts- crowding around, telling high pitched stories about other frogs they'd seen. After a while I brought the frog next door to my friend Hannah's class, so her kids could have a look. We let the frog go at recess, and it hopped away, happy as can be.
As I said, that was weeks ago. But the memory of the frog lives on among my students. I used the story a few times to model the writing process because the kids were a part of it, and thus invested. First I wrote a very boring version of the story, then over the course of a few days made it more and more interesting by adding details that the kids remembered. It was a great opportunity to teach about editing and rereading, about descriptive language, about writing for an audience. Anyway, yesterday the custodian came down to give me some garbage bags so I could bag up all the pillows and stuffed animals in my room. I needed to quarantine them as the result of a lice breakout. (Gross, I know. Now let's move on.) So when she was in the classroom I showed her the story about the frog, in which she figured as a main character (the rescuer). She sent me an email later telling me how touched she was to be a character in our story, and asking if she could keep it when we were done using it. Let it be known that this story was written with magic markers on giant chart paper. So we fancied it up a bit, the kids forced me to improve my illustration, and I was about to send it down to her when a girl came up to show me the story she'd written about the frog. It was great, and pretty different than the one we'd written as a class. So I asked for a show of hands- who else had written about the frog? Seven hands shot up. Next thing you know I had a parade of first graders headed to the boiler room to give their stories to the custodian, along with the one I wrote on chart paper. I hope she liked them.
I feel obliged to end this post by saying something like, "that little frog touched more than the tile floor when he hopped into the girls' bathroom that day. His webbed feet also touched our hearts."
But I won't. I still want this blog to be a little bit edgy, so instead I'll end with this. "Frogs are assholes."
My adolescent cat acts like a boyfriend. He plays too much, he expects me to feed him, and he yells at me when I come home late. Ha ha ha! That was my stand up routine. But seriously folks, he loves to be spooned. He often wakes me by touching my face with his paw (80% of the time sans claws). When sleeping, he prefers as much of the surface area of his body as possible to be touching my face. He gets jealous of Mike. He give me what can only be classified as kisses by pressing his wet nose to mine. I think he is in love with me.
Look who blogged two days in a row!
...sign your name at the golden gate. 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th...
Does anyone else remember that jumprope song? I should go out on the playground more often to see what the kids sing while they jump these days. "Cinderella, dressed in yella..." is sure to still be in use, right? What else?
So here I am blogging. Look at me! And do you know who won the prize for Most Likely to Lure Willow Back Into The Blogosphere? Someone named Robert who just yesterday left a comment on a months-old post, asking me so nicely to come back! You win, Robert! Your prize is a rambling Perfect Heart post about teaching and making silly movies! Come collect your prize anytime!
So, teaching. I'm back at it again, and it has been a strange year so far. My class is of course way different this year, and it seemed to take longer for all of us to settle in together. The kids I had last year were mostly old for 1st grade- the bulk of them turned 7 in October or November. As a result they were able to sit on the rug longer, work on stories longer, read longer. They were also able to stand in line without shoving, cutting, screaming, or slapping. Not so this year, my friends. This year's class has a collectively shorter attention span, and a limited understanding of personal space. Thus when I go to pick them up for recess, 90% of the time someone is crying because someone else bumped/cut/slapped/spit on them. I even gave them assinged spots to stand in line, but it doesn't really help. I have what is known in the field of education as an "active class."
On the flip side, they are way funnier than last year's group. I have one little boy who likes to sit right up close when I am reading a story, and then sing out the last word on each page of the book exactly in unison with me. This same boy has been known to turn to a neighbor in the middle of a lesson and cheerfully ask, "More tea, Eloise?" Another boy has these meta-tantrums where he'll declare,"I'm mad! I'm so mad I'm gonna stamp my feet!" The next day he'll say, "Member yesterday when I stamped my feet? That was embarassing." Funny boys.
This year I am also the union rep for my building, and I am taking courses to get my Reading Endorsement, which is sorta like getting a second Masters. I feel a little over-extended, to be honest. I'm still finding time to work on non-teaching related projects though. Like this movie I made with my friend Justin for a 48 hour film fest (click on the video for details about the contest:
Dragon Breath from No Montage on Vimeo.
