DAY 134

1st grade at a Detroit Charter school. For the most part it went well, but by the end of the day, two of the girls were getting on my last nerve. Just bouncy, silly, bugging people, not staying in their seats, that sort of thing. I shouldn’t have let it get to me, but, maybe because I was tired, I did. Sigh. Too much arguing and drama and tattling, and blurting out whenever anybody thought anybody was doing something wrong.

We did accomplish a lot of the work and I did the Hokey Pokey and Pizza Hut Songs with them. I enjoyed talking with most of them. Some of them did not catch on to the difference between common and proper nouns, and it took a lot of patience to deal with them over and over about it.

There was a very nice assembly in the morning to honor all the kids from grades 1-4 who met their Accelerated Reader goals. There were performances by some of the older (5th and 6th grade, but they look like about 10th grade!) students that were quite good.  So – have to say this – I was with the kids for about an hour or so and then in the auditorium for awhile before the thought suddenly hit me – that I was the ONLY white person in the entire auditorium. Later a couple of other staff members entered, but the interesting thing was that I wasn’t noticing this at all – they are just students and co-workers. Haha – actually, when I saw the other teachers, I thought they looked really pale, but didn’t think about how I must have looked the same.

A little girl told me she liked my hair. I asked her what she liked about it and she said “it’s curly.” 🙂 I told her that I liked her pretty beads and she told me more about them. It really is interesting to just listen to the kids tell about their lives.

My best friend got a new grandson this week, who is named Sebastien Flynn Hanko. I thought it was a pretty unusual name, but when I mentioned the name to some girls in the class, one said, “I have a cousin named Sebastian” and the other said that her friend had a brother with that name. So – I didn’t realize this name made a comeback.

I love being in that old building – it’s the one that looks almost exactly like Dixon Elementary School where I attended 2nd-6th grade. The first graders’ bathroom has little stalls with little wooden doors on them – can a bathroom be labeled cute? I was grateful for a giant fan, though, because otherwise we would have been very hot in the 79 degree weather.

Only a few more days of the school year – so far I have scheduled half a day for Monday and a whole day for Tuesday – not sure if I’ll find any work for the last two days of school. Hope I do – even if it’s just parapro or secretary (important jobs but they pay way less.)