National Book Festival

I personally believe the National Book Festival should be treated with the same enthusiasm and magic as Christmas. Maybe even more. Christmas = one Santa Claus, Book Festival = many authors AND other fictional characters. (Although we heard staff whispering that the Penguin from Penguin books got sick and had to leave before his scheduled appearance)

Our first stop of the morning was to hear Brian Haig, a mystery/thriller writer I discovered this summer on my quest to do nothing but sit on my porch and read. He was a surprisingly engaging speaker and beneath his quick wit he had great insights into the writing process. His greatest writing suggestion I took away was that he always starts knowing his ending. After that, he just needs to figure out how to get the characters there. What a great mini-lesson on planning for writing workshop.

Another tidbit I took away from him was that he writes with the beliefs that:
1. His readers are intelligent people and he doesn't need to hit them over the with his message. Less is more, both in terms of descriptive text and in political messages.
2. Much of the press and general literature depicts life as being black and white. He works to show that life is not like that. I haven't read his newest book on Iraq, but if it somehow shows what is going on over there without taking sides, I can't wait to read it. (hello intersession).

Later we wandered down to the Pavilion of States, which is really like a literary version of Halloween. Kids get a map of the US and are suppose to go to every state's booth and get their map stamped. Teachers, as true scavengers, go to every booth and grab posters, sticky notes, book marks, and more that all have something to do with reading.
Just like Halloween I came home to empty out my large yellow bag to check out my loot.
1 orange 'readstrong' bracelet. 1 Latin music cd. 2 books on nursery rhymes to read to your toddler. many fabulous posters. 1 nice pen. 1 pack of sticky notes. 2 cds of children's books in spanish. 1 pack of black-eyed-susan seeds.

We ended up at the top of the Post Office Pavilion where we could look down and see the large crowd of readers swarming the National Mall. What a great sight.

Spanish I never learned

Como se dice:
Are these bite marks in your guided reading book?

Did you bite your guided reading book?

Books are for reading, not for biting.

Did it taste good?

bad sign

I just put my pajama pants on over my regular pants because I forgot to take them off.

Thank goodness intersession is coming up.

I LOVE year-round schooling.

judging parents

I think my biggest pet peeve is teachers who blame parents for everything that is wrong with their kid. I have dealt with my share of parents that made me want to require people to fill out an application and take a training class before having kids, so I am well aware of the power parents have over their kids.

But

this is the exception, not the rule. I notice complaints about parents the most from young teachers like me who do not have children yet. It's easy for us to roll our eyes when papers don't come back, when lunch money isn't paid, kids are dropped off late, or when reading logs aren't signed. We haven't yet tried to juggle life like that. Then there are the teachers who use to complain about parents all the time, but have become silent as they had their own children.

I want a parent/teacher partnership that is working toward our shared goals for these awesome little kids. That may seem naive and a stretch, but us young teachers will never get there if we approach the parents as though their baby's problems are all their fault.

If they can drive us crazy all day, who is to say they aren't driving their parents crazy as well? The parents do not intentionally create monsters. They do not go out of their way to turn what would be a sweet, caring 6 year old into a screaming, hitting monster. Child development does that, not parents. We only have to deal with their child 7 hours a day. They have the rest, plus weekends, summers, breaks, etc. Let's cut them some slack and try to work together.

Or maybe I'm just worried what will be said behind my back when I have my own kids...

teachers as witches?

Do you remember the book, 'The Witches' by Roald Dahl? Do you remember reading it in elementary school and becoming convinced that at least one of the teachers at your school was a witch?

For me it was my strings teacher. We knew for a fact she wore a wig (one of Dahl's sure signs of witchery) and we were pretty sure her spit would have been blue if we ever got a chance to check. In fact, the day we found out the county would not be renewing her contract we ran around the playground singing "Ding, dong, the witch is dead!"
6th graders can be mean.

I think that if my kindergartners had read The Witches they would have accused me of being one today. While sitting on the carpet trying to listen to the substitute, one became very concerned with my fingernails.
"Why, Mrs. Lipstick? Why do you have them that long? That's very bad. Bad for my stomach."
"Bad for your stomach? How?" I whispered, wondering if there was some different cultural belief in having long fingernails.
"Because you could hurt kids stomachs!" he said, rather too loudly for carpet time. (I shouldn't have been whispering with him anyway.)

Fair enough. I didn't bother to ask why I would be touching a kid's stomach, I left it at the fact that long fingernails scaring little kids.

Maybe Dahl wasn't that far off in his witch characteristics. Perhaps teachers with long nails should be avoided for self protection.

Ironically, my nails have been long (Dahl may say witch-like) ever since I stopped playing the violin in college. It is a silent protest against my 6th grade string teacher who would get out the scissors used for cutting cello strings, line us up, and cut our farm-kid nails to make them appropriate for orchestra.

The trouble with co-teaching in 4 different classes...Or, Who Let Spider-Pig Out?

I was in my first kindergarten class of the day during their snack time when I heard a rousing rendition of 'Spider Pig' (from The Simpsons Movie) break out from one table group. They sang the song passionately, over and over again and so I left their classroom with "spider-pig, spider-pig, doin whatever a spider-pig does" playing in my head. I immediately entered another kindergarten class, who had just sat down to snack. It was not long before "Who let the dogs out?" was being sung by a table group munching on animal crackers.

It was kindergarten battle of the bands, the only loser being the teacher who now had both songs playing over and over again in her head.

Friday uno game

I got schooled in uno today by a kindergartner. I mean, 100% beat down. Sweetest little girl, when she's not playing uno. A slightly shy, nurturing 5 year old girl who becomes a 16 year old uno champion, complete with smack talk. It was as though she was transformed into another being once the uno cards came into her hands. Occasionally she'd come out of the trance and look embarrassed, apologize for her rudeness, and confirm that she was just joking. Then it would be her turn again and she'd throw down a well-played draw 4. She was even slipping in and out of Spanish when she got overly excited.
It was fun to watch this competitive, strategic side come out of her. It was such a reminder that we don't always see the whole-child in our little 7 hour window we get to see them. There is always a surprise hidden there somewhere!