DAY 128

“Is college boring?” This was the interesting question of the day from a third grader. I answered that some classes are, and some are very interesting but basically it’s like life – some parts are boring, others are exciting, and some things we have to do are just hard. Talked about how we build strength every time we make ourselves work longer than we really want to and how that strength helps the next time we have to work hard.

Today was a fairly easy day with this third grade class in Livonia. I monitored them doing their multiplication pages and helped quite a few of them with their problems – even did a couple up on the board since so many were “lost.” I gave an impassioned speech about learning their multiplication tables during this summer – getting flash cards, making a game out of it, whatever. Asked them if they prefer to spend 2 hours or 1 hour doing homework. Ha! Easy answer. Explained that knowing their M. tables will make it faster to do their homework and help them all their lives. Hoping it sank in for some of them. Honestly, I can’t imagine not knowing them! What a personally-invited-handicap!

The rest of the day included walking them here and there (having a couple of hours to work on my art class assignment), taking them out for a couple of recesses, and watching “Wall-e” at the end of the day (about 2/3 of it, anyway.) One boy had not seen it and had a few questions as to what was going on. “Why is the earth covered with garbage? Why are all the people so fat?” I asked him if he knew what exaggeration was. I told him this story was written to exaggerate and show what the world would be like if we kept filling it up with garbage and never exercised and only communicated with other people through electronic devices. He seemed satisfied with that. I hope he gets to see the end of the movie.

Several boys got into arguments today. W and A were going at it and I said, “we can either take the last ten minutes of recess to straighten this out, or you can both apologize and go back to playing.” W apologized. A. told him it was not the right tone of voice. W. apologized again. A. told him that he didn’t sound sincere. W. apologized again. A still said he didn’t accept it. At this point it was getting ridiculous – I sent W on his way and made A sit down for awhile until he cooled off. I suspect that this reflects the way apologies go at his house with at least one of his parents. 😦

For the next argument, I told the boys to get a pen and paper and write down what happened and I would give it to their teacher to deal with it. Both of them plus another boy who claimed to be a witness each wrote about three-four sentences and gave it to me. I didn’t read them – just left them stapled together with a note for the teacher. 🙂 It let them vent without me and the rest of the class having to hear it, anyway.

I met a teacher who keeps meticulous notes. She has a 6-page booklet for each student, in which she records every week how each of them did in every subject, regarding following directions, cooperating, understanding, etc. She writes notes for each one of them EVERY week and sends these forms home to the parents. She says there are NO surprises at report card time in her class. I was impressed – I have never seen anyone do this (or maybe I just didn’t know) other than some special ed. teachers. She’s been doing it for about 20 years, I think she said. Hand-written – imagine that!

Last of all – a shout out to Mr. T, the other 3rd grade sub today, just in case you decided to read my blog. 😉