the little things...

I had a conference with the mother of one of my amazing students today.

She told me that he said this last week: "My teacher is young. And she is So Beautiful."

♥

So, I'm thinking... should that give him an automatically pass? Or maybe I should just keep him in first grade for the next few years to make me feel good... ;-)

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In other news, I know I've been very quiet on the blog front. It's been a really rough start to the schoolyear, and I'm slowly working on writing it up here to both describe and reflect on it. Hopefully it won't take another month to make that happen.

*much love to you all*

turns of phrase...

I've taken to use the expression, "oooh, shiny!" to describe my state of mind sometimes when I'm feeling distractable. I also use it to describe the easy way that young children can become derailed or distracted from something (both in positive and negative ways). I don't actually know from where I adopted this phrase, it's just sort of become part of my vernacular, and one that my copilot teases me about when I am acting that way.

Today, when Lamar was sharing items from his Artifact Bag (a get-to-know-you project), he took out a little silver medallion and Anisha actually said:

"Oooh! Shiny!"

It took all I had not to burst out laughing.

Guess the original phrase must have come from a first grader, huh?

NOTE: All names used on this blog are pseudonyms.

the beginning of the year...

It's easy to forget the difficulty of the beginning of the school year.

Some women have told me that they don't remember the pain of childbirth, otherwise they might not have gone through it again. For me, I think I don't always remember the toil of the early days of school. I don't always remember the almost inhuman patience needed to reinforce and redirect and remind. I forget my early mantra: "they're six, they're just six... they don't know this yet." I forget my own personal mantra, "you don't suck... you love this... you can do it..." I know about these things, sure, but I don't remember them.

I wonder if I did, would I be so eager and ready to start a new school year each time?

The beginning of the year creates such a disequilbrium because there is always so much new, even in the midst of the familiar.

Yesterday I said to one of my colleagues about my class, "They're going to be awesome, but they're not awesome yet."

When I think on it though, what I might mean is that I'm not awesome yet. I'm still finding what works for this class, for these kids, so that I can do right by them.

I hope I find it.