Letters to an Absent Miss Djerf

One question I’ve constantly fielded this winter is “Are you missing teaching?” There are two answers:

 No, I’m not missing the stress of teaching. Right now, the idea of managing the noise and activity of first and second graders all day is synonymous with thoughts of torture.

But yes, I’m missing the students. Terribly!

I missed them even more when I received letters from the class near Christmas. Their unfettered affection, creative spelling, and imaginative drawings (one featured me snowboarding down a steep mountain with the caption "your wining Miss Djerf", while another depicted me with some serious eyelash augmentation) triggered all kinds of warm-fuzzy emotions. 

Here are a few of these precious missives, nothing added except for titles (which double as summaries of my experiences with those particular children):

The Compassionate One

Dear Miss Djerf

I am having a good time at sckool. it was nicer when you wher hery. today wee are having hot choclit. The sckool has chached sinc your gon. But I feel bad that you hert.

The Enthusiastic One

Dear miss Djerf,

I was excited when I hrd this nys!

I hrd this

I hrd i wus cuming in youer klasrum.

I jumpd up!

I wos so hape!

I love your voys

it sos god.

you or nis

The Distracted One

Dear Miss Djerf

I hop you feel betr so you can come to shcool but after the shcool yer you are going to go to shcool so you will feel betr so you can go to shcool nest yer

I hop you cood feel betr I like you a lot

The Precise One

Dear Miss Djerf,

I really am looking forward to seeing you next year. Why not come on February third that is my dad’s half birthday.

Merry Christmas.

Boy, do I miss them.

At Least the Teacher Can Do It

It was a lively morning in the classroom, preparing to leave for a field trip to a park. Jeffrey's grandma, who works nearby, stopped by in the midst of the chaos. "Have a good day, everyone," she called from the doorway. After a pause in which she surveyed the excitement, she added, "And, um, help Ms. Djerf have a good day, too!"

"She will!" Jeffrey cheerfully replied.  "She always does!"

Grandma tried another tactic, every bit as subtle as the first. "You know what I mean," she chided, "like, behave nicely and pay attention."

"Oh, she ALWAYS pays attention!" Jeffrey reassured her. "I mean, she's not a kid. She's a grown up! It's EASY for her to pay attention!"

Cupcakes and Osama

I didn't have a lot to say this morning. But I had cupcakes. And I'm pretty sure the cupcakes were what mattered most.

Allow me to back up to last night, as I whined to my roommate, "Tiff, did I actually like teaching middle school this year?" She assured me that yes, Megan, you loved it and talked about them all of the time. (It is SO helpful to live with a good listener.)

I was relieved by her answer, but it was an honest question. The rocky last several weeks with those seventh and eighth graders have erased my positive memories and developed feelings of intense frustration. We've all been inching toward the exit sign, keeping a wary eye on one another.

I prefer to end the school year with a sense of closure and a way of affirming the students individually, but since my dominant thought over the past month has been "Goodbye and good riddance," I decided not to overreach this year. No big mushy-gushy class meetings attempted. No individual gifts made or notes written. Still, in frustration with my own feelings, I've been asking God to somehow wrap up the chaos in a good way.

The answer was simple: cupcakes.

So, last night, even as I struggled to remember any positive memories from the year, I devoted myself to yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting -- and the Holy Spirit met me at the table. As I took my sweet time arranging candy on the frosting just right (each cupcake unique from the others), I felt the irritation ebbing and instead, love rising. 

For me, putzing in this way was a choice to love them and place value on them instead of remembering their flaws. As I worked, I began to remember fun and meaningful moments from the year, and once again, I could pray for their good instead of dwell on my angst.

Those thoughts and prayers translated into me standing before the class this morning, thanking them for a great year and, before distributing my yummy cupcakes, challenging them from Psalm 34:8 "Taste and see the the LORD is good; happy is the man who takes refuge in him." 

What does all of this have to do with Osama? Well, it just made me think about the ways I like to show love, I guess.

I putzed in a similar way earlier this week, pouring my creative self into a birthday card for my brother Peter, with whom I share a long history of Osama Bin Laden jokes. The resulting masterpiece ("23 Places Osama Is No Longer Hiding") was my artsy-fartsy way of saying, "You're valuable to me. Our shared history matters."

I realized halfway through the project that Peter might not think it was funny, and I worried that the underlying message might not be transmitted. But I was stuck with the idea, so I gave it all I had and prayed that my heart would come across in the silly efforts of my strange imagination. I think it did; he seemed as delighted to receive it as I was to make it. That's what I was hoping for.

There's no big conclusion for these thoughts, just more thoughts and questions. Do I leave enough margin in my life for this creative love to have an outlet? Creativity takes time. And sometimes I'm most creative when I'm working on something for someone else. Interesting. 

How do I keep something that is a gift from God, a way in which I reflect His image, from being about me? How do I keep it in His hands, seeking always to point it back to Him?

And how am I doing at expressing love in other ways, when putzing for hours is perhaps not the best method? Am I more committed to loving well, or to expressing myself well? 

Thank You, Father, for all of the creative ways You show Your love to me. Let me be quick and free to reflect it to others!

Extemporaneous Information: Animal Reports, Part II

We finished our animal reports weeks ago, but I just finally re-found my scribbled page of notes. While the students presented, I was sitting in the back of the classroom, frantically recording on two different sheets. The top sheet was always the evaluation; the bottom, the things too funny or interesting to risk forgetting. Ended up with a full page in the second category.

One more quotable from the panda girl:
"Pandas have 84-240 germs when they are born." Germs, grams. How different could they be?

We have great community in our class, even if we're misinformed:
"Penguins mate for life..." Blair stopped in the middle of reading her display board.  She looked up at the class and calmly asserted, "but that's not true."

"How do you know?" I responded.

"We looked it up."

My skepticism must have showed on my face, because Jeffery rushed to her defense. "It's true, Ms. Djerf! I saw it in a commercial!"

A few beavers have it figured out:
Taylor told us all about beavers. The class -highly sensitive to anything remotely inappropriate- was particularly excited about question time during his presentation because they could say the word "dam" over and over again. What I liked the best, however, was the part on their habitat. It read "Some beavers live in the frozen north. Others live in northern Florida."

"Stump the Presenter" is a game we play without even trying:
"How many eggs do lions have in one year?" Poor Emma. She'd learned a lot about lions, but she was a little thrown off by this question, and it took her a minute to respond that lions don't lay eggs. "I know, but how many?" the questioner replied. (We're not the world's greatest listeners.)

If you're threatened by someone else's superlative, simply respond with unrelated but competitive information:
Martha told us that cheetahs are the fastest land animal.

Jeffrey's immediate response: "Yeah, but they can't swim."

And yes, Ms. D. was paying attention while laughing. She even learned three new facts. And she's pretty sure they're legit:
A group of cheetahs is called a coalition. (Bet you didn't know that.)

A tiger's eyesight is six times better than a human's.

A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away. (How do they figure things like that out, anyhow?)

Hmm. I wonder how far away you can hear a class of first and second graders?

Life Span and Sex Identification of Giant Pandas: Animal Reports in First Grade

"Any questions for Melanie?" Hands flew up all over the classroom. Melanie stood proudly next to her giant panda display board, eager to deflect the curiosity of her classmates.

Question time is my favorite part of a student's report, when they go off script and I discover how much they really learned about their topic. Or how creative they are in a pinch.

"How long do pandas stay alive?" someone called out.

"Um, they stay alive until a snow leopard or a wild dog eats them," she replied confidently.

"So...they can live as long as they want to?"

"Yeah. Until they die."

She answered questions about panda babies, where you buy bamboo to put on a board about pandas, and where pandas live. Just when I thought we were done, however, she pulled out her own question: "Do you want to know how to tell if one is a boy or a girl?"

I was tempted to redirect, but I was just too curious about how she would explain it. I WAS ready to intervene at any moment, however. "Well, how you know if a panda is a boy or a girl -because they look just the same on the outside- is you watch them. See, only a boy will walk up to a girl. So, if there are two pandas together, the one that's walking up to the other one is the boy. That's how you tell!"

This didn't fully satisfy my curiosity -do girl pandas simply go through life without meeting?- but the class thought it made perfect sense, and we moved on without any major violations of our innocence. Phew.

Forward-Looking

Today, Jeffrey asked how old my roommate is. "She's a couple of years younger than me; I think she's twenty-eight." I replied.

He did some quick calculations: "OK...so when YOU'RE one hundred, SHE'LL be ninety-eight."

I hadn't ever thought of that, but his math was accurate.

"You two will be old ladies together!" he continued, and then gestured to the rest of the class. "And all of us, we'll be young -- like in our seventies."

There's nothing like a little perspective.

(Just add another seventy years to this picture.)

Running, Walking, and Leprosy

Here at school, we're always sprinting when we should be walking and slowing down to a pace of utmost decorum when we should be hustling. It's some kind of weird Murphy's Law that exists between children and adults in authority. Some days, it seems that all I do is swing between harping on students to "WALK!" instead of fly and harping on students to "GET MOVING!" instead of putz.

On the way to the lunch line? We're a blur, barely visible to the naked eye. You wouldn't want to be standing outside the classroom door when we head out to our backpacks to get our snacks, either. (I guarantee you'd be the one left with the bruise.) The same is true as we tumble out the door for recess.

But we let our feet d - r - a - g on the way back to the classroom. Thirty minutes of recess has a way of reprogramming our legs to bring us back to class by the slowest, least direct detours. Same goes for return trips from the bathroom -- that's the perfect time to tour the world at a snail's pace. This year I even apprehended one of my own students as he was army crawling all the way back from the bathroom. (Yes, army crawling.)

These thoughts brought to mind a chapel sermon I heard back in the day at NCU (from a Californian pastor named Scott Brown. A plus to being a note taker: being able to give credit where it's due ten years later...). He told the story of Namaan the Syrian leper coming to Elisha, the Israelite prophet, for healing. (You can find the whole story here, in 2 Kings 5.)

It was the only message I've ever heard which focused on Elisha's servant Gehazi, who's not even mentioned until the end, when Elisha rejects Namaan's joyful offer of a reward for the healing and sends Namaan on his way. Gehazi, thinking that Elisha let Namaan off too easy, runs after him and lies in order to take the reward for himself. When he comes back to the house, Elisha tells Gehazi that he'll have leprosy for the rest of his life (and upon his descendants, as well) because of his subterfuge. Not exactly a happy ending.

An astonishing healing had just taken place, but Gehazi wasn't excited about that. He perked up and ran, however, at an opportunity to enrich himself. Brown's question was simple, but heart piercing:

What makes you run?

And what makes you walk?

Because the things we run for, ultimately, become the things that run our lives.

This is making me think. I run to check my email. I d - r - a - g my feet to correct reading workbooks. I'll spend time with friends in a flash, but I've been vascillating for months now about working in the church nursery (a small thing!). I'm highly motivated to keep my blog updated, but the simple acts of washing dishes or keeping track of my budget? Well, suddenly I'M the one army crawling across the living room.

The older I get, the more I see how much those small things matter -- the things I'm happy to avoid. Just like my poky students -and good old Gehazi-, I'll miss out on a lot of what's truly important (and bring pain on myself and those around me) if I don't learn to walk and run at the right times.

So today, I'm asking God: where is He telling me to "Get a move on!"? And where is He saying, "Hold your horses, there..."?

Oh, To Be a Hero

(Picture: my very heroic brother)

Today, I was sorting through materials leftover from our school spirit week, which happened back in February. [Side note: the upside of desk-cleaning is finding scraps like this. The downside of finding scraps like this is that one tends to stop and blog about them instead of finishing the desk cleaning...]

The theme was "Heroes." Each day our multi-age teams began by discussing a goofy superhero question. These were my favorite two answer sheets:

[I would post the actual pictures of the sheets, but they have student names on them. And I always change names of students here, so I'll recreate them instead.]

What is one superpower you would NEVER want to have? Why?

Flying. Too common.

X-ray vision. No use to it.

X-ray vision. It would be a scam.

Stink power. Doesn't want to smell bad.

Mind reader. Doesn't want to know what people think.

Fighter. Peaceful thing.

Invisibility. Don't wanna run into people.

Last student (a kindergartener): he likes all super powers.

If you could do only one heroic deed in your life, what would you choose?

Save a life

Save a life

Save a life

Hit the winning home-run in the world series

Shovel driveways

Gotta love that last one. He must really be a hero to his parents -- that is, unless his wish is to shovel only once. In that case, he's living in the wrong state.

Of course, I had to think of my own answers to this question...

The one superpower I'd absolutely hate:

I have to agree with the mind reading. Yuck.

One superpower that would come in handy:

The ability to magically make unruly middle schoolers stop disrupting my class. I'm imagining me pointing at someone (who just might be making duck noises in the back row), a loud ZAP! resounding throughout the room, and that student remaining frozen until the end of class (or the end of the semester -- I'm flexible). That would be so stinking cool. And effective.

My preferred heroic deed?

Chase a bear away from a vanful of food in the middle of the night while camping -- oh, wait, my mom already did that. (I did wake her up, so I was a tiny bit helpful.) Maybe I could rescue a camper from the jaws of a grizzly bear instead.

Presuming that I actually received the aforementioned super zapping power: in some cases, choosing to unfreeze certain students would be a gesture of heroic, exceptional mercy. Just sayin'.

In reality? I'd like to steal my friend Nick's answer from the last time I played Loaded Questions: take in orphans. Or follow my aunt and uncle's example and purposely live on less than their salary so they can give more. There are a lot of people in my life that I'd like to emulate: people who choose to give their time and resources to those who can't give it back. People who serve without anyone noticing or appreciating them. People who take the high road, or the hard road, in order to follow Christ, even when it costs them.

Presidents and Toy Story, First Grade Style

Many of my students were non-readers when our current president was elected, a fact that was irrelevant to me until an argument erupted and half the class passionately asserted that his name is Rocko Bama. ("It is! I KNOW! My dad told me!") We had a brief social studies/spelling lesson once everyone had calmed down and I had stopped laughing.

(I have to confess that while I don't have any trouble with saying Barack Obama's name, I'm stuck with a different political creative hearing problem: every time I hear someone on the radio talking about the crazy president of Libya, I hear Mallomar Gadaffi -- and subsequently picture a chocolatey-marshmallowy cookie man. Proof that I'm a first grader at heart, I guess.)

The fact that what I say is not always what they hear was reinforced today when I was introducing our science fair animal report projects. I listed the types of animals the students could choose from: "Mammals, or birds, or fish, or reptiles, or you could even do amphibians..."

To which Jeffrey immediately responded (in his best Buzz Lightyear impersonation), "To Amphibian! And Beyond!"

Um, I Don't Think So

During Friday morning prayer requests, I relayed that I was once again praying for my dad, who was going to have surgery.

We've prayed quite a bit for my dad this year, through his prostate cancer and surgery as well as for his Crohn's disease. This particular problem was a hernia, but my method of explanation was the same as it has been for the other things: "There's something wrong in his belly."

"Boy, he sure has had a lot of problems with his belly!" someone called out from the back. "Maybe he's pregnant!"

Doesn't Take Much

Wednesday morning, Grayson, our unofficial class leader, scanned the room with a discerning eye, and delivered this bomb of an observation:

"Hey Carl, your hair is sticking up in the back. You...sorta look like a werewolf."

Jeffrey immediately turned around, took a hard look at Carl, and breathlessly added, "Yeah...you DO kind of look like a werewolf!" (I think he was excited by the prospect of having one of our own in class.)

To which Carl dissolved in a puddle of tears, and I attempted (unsuccessfully) to right the situation by talking with them.

Turned out to be quite difficult to convince a second grader that he need not worry about his best friend's tactless remarks; this child takes things to heart (I had to mop his tears on Monday when someone called him the smallest person in the class. Never mind he's my TALLEST student; he cried buckets. We had a similar, fruitless conversation then, too.).

Was equally challenging to castigate the two offenders, as they saw their comments (and subsequent suggestions for taming the werewolf-like hair) as simple observation of fact. In their minds, they were simply providing a community service. And though I warned that such Good Samaritan-like behavior might someday invite a punch in the mouth, there was no relenting.

Such is life in our never-boring, delightful microcosm.

Anti Time On the Line

"So what do you want us to do, run laps the whole time?"

Four third and fourth grade boys stood before me at the beginning of recess today, reporting for duty.

Yesterday's recess had culminated in a far-too-physical game of King of the Hill (which is illegal to begin with). The tears and tattles that straggled in with my little people alerted me to the problem, and I headed over to the third and fourth grade room for an impromptu come-to-Jesus meeting in the hallway. They quickly admitted their guilt, so I asked them what consequence they thought was appropriate for their disobedience and lack of self control. To my surprise, they all agreed: "We should probably lose our recess tomorrow."

So there they stood today, waiting to see what plan I'd cooked up. How painful could Ms. Djerf make these twenty-five minutes be? Laps aren't so bad when you're a boy with an excess of energy and your three best friends are in the penalty box with you.

I'd been thinking and praying, however. I've spent this winter working through Ephesians 4:22-32 with my middle schoolers. The entire passage reiterates a basic three-part theme: if you are a follower of Christ, put off behavior that hurts you and rejects God, be made new in the way that you think, and put on new behavior that is like God. As I've studied this, I've been challenged to adjust the way I view discipline and the process of change.

Kathy Koch of Celebrate Kids! (a ministry for which I have enormously high regard) teaches that change is EXCHANGE. Don't just put off the bad habit, but intentionally put on the opposite new one. The same principle applies to correcting and disciplining: after telling them what needs to stop, I need to clearly put forth what needs to start.

We don't just want our boys to draw back from the "too-far" line of physical aggression toward smaller students; we want them to see their role as leaders outside and direct their energy toward fun and healthy pursuits. And so I told them I had a secret mission for them: each one had to find younger students to help, encourage, or include for the entire recess period. They would report to me at the end.

It gave me such joy to watch one boy help some little girls work on their snow fort, while another built a snowman with first graders. A third (braver than the first two) chose to intervene in a conflict between kindergarteners, standing up for a tearful girl and then helping her rejoin the game. The fourth invited a wandering little boy to play hide and seek with him. For one recess period, they were shining leaders instead of wolves fighting for the alpha spot.

I don't expect that we permanently eradicated aggression or unkindness, but it sure was better than running laps.

How to Recognize the End of the World: From the First and Second Grade Archives

This is, quite possibly, my all-time favorite second-grade story. Was retelling it to friends recently, and decided that it most certainly belongs on the blog, particularly since I almost named my blog after it. [Actually, I only told half of the story that night (sometimes it takes me a really long time to get to the point), and never quite made it to the punch line. So this is for you, JS! Now you know...]

Several years ago my only two second grade boys were best friends and polar opposites. James was philosophical and quirky, with his feet just barely on the ground, while happy-go-lucky Matt, concrete to the core, strongly influenced our classroom culture each day.

This contrast made for plenty of humorous moments throughout the year (another day, another blog post), but my favorite Matt and James moment was in relation to our class behavior incentive.

Matt was all about motivation -- a big fan of prizes in any form. Naturally, he was the number one fan of my class reward system, which consisted of two things: a drawing of superballs in a jar, and the promise of a party when the "jar" was full.

One of the easiest ways to earn a superball was for everyone to be at his or her desk working quietly when I returned from brief errands outside the room. Thus, that year, any time I walked out the door, I heard Matt directing, "OK, everyone! Sit down! Be quiet! Remember the superball!"

Lucky for him, all of first grade toed the line enthusiastically (they were all girls, and they were all in love with Matt).

James, on the other hand, wasn't as impressed by Matt OR the superball jar.

One Wednesday, I walked in just in time to hear James say condescendingly, "You know, Matt, if we didn't get a superball, it wouldn't be the end of the world..."

In all seriousness, Matt replied, "I KNOW it wouldn't be the end of the world, James. If ALIENS were coming, THAT would be the end of the world!"

Yes, Those Words Came Out Of My Mouth: Commands Only A Second Grade Teacher Would Give

"Yes, you MAY go to the bathroom, but ONLY if your hair looks EXACTLY the same when you get back."

- Instructions to my second grade Justin Bieber wannabe, who spends most of the day worrying about his hair and "wopping" it (shifting it to the side with a jerky, tic-like motion). I've been instructed by his parents to limit his hair-adjusting visits to the boys' room. True story.

"Everyone else has to leave their teeth in their mouths for the rest of the day. If anyone else feels like taking a tooth out, they're going to have to wait and do it at home. Period."

- It might surprise you that loss of teeth is contagious in a first and second grade classroom, but I am not fabricating this. Sometimes, you just have to lay the law down.

I hate to admit this, but there are times that I'm disappointed I can't tell the rest of the world exactly what to do and how not to do it. Teaching second grade just feeds my inner dictator...

Animal Alter Egos and Dating Advice for Strong Men: First and Second Grade Journals

In a move to broaden our writing horizons (from pet and video game stories), I've been assigning journal topics during daily writing. We're terrible spellers, but plenty thoughtful and creative.

"If I Were An Animal, I Would Be..."

...a lion I woud scare peopl so I scare peopl out of a restront and eta al of thaer food.

...a cheata. Because cheata's can run 60 miles (97 kiloneters) per hour. The reason I want to be a cheata is because I love cats and cheata are part of the cat faimly. But the thing I don't like about them is because cheata's are meat eators and I'm meat.

...a dog. because I like treats and. people petting me and. have sharp teeth and. have big ears like. my anuts dog.

...a Rabit i like to hope i love to Run and i like to hiDe. But i dont to be shot and be eating. But i do like carrets. But the only thing is that i like to swim and Rabits dont like to be cold and i dont like to be in a cage

...a Dinesor because they are bigger than any other animel. And no body can kill a Dinesor except Jesus. Except I wouldn't want to scare to many people away because then I wouldn't have any friends then. and they eat meet and I really like meet and they are strong and they have huge teeth. But one thing I don't about Dinesor is how they don't get cavities without brushing there teeth

...a dinasor because it is big and were the first animal made. they have big bones. and have blud. and likes meat and green stuff. and be a good dinasor and stomp.

...a baer because I like fish and I downt lik winter and I like sleping but If I wus a baer i wud skaer people but i like to eat to   but I wud want to brush my teeth after. But I wud want to be frinds wih people

A few of us are rather attached to our toothbrushes, I guess. This makes me laugh.

After a week of studying this fascinating Bible character (and collectively groaning over his dramatic ups and downs), I told the kids to write Sampson a letter as though he's still alive today. They could tell him what they liked, ask him questions, or give him advice. These were my faves:

Dear Sampson:

Please never marey a philisyn girl agan. Never let anyone ty you up agan. Never cut you'er Hair. Never drink wien. Never let anyone win a Batell agest you agan. allways trust in God. allways love God. Never kill you'er self agan.

Dear Sampson how did you kill a loin and how long was it untill you came back and the bee nest was thier? That was a good ridly you. did And how did you get such a good ida to bren the Fillasteans fields. Oh and I have some ed wiss don't let girls get in the way of you and God.

Dear Sampson I liked it when you killed one thousand Fillesteens with a Dead donky's jo bone. But I didn't like it when you were falling in love with fillesteen women. And I don't think you should have taken some honey from the lion you killed. You souldent have told your wife the awnswre to the ritel. p.s. try not to fall in love with more girl's okay

Why Criminals Are At a Disadvantage in the Winter

A kindergartener came running up to me at recess on Tuesday. "Ms. Djerf, Ms. Djerf, guess what! I go to Manhandle Class!"

This was a new one. "You do, Cory? What's that?"

The question he was hoping for, of course. "It's where we learn how to handle...I mean, man-handle bad people, like robbers and killers!"

"Oh. Wow." That was all I could muster.

"And in the winter," he continued, "we can do something special. We grab their hoods and choke them!" This was accompanied by vivid gestures which assured me that man-handle class involved hands-on practice.

I'm hoping we can keep the manhandling down out at recess (I think we're OK; although we have mutant gerbils and invisible zombies, we don't have any robbers or killers that I know of), but this I know: if I ever need just one kindergartener to walk with me through dark alleys, this guy will be my pick.

My Invisible Zombie Can Beat Up Your Invisible Zombie

I love recess duty.

Today, I observed a small group as they ran screaming from snowbank to snowbank, being pursued by an invisible zombie.  A particularly imaginative kindergartener dictated the storyline of the game, demonstrating what zombies sound and act like, and then throwing the rest into a panic with sudden shouts: "There he is!!"

The rest of the group obediently took off in delighted terror each time. "AAAhhhhhhh!!!!!"

One smaller boy played along for a little while, and then boldly decided that HE could sense the approach of the zombie, too. Before this, they had punctuated their endless escape by throwing themselves, panting, onto snowbanks (safety tip for future reference: invisible zombies can't catch OR bite you when you're on a pile of snow). But now, these time-outs grew shorter and shorter as the two competed to be the first one to yell, "There he is!" and hurtle headlong in the opposite direction.

The next time they paused near me, I overheard this same student take his bid for power one step further, as he attempted to explain to his comrades that "some zombies are actually good, and this one IS good, because he's in a cage..."

That's all the further he got, however. (When your enemy is invisible, and you're not the only person controlling its appearance, stopping to hypothesize about it is fruitless.)  Because the next second, someone else screamed, "There he is!"

And they were off.

When We Grow Up

"It is easy to decide what to be when you grow up: agree or disagree."

Once we could successfully discern the difference between agreeing and disagreeing, we had a lively discussion in first and second grade today around this topic.  Students placed their names on one side or the other, and then gave reasons for their choice.

Most of the class agreed that there are SO MANY interesting jobs that you could have, that it's very difficult to decide. However, three were remarkably decisive:

"I used to think it was hard, but now I think it's easy. Because when I was two years old, I didn't know what I wanted to be, but then when I was three years old, I heard about planes and jets and that you could fly them in the Air Force, and then I knew that I'm going to be in the Air Force. So then it was easy."  -- This from an ancient eight year old.

"Well, I think it's easy because I have a brother who does all these things that I can't do yet because I'm not old enough, but I just watch him, and I like everything he does, and then I can see what I want to do when I'm older, like guns and soccer. And they happen on different nights, so I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to do all of them."  -- I wonder if that exemplary eighth grader knows how much influence he exerts over his second grade brother.  I'm tempted to tell him.

"I think that you just have to find something that you really like to do and you're good at it, and then you just think of jobs that are perfect for that. Like, I'm good at singing, so I'm going to be a rock star."  -- I have a feeling that this child gets her daily dose of the Disney Channel. 

This made me think of my all-time favorite story from my roommate's third-grade class. Another time, another post...

Catching On

"Miss Djerf, I know Mr. Popper is the main character in this story!!!" And then Jeffrey went on to explain why he knew this to be true.

 

That one comment (blurted in the middle of our read-aloud) was a bit of sunshine I'm poking away in my pocket, where I can stick my hand in from time to time and soak up the warmth.  Turns out Jeffrey, who appeared to be communing with distant galaxies during this week's reading lessons, knows what a character is AND how to find the "main-est" one!

 

It's not much, but it's a pretty happy something as far as I'm concerned.

What Do You Get When You Cross the WWF with Overgrown Rodents? Recess, Naturally

Stepped back as a stream of heavily insulated children thumped past me, all in pursuit of one fourth grade boy.  Snagged one I know to be a storyteller, inquiring, "What on earth are you guys playing?"

 

He cheerfully brushed snow from his face. "It's a fun game. We all chase Bart, and then we pile drive him!"

 

I was obligated to create a new rule. "Hey, no pile driving at recess."

 

"I know," he responded, "but if we don't, then HE touches US, and he turns us into mutant gerbils, just like he is!"

 

Which made the pile driving entirely acceptable, of course.  Can't have a bunch of mutant gerbils running around at recess.