March 2012
56 posts
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“Augh — You’re just as bad as the kids!”
– Things I said just now to my cat as I mopped up water she spilled all over my pencils. Which happened this afternoon at work with kool aid and a completely unapologetic high schooler. (via shapefutures)
#education #cats #sorry sweetie you’re reaping what they sow #I think the cat has less...
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“Augh — You’re just as bad as the kids!”
– Things I said just now to my cat as I mopped up water she spilled all over my pencils. Which happened this afternoon at work with kool aid and a completely unapologetic high schooler.
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She's still trying to get to me, and I don't think...
Middle schooler: Oh! You're wearing normal clothes today! It looks nice!
Me: Oh -- I didn't do my laundry yet, I'll make up for it tomorrow.
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Do any teachers/youth workers/etc have peanut...
My kids love peanut butter. It’s one of their only affordable sources of protein and at the program they can have it for free. So whoever chooses the snack inevitably involves peanut butter somehow.
I’m allergic to peanuts. Not in a severe, even-the-smallest-hint-of-peanut-in-the-air-will-kill-me way, but generally, if I ingest it, bad things happen. I don’t even merit an...
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“I’m gonna move to anywhere but Florida ‘cause a black kid got shot...”
– One of my grade schoolers, who is also one of only a few students of color in the area. The only other student who knew what she was talking about is the speaker’s sister, also a student of color. The other students, mostly middle schoolers, were in varying states of incredulity, and an...
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poc picture books →
patoney:
This wiki is meant for childcare workers, librarians, teachers and parents interested in reading and sharing picture books where people of color are featured prominently. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all people of color books. Rather, emphasis is placed on finding stories especially appropriate to share with groups of children, five years of age and younger, where...
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Saw Hunger Games with the 'rents tonight.
Some of the tributes looked like my kids.
Needless to say, there was bawling.
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“Can’t talk right now, but, look up KhanAcademy online. Supposedly an...”
– A text that I got from my brother this afternoon. Made me smile. (My brothers are two of the best friends anyone could ask for.)
Cathedral Building: Tumblr support's response to... →
thesedeafeyes:
shapefutures:
My own additions before the reblog, for those who may not be aware of what’s been going on: this user has been collecting personal contact information and home addresses of LGBTQ users under the guise of friendship, then using this information to out them to their parents. This was one of their…
The idea of someone being malicious enough to do this makes me very...
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Tumblr support's response to reporting...
My own additions before the reblog, for those who may not be aware of what’s been going on: this user has been collecting personal contact information and home addresses of LGBTQ users under the guise of friendship, then using this information to out them to their parents. This was one of their latest messages:
Titled: I have been collecting thousands…
sophie-von-bayern:
…of...
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We were cleaning up at the end of the day. I...
Second grader: (reading from a question book for kids) Who do you think has it harder, boys or girls?
Middle schooler: Girls.
Me: ...well, everyone has high points and low points and situations where it can be difficult for them, but I do think it's pretty tough for girls --
Second grader: Yeah, because girls get their period.
Me: ...uh...
Middle schooler: Not ALL girls get a period.
(This back and forth continues faster than I can catch up with.)
Me: ...I was...going to say something about...power structure. But...you know what, you're having a really...good...discussion about it what's the next question?
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Rainbow Jones
We started doing character profiles. For every half an hour that they work on the week’s challenge — this one being creating characters — during homework time, they get a piece of currency that lets them into a prize closet.
So far nearly all the kids who started have gone far beyond homework time and currency, and have started forming stories with other kids, and it’s...
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Madness indeed!
Somehow “Watercolor Madness” turned into “watercolor on the lawn because it’s the first day of spring” turned into “everyone paint on each other.”
It was awesome until someone drew some inappropriate anatomy on someone else’s leg and we had to bar them from the paints for the rest of the afternoon. But everyone else had fun, and my supervisor...
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I have a gigantic headache today and can't figure...
I don’t think I picked up anything from the kids this time, they’ve all been pretty healthy. Well, except for my spunky little anti-bullying grade-schooler, but that was last week and it was mostly coughing.
The schedule I’m on is a little strange — I’m moving from just before 1pm until just after 7pm, which includes an hour drive to and from work each way. Every...
“Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed...”
– We no longer have to just take iconic writers’ words on the power of fiction. The New York Times’ Annie Murphy Paul explores the neuroscience of your brain on fiction and how narratives offer a way to engage the brain’s capacity to map other people’s intentions, known in psychology as “theory of...
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Dirt
When one student in particular — the source of the issue that had me walking another student home at the end of the night — is angry with someone, he hits them wherever it will hurt the most, specifically and especially in regard to identity, whether it be race, gender, sexuality, whatever. And last week, because of some severe and persistent issues, he was told he could not come back...
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If you’re used to an environment that puts emphasis on the importance of language and word-choice, it can be hard to realize how drastic the difference can be between respectful language and some of the ways that individuals can be framed in a conversation as objects. The latter is just something that seems like common sense not to do.
Today’s offenders hail from a combination of...
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hisnamewasbeanni asked: One thing that occurs to me (and I'm sure you've already tried it, but just in case) is to try to play up the "kids teach/coach the teacher" aspect as much as possible? The way it sounds, most of those kids wouldn't have had many life experiences in which they are in the role of the "expert"? It's really tough to walk the line between a "student"...
hisnamewasbeanni asked: Gosh, I feel for you! Reading about your current predicament, I have conflicting feelings of sympathy, admiration (for your persistence and sheer commitment), and jealousy (at getting to interact with kids in an area I'd love to but am unable to) battling within me! (Admiration is winning out, by the way. Pretty easily, too.)
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I want to thank everyone for the wonderful...
It’s really heartening to know I have such support in this community. It helps make the world a better place, what you all are doing. This week something fairly devastating happened to my family. I cannot go into it. But the worst of the news came this morning. I didn’t know if I could even move, let alone go to the program, where I was preparing to be emotionally beaten up...
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In all honesty, the kids are getting to me.
Even when I’m physically fit I’m not particularly graceful or well-coordinated.
The fact that I’m bad at just about everything they can do, or try to show me — sports, yoga, basic gymnastics like rolling and cartwheels, tree-climbing — is becoming a running joke. I’d like to think that they’re cheering me on because I keep trying it anyway, but...
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Today I...
Remembered there was a reason why I was always picked last in gym, recess, etc.
Tested the limits of my poor spacial awareness by accidentally leaping into a support column, nearly tipping over the porch railing, slamming my knee into said railing, and bashing my arm into a wall-mounted mailbox
Scraped, bruised, tripped, wheezed, limped, and lost at GaGa ball a lot
Brought in a pie for Pi Day
...
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We've Had Enough
positivelypersistentteach:
i-am-river:
Trigger Warning: Violence, Disrespect, Injustice, Public Education
Yesterday, a veteran teacher and wonderful person, with a thirty year unblemished record was attacked by one of her students. She defended herself, but still ended up on her back in the hallway, with the student on top of her and beating the living daylights out of the teacher. The...
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The day after incidents like yesterday’s I find the best way to counteract the bad attitudes and their effect on me is to go ahead and wear the most ridiculous outfit I feel the most comfortable in and not give a darn about the opinions of the kids. The latter, aside from the cursory making sure it maintains a certain level of professionalism, is something I should be doing anyway.
Last...
A student discovered while outside that they could shoot their drink out their nose. They did this repeatedly on the lawn to the shock, delight, and occasional horror of the other youth, as well as the other staff. The staff praised it as a great talent and just encouraged them to continue to do so on the lawn and not to bring it inside.
I don’t know how I feel about this at all.
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If this thunderstorm is happening in VT like it is right here I know at least one of my middle schoolers is freaking out right now.
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But the high point on the wings...
…is that they were made by four elementary schoolers, including a boy who meticulously selected only purple feathers and then proclaimed for the next half hour that he was flying (complete with occasional arms-out-in-front, and standing at the edge of the porch or sliding down the stairs on his butt for apparent effect).
That was pretty awesome.
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I can't tell if this will be the norm or not.
Me: *wearing a pair of little feather costume wings some of the kids would make later with feathers, pipe cleaners, and clothespins*
Middle schooler: What are those?
Me: Wings. We're making them later.
Middle schooler: Can I rip them apart?
Me: ...what? No. Why would you want to destroy something someone put effort into making?
Middle schooler: Because it's weird.
Me: So am I.
Middle schooler: *has no idea what to say*
Me: You know, you're going to miss out on some really cool stuff if you only want to rip up everything weird.
Middle schooler: ... *walks away*
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A note on language:
If you have a gay friend or know a gay person who’s okay with things like “That’s so gay” or “f*g,” that doesn’t mean that it gives everyone a blank check because on LGBTQ individual likes the word.
There are plenty of LGBTQ people out there — and people who may not be but have been assumed to be for one reason or another — who have been...
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Tank Full of Fighting Fish
When I was seven my first pet was a carnival fish. He was a Japanese fighting fish, and his name was Freddy. I quickly learned that Freddy was not allowed to be in a bowl with other fish, because of his aggressive tendencies — demonstrated for me cruelly by a friend who insisted on propping up a mirror at the side of his bowl and watching him try to attack his own reflection.
Most of the...
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Sorry if I've been relatively unavailable these...
Closing out the old job (that I still somehow ended up not entirely walking away from except now I don’t get paid for the bits of work…it must say ‘welcome’ across my forehead because I’m a doormat) and starting this new job (as much as I love it, the kids have been kicking my butt and I have ended up crying on the way home two out of three days this week) has left me...
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I was relaying an art-related mishap to my mother...
She was watching an interview with Susan Blakely, creator of Spanx, and told me that her father routinely asked them at the table what they failed at that day, and then gave them high-fives for it because it meant they tried something. I tracked down a piece of an interview where she mentions it, though I can’t find the one that my mother saw specifically (and it turned out it was week, not...
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I lied. One more for the math folks.
The roundest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
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One more before bed because it made me laugh way...
Two atoms are walking down the street and they run into each other. One says to the other, “Are you all right?”
“No, I lost an electron!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m positive!”
Goodnight everybody, I’m here all week.
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The kids will either begrudgingly get a kick out...
storiesofastudentteacher answered your question: What do you call an alligator in a vest?
I LOVE BAD JOKES. I tell one to my students everyday. What diid the buffalo say when his son left for school? Bison.
Hee hee hee!
I’m thinking of purchasing an additional white board, a small one, probably from the dollar store or something, to put up in the program space just for a daily cheesy...
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“They’re wrong. Being different is good! Everybody should be different,...”
– A second-grader at program when she and I were talking about why people bully others.
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What do you call an alligator in a vest?
I love using bad jokes and puns with the youth I work with. Icebreaking, diffusing an awkward or tense situation, making someone laugh when they’re down…they’re great tools, and I get a kick out of them. You can even use some of them as crossword clues for filler or spelling words, or have students write their own when studying homonyms (or other language lessons that might...
