Immi's Gift

This was my favorite state award nominee book, so I saved it for last.  Our school just launched a 26 Acts of Kindness program, and it was so awesome to hear the kids make that connection to the book. So I read it 18 times. I didn't get tired of it, not once.  What I especially loved was how the kids responded when I read the last page.  Every single class of second graders gasped.  They totally got it.  Some of the first grade students got it--I heard a few gasps.  Not one kindergartner got it without a little explanation.  But that's okay--I assume it's a developmental thing.

I had a few different activities to go along with the book, but every class ended up doing the same thing, which was to draw and color one of the things that Immi got from the sea.  Then we put all the items (ahem...maybe not all of them) on my K-cup igloo.  I can't believe I forgot to take an "after" picture. 

I'll take one tomorrow and upload it to this post, but for now, here is the igloo before we decorated it.  I collected K-cups from my own home and from my assistant's.  We had almost half of the cups pictured below! (yikes) Then I had to ask the teachers for help.  Thank God for caffeine-addicted teachers! I had the rest of the igloo completed in two days! The igloo in all its K-cup glory:

Ok, so you can see all the kids' creations on the snow around the igloo.  I hot glued most of them to the igloo and even inside it.  That picture will appear below (after I take it tomorrow!).

It came out so cute--I just love it! The kids enjoy looking for their object on the igloo, and if they don't see it, I tell them it's on the inside!  (I couldn't fit them all on the igloo.)

Day 6: Soul-crushing

I am so tired of this schedule.  I just don't think I can bear it much longer.  Every night at dinner, I am asked how my day went.  And for five days in a row, I say, "Just like yesterday...Just like yesterday..."  It's true--my day is EXACTLY the same for six school days in a row.  This always spans a weekend, and depending on the number of days in a week, sometimes two weekends.  It is interminable. And so. so. depressing.

I'm in a bad place right now.  My principal always talks to us about all the good we're doing, and how we can say we're just one little bolt riveter on the ship (it's a big, long analogy), or we can say that we build boats that carry our soldiers as they fight for our freedom.  So I can say that I'm a lowly, elementary librarian teaching the same damn thing six days in a row or I can say that I help grow children.

So I really try to keep this in mind: it's not my lessons that matter so much.  It's what the kids learn about themselves and the world around them that matters.  Except today, when I was teaching a fifth grade class.  For quite literally the 18th time, I was teaching the same lesson with the book Mirror, Mirror, which is on our state awards list.  Last rotation, I read it to them, and this time, they were performing one of the poems with a partner.

In all the classes, I talked about what it would look like when they were performing and what it would look like when they were in the audience.  One of the things we discussed, without incident in 17 classes of third, fourth, and fifth graders, was appropriate clapping.  A little chuckle and trying out of inappropriate clapping. Then back on track doing it appropriately.

Except this one fifth grade class.  One of the boys insisted on clapping with his palms cupped together.  As I tried to explain to him that this kind of clapping would not be appropriate at a poetry reading, he just kept doing it.  Once he told me he forgot, once he just shrugged, and when I said that I'd have to write a referral, he said, "for what?! Clapping?" When I asked if it would matter more if he were to get a referral for it, he said, "Not from you."

A referral for clapping does sound ridiculous.  But it wouldn't have been for clapping--it would've been for defiance.  During checkout time, this boy and two friends (for reasons unrelated to the clapping)  and I had a little sitdown.  It was there that he said, "I HATE YOU! EVERYBODY HATES YOU! THEY HATE COMING HERE!"

Woah.  Nothing like hearing that to make you question what you do every day.  I know that this boy has a lot of issues, and a lot of anger.  Things happened in his young life that should not ever happen to a child. Even though I know all this, his words still bother me.

His teacher came in around that time and I told her what happened--not the whole thing about the clapping, just what the boy said to me.  She acknowledged that he does say things to adults that are hurtful. (true)  And she also reminded him that he often feels this way and says these things when adults hold him to high standards. (very true)

So what do I do?  Lower my standards? Not expect as much from the kids?  Or the kids who come with all kinds of baggage? I just don't know.  But today I feel like I just cannot keep doing this schedule, this monotonous-same-thing-every-day-schedule for another. single. minute.