Crazy, but fun. That about sums up the day. It actually felt more like a field trip day than a regular day of school.
Yesterday I told my class about our visitors for the day, so all this morning they kept asking, "When's Laura coming? When's Laura coming?" When she wasn't at school by 9:30, I got a little nervous. Did she have car trouble? Did she forget how to get to the school? Oh no, I hadn't given her the address! But she's been here before, so maybe I'm thinking about it too much... So I checked my phone and saw she'd left a voicemail saying she'd be to school around 9:30-ish. Whew.
I made the mistake of telling my class her estimated arrival time. From then on they kept looking out the window. "I see a car! It's coming down the road! Is it Laura? What kind of car does she drive? Do you think it's her?" Everyone crowded around the windows. Nope. Just a semi. Another semi. A red car. A semi. So we went about our normal morning routine. And finally she arrived! She had lots of things to tell us about her time in the UAE, so we did a shortened version of Daily 5 (only two rounds). I kept waiting and waiting for the school board to show up... 10:00, 10:15, 10:30... come on now! I had a bunch of things planned that we could do (to show them that I actually do teach my students and interact with them), but they weren't coming and they weren't coming... so I just went ahead and did them. 10:45 one member finally came in. I had already met with the students on the agenda for the day. Everyone was silently reading and didn't need help on their spelling. Nothing for me to do. Boring to watch. And it was time to switch for Laura to do her presentation. Lovely. So I explained to the board member what was going on and that we did all our other stuff already... he did get to see me give my students a post-it note assignment (write three interesting things you learn on a post-it) and introduce my friend. And he sat in on a little of her presentation. Ugh, I felt bad. But nothing I can do about it now.
The 8th graders weren't overly enthused about her being here, but then again, they don't get excited about much. And I warned her that they don't ask many questions, so she was prepared for their lackluster participation. Thankfully, my class more than made up for it...
My class was riveted to Laura's speech. They were quietly listening, raising their hands to ask questions, taking turns... it was beautiful. She brought some clothing worn by Muslim women, so the girls got to try them on. And her host mom had given her a male robe for her dad (but it didn't fit him), so the boys got to try on that. At lunch she pulled out a basket of dates for our class to try. Some thought they were good, others thought they were gross. Some thought it tasted like caramel. Nearly everyone tried it... of course, they had added incentive since it's a fruit and could be counted toward our fruit/veggie challenge! We ran out of time before lunch, so once they came back from math in the afternoon Laura finished her presentation. And we still had time for our science lab!
This lab was really fun. We used iodine to test which foods had starch in them. Liquid starch was our control (iodine turns starch black). I brought some potatoes, rice, noodles, and chips from home. Our cook gave us some bread, carrots, celery, cucumbers, applesauce, and pineapple to test (all stuff from our lunch menu today). Some kids saved a tator tot from their lunch to test. They were worried about the iodine staining their clothes/hands, so we pulled out the lab aprons and gloves. And we used pipettes (science eyedroppers) to squirt iodine on our test samples. The lab was done in about fifteen minutes, and cleanup shortly after. We had time for recess too! Yay! Laura watched them in the gym while I supervised cleanup in the classroom. When I finally made it out to the gym, I found her roped into playing a game of Lightning with the 6th graders. Coincidentally, last week on Tuesday she'd been playing basketball with 6th graders in Abu Dhabi!
Packing up for the end of the day, she remembered that she'd brought prizes for the class. Her host mom had bought a bunch of gaudy key chains (gold camels, t-shirt coin purses, dangly/metallic UAE scenes) for her to give as souvenirs, and Laura didn't want to keep them. There weren't enough for everyone in my class to have one, so we drew sticks. She kept back two for when she visits her sister's class later this week. All in all, my students were very satisfied with the day. We had time for highs and lows and nearly everyone said having Laura here was the highlight of the day.
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