E.: “Fainting is [falsetto 'eh hee hee hee' noise]. Fainting is when you are so happy you just fall down.”
Filed under: teaching
Last week, we studied Thomas Gainsborough and landscapes in general. So when Friday came around, I instructed my students to paint a landscape. Some created lovely (for Kindergarten watercolors) bucolic scenes with brooks and hills and wildflowers. But I was not a bit surprised when E explained his mostly brown painting:
“It’s a volcano! With a one-eyed monster right here and a two-eyed monster on the other side.”
Our lesson on poetry included (what I thought was) a simple assignment in writing verse: four lines, at least two of which rhyme. Not so simple, it turns out. Here were some choice gripes from my normally motivated students, as they sat struggling:
“I could write three lines, but there’s just no way I can write four lines of poetry!”
“I am really good at writing Haiku, just not other kinds of poetry.”
And my favorite (from a student who was upset that I didn’t allow the word “lightal” which was to rhyme with “vital.”): “Miss C., if I’m not allowed to make up words, I can’t write poetry.”
“What’s your favorite cephalopod?”
But then, you probably didn’t play with a dead octopus at work either. Or sing a song about the Monroe Doctrine. Or include a stuffed rabbit named “Bun-bun” as a contributor to a group accounting project.
I love my job.
A. mentioned that it was going to be warm on her vacation because Hawaii is “near the equator.” Of course, the next moment E. asked, “What’s the equator?” I loved A.’s five-year-old clarity:
“It’s a hot line that goes around the world. It’s where the sun likes to shine most.”
J was writing a letter to his cousin, B. (“He was born at 3:30 in the morning, too. So that makes us really cousins!”) when he looked up and asked, “Miss C., wouldn’t it be funny if we said ‘doyng’ instead of do-ing? Cause of the O-I, you know?”
M. is on vacation with her family. Yesterday, I heard comments like this all day long:
“I wish M. was here to make pumpkin bread with us.”
“I wish M. could have seen that. She would have thought it was funny.”
“M. would have liked that.”
Have I mentioned that I teach some of the sweetest kids ever?
Many of my students’ questions are tricky. These kids have to know why rule-breaker words break rules, if it was right for this or that to happen, or what I think of complicated family dynamics. So every now and then it’s nice to get a simple: “Miss C., was Ronald Reagan a founding father?”
Dear God, thanks for today. Please help my mom and dad to buy more ice cream and the new flavor of Tang. It’s a big package. Amen.
