Classroom Reflections 03/08- 03/12

Week 6

I taught my first Social Studies lesson on Monday in Mrs. Strickland’s class. This seemed to be going well, but I hadn’t planned for them only being there for thirty minutes before leaving to go to camp (P.E.), so I actually wasn’t able to finish it. She said that this was fine, however, because they would still be studying parts of Greece next week and it would be good to have an activity to have them do as a refresher. I’m feeling a bit more confident and consistent with the students, and find this time in the classroom to be extremely enlightening and productive. It’s amazing how quickly you get attached to students, learning more and more names, seeing particular weaknesses and strengths in different ones, and generally adapting to the “character” of each classroom. It's week 6 already. If only there was more time.

One very bright boy, who can also be quite disruptive if he is bored, has decided that he would like to go into the Marines when he gets out of school. He has began writing stories of his future “adventures”, and on Wednesday I had the distinct pleasure of reading a page of one of these dreams-placed-to-print. He had included conversations, all included in quotes, between himself and his marine leaders, involving him continually responding “Yes sir!” and to something else, again “Yes sir!”, until the unit leader shouts, “Stop saying that!”, to which the boy replies in his narrative: “Yes . . . I mean, I see what you mean sir!” It was humorous and enormously creative, and I found myself secretly praying that he would never lose his joy of writing, that it would not be worn out or eroded by life and time. Of course, one never knows. Time has a way of bringing us back to things even long after we’ve discarded them, so there’s always hope.

During their snack break one afternoon, I asked if they would like to hear a few funny poems from a book that I had. It was Shel Silverstein’s book Where the Sidewalk Ends , and there were several humorous selections that they found entertaining. Though it wasn’t part of any particular lesson, one girl remembered that this was the same author who’d written The Giving Tree, and pointed out the similarities in the pictures of both books. They asked if I could find more of his books to bring in, and I said that I would definitely try if there was time. Time is, of course, both inside and outside the classroom, the final enemy.