Dinosaurs

A quick story that happened on Friday:

We have this behavior management system at school called PBS (Positive Behavior Support) that centers around recognizing students who are doing the right thing rather than focusing on the students who are misbehaving. I am not completely bought into it, but it seems to work for most of my kids. Part of the system is that we reward students with “Cubs Cash” that they can trade in for prizes, special privileges, etc.  On Friday’s I have a Cub’s Cash store that students can “buy” from with Cub’s Cash.  Well one of my students, A, had apparently been saving his Cubs Cash (80 tickets!) and wanted to buy two toy dinosaurs.

To give you a little background on A, he is one of my sweetest, most eager, yet academically lowest students. He is a refugee from Thailand. His mom left A’s older brother and dad in Thailand to bring  A and his little brother here. They came here with absolutely nothing. Mom understands no English and now that their transition aid is running out, it is clear that they are barely making ends meet. To make matters worse, I recently learned that A had Malaria when he was about 5 years old. The medical care they had in Thailand through the clinic was very poor and he had it on and off for a year. Mom told us that she had to completely re-train A to eat, walk, go to the restroom, everything. We suspect that he has some developmental delays and language acquisition issues as a result of his Malaria left untreated for so long.  

Anyway, I told him that he could only buy one thing, which has always been the store rule. Instead of buying one of the dinosaurs he just kind of walked away with his head down. I wasn’t really paying attention, but when I caught up with what had happened I asked him why he didn’t just buy one dinosaur.  He told me (in a lot less words…he has very little English) that he was saving so he and his little brother could play together. I am not even kidding you; it took everything that I had not to burst into tears.  (And yes, I let him buy both dinosaurs). 

Most kids his age would never have even considered buying something for a sibling. To make the story even more special, I had a few students in the room who witnessed it. Another student, S, asked me why I let him get two things. When I explained to her and the students that were there what it meant to be a refugee, and that A doesn't have toys at home like most kids; they just nodded their heads and moved on. 

Times like these are the reason that I really like working with my population of students. They have so much more empathy and understanding of each other’s challenges than other kids their age (I am sure more than I did myself).  It is hard to explain, but they really just “get it.” There are some things you can try to teach, but I don’t think I could ever teach the type of empathy, support, and compassion that my students have for each other. It truly is amazing.

Jancing

My students invented a new vocabulary word today.

Jancing: the act of dancing and jumping.

Jancing is what happens when you try to say dancing and jumping and one word comes out.

Imagine 8 3rd grades breaking out into a 3 minute jance party.

Happy Friday

One woman

Every Friday I eat lunch with my table winners. I usually get them settled and then take a minute or two to get myself settled and prepped for math before joining my students. Today I had the pleasure of overhearing the following comment...

D: "I wish there was only one women in the world."

(In my head) "Sweetheart that will all change in a couple of years.."

D: "Yeah, then we could all just date her."

(me) hiding my laughter with a coughing fit.

Reasons I don't like missing school...

1. Incompetent substitutes who cannot find the lesson plans for the day. Yes, the lesson plans that are in the binder marked "Subsitute Binder" in the first section that says LESSON PLANS with today's date highlighted on the very top of the page.

Maybe the binder was hidden? NOPE it was sitting on the top of my desk in the tub marked "SUB TUB" in huge letters. The substitute folder from the office also has "see substitute binder" written on it in at least 10 places.

Under the binder was every single thing the sub would need in order of the day (with the instructions AND an exemplar for each activity.)


Rant over. Thanks for letting me vent. Good night.

"Why don't you just sleep here?"

Today I was teaching a vocabulary lesson and we were talking about the word echo. One of my students mentioned that the hallways can echo when they are empty. To affirm this students' question, I told a quick story about how I was the only teacher in the hall this weekend and I dropped my books. The noise echoed. Moving on? Not a chance. One of my students asks,

"Miss Prinzo, why don't you just sleep here?"

Maybe I need to make an effort to be at home more...

Hot Cheetos

Hot Cheetos... add them to the list of weird kid things I don't understand. They can go right after folded paper squares. Seriously, why do kids want these bright red, spicy, worm looking things? 

On Fridays I eat lunch with my table winners. Do you know what we talked about for over half the lunch? You guessed it...Hot Cheetos. One of my students in particular is a Hot Cheetos connoisseur. On Friday he put Hot Cheetos on his hamburger and then bet the other students at the table that he could eat the whole bag without drinking milk. The other students at the table were amazed. I guess I know what I need to do to win my students over... 

In all seriousness, every student has that thing they need to break the ice. This particular student has had two non-academic conversations with me this entire year. Both conversations were about Hot Cheetos. He is a student that kind of gets lost in the shuffle, and I am glad to have something to talk with him about. It is hard to find time in the day to really get to know students, but it is totally worth it. The rest of the day on Friday, this student participated twice as much as usual, and to think, it was all because of some Hot Cheetos.

We are Diverse Learners

One of the things I am most excited about this year is the diversity among my students. For those of you who do not know, the majority of my students are English Learners or bilingual. Students in my classroom speak 6 languages and come from about 10 different countries and/or other regions of the United States.  By the statistics alone, we are a diverse group of learners. My students LOVE to share their cultures with each other. I am pretty sure I hear the words, "In my country..." at least 15 times a day. 3rd grade is a really great age to share about cultural diversity because many of my students are old enough to remember moving to the  US and/ or remembering trips they have taken to their home country, and can share their experiences with each other. Most of them also speak/ understand enough English to discuss and ask questions to each other. They are also not old enough to have developed some of the strain between ethnic groups that seems to come in during the middle school years. (Although, hopefully our diversity discussions will help prevent some of these later strains).

Right now we are writing cultural narratives. My students have been drafting short paragraphs (4-6 sentences) on the different aspects of their culture: language, clothing, holidays/ traditions, and food.  They many choose to write about the country that they came from exclusively or write about how their family has blended their native culture with American culture. Right now we are in the revising stage, but hopefully in the next two weeks, we will be able to type and publish our writing. Then it is all about the sharing. I am in love with this project! I have been learning so much about my students. There are so many little things that I have learned that have helped me to better understand my students. For example, I realized that a few of my students take part in fasting during Ramadan.

This past weekend I was invited over for lunch by one of my students. His mother works in our school cafeteria and treated two other teachers and me to a traditional Kurdish meal. It was delicious! It was also quite the cultural experience. Their family traditionally eats together on the floor. Our hosts were extremely concerned that this would bother us and kept saying that we could go eat at the table (FYI..the table was their coffee table). After lunch we were treated to Kurdish black tea (with a TON of sugar!) and pastries. There were also figs and a few other fruity/ nutty looking things that I was not brave enough to try. We did have one slight cultural mishap when we used ashtrays/ nut casing collectors as dessert plates. We also learned a little bit about how the family came to the US and about their families that were still in Iraq. Our host was also telling us that adult children, women in particular, typically stay a part of a household until marriage. It made the three of us, who are all single, under 25 and living on our own, chuckle when she told us about her friend who is so frustrated because she  has children between 22 and 25 at home who just cannot find the "one." Lunch was definitely an interesting experience. I really enjoyed it, but I have to admit that I was much more comfortable being alongside two of my colleagues. There were a lot of gaps in conversation and periods of uncertainty that were made much easier with other English-speakers!

The Tennessean also had an interesting opinion piece on the diversity/ history of immigration to our region. I really enjoy learning about the history and benefits of our diverse community. Here is the article: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120907/OPINION03/309070052/Local-diversity-model-all