Every once in a while something happens while you're teaching that validates your existence. Something that makes everything else worth it; you are a success (for that day/week) because of a particular moment. I had one of those today.
There's a girl in 5th grade who reminds me a lot of myself, except she doesn't do any sports if she can help it. My parents made me do sports (and I was usually a willing participant). Her best friend plays floor hockey with the boys at recess so the past couple days she's been sitting around being bored. Yesterday she watched me play Lightning with some of the 6th graders. In the past, every time I asked her if she wanted to play, she'd shake her head "no" and go back to whatever she was doing. Yesterday instead of saying no, she said she didn't know how to play. I tried to teach her, but she said she didn't get it and eventually went off to do something else.
Today, I caught her watching us again. I asked again and she kinda sorta shrugged and said she still didn't understand it. I sat out for a game so we could go over the rules one more time. "Huh, I think I get it now," she said. And then she agreed to play!!! The girl who cries when she has to play kickball! The one who would rather be doing anything else besides doing some sort of sport. She played with us! For two or three games! And she didn't get out right away and she didn't cry when she did get out! Definitely a red-letter day. It made my entire week.
Now, on to more normal stuff. My voice came back for a little bit today. I used it a lot during art and then it went away again. But I'm on the mend! Not much talking planned for tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be back to normal by Monday.
We had a guest speaker come this morning, Jakub, a Slovakian foreign exchange student living with my aunt and uncle. He had made a powerpoint with pictures and videos about life in Slovakia. My kids were ooh-ing and ahh-ing over pretty much every slide. Jakub showed us a video of a farmer combining the end of a field and all the wild boars running out. There were at least thirty of them tearing off for the woods! My class now wants to move to Slovakia because they don't have as much homework there. One big curiosity was which sports they play in Slovakia. Once they found out soccer was one and that Jakub played, they all wanted to see how good he was. Only one kid got to see it. My uncle and Jakub went around to the other classrooms to say hi, escorted by my helper of the day. He came back and whispered, "Miss H, Jakub showed me a trick with the soccer ball in the gym. And it was on the ground and then he flicked it with his foot and then it went up to his head!"
I officially need to make a new NaNo chart. They've written so many words we're at maximum capacity. And it's only week one. Maybe with this chart I'll go by thousands instead of 500s.
But, it's time for me to go home and relax. I didn't write any words in my story yesterday; I watched the TV show Chuck instead while correcting papers (though I did write a little bit during breakfast). And that's all I want to do tonight (watch Chuck, that is. Not correct papers). The library is having a book sale tomorrow, so I'll probably hit that up. Clean my apartment. Write lots of words for NaNo. Do crafty things.
No comments:
Post a Comment