Mid-twenties. Let’s talk about it. Who the HECK knows what to do in your mid-twenties. There are the few who got married and already popped out kids, some are steadily on the marriage track, others are delving into high powered careers, some are “living the dream” of spontaneity and soaking up every moment their youth has to offer, some are rocking stillettos and diva-ing their way through the chaos… and I… am failing in love with 7 yr olds.
If you asked my five years ago where I would be on the eve of my 24th birthday would I have said: exhausted, overwhelmed, discouraged, focused, anti-social and writing a lesson plan on how to make a bar graph? Probably not. Yet, here I am.
I am currently 6 months into my 1yr intensive Masters in Teaching program at UW and am in the midst of the “hardest” part of my program (which is comical because I swear it couldn’t get any harder). I have a pathetic social life, am best friends with textbooks and lesson plans and get my kicks from the outlandish things my 2nd graders say. To give you a little insight, I read a book to my class last week called “Mr. President goes to school” and I legitimiately loved it. I proceeded to teach them the hokey-pokey because let’s be real, no kid in my class is going to leave 2nd grade without knowing how to ROCK the hokey. Despite all of this: the lack of sleep, inability to see my wonderful friends, truly haggard look that is permanently worn on my face (don’t get me started about my hair)… I am happy. The 2nd graders of room 4 have won my heart and I truly feel sorry for those who don’t get to experience the wonder and curiousity of elementary students. Alas, I will share with you some fun facts and a few of our finest moments.
In the eyes of a 2nd grader…
-The more patterns the better. If it is possible to wear an outfit of hearts, stripes, polka dots, plaid AND zig zag – DO IT.
- The more ponies the better (not the horse kind, the hair kind). In my clearly sheltered elementary experience I learned that the single pony is the cool way to go. Pig-tails are for losers. The tides have changed. 3-4 randomly placed ponies is what gets you into the popular crows. Tell all the kids you know.
- Bold colors. Always. This goes back to the pattern comment – if you can dress in ALL pink… DO IT.
- If you can wear leopard, neon green AND polka dot blue at once – DO IT.
- Another option if you’re not into the multi-color is to wear multiple shades of the SAME color.. 4 shades of orange… so hot.
- It is completely normal to get out of your seat and come tell the teacher in the middle of the lesson that you are growing tomato plants in your back yard. Obviously that information trumps math teaching.
Here are some of my favorite moments…
When I asked one of my students what his favorite part of Christmas break was he responded…. “I ate 4 nuggets from Mcdonalds”. Yep. Not presents, not family time, not playing in the park. Nope. Nuggets.
When our students wrote a story about a pet they wished they had (any pet in the whole world) one girl wrote… “I wish I had a pet dog named doughnut.”. Clearly she is one of my favorites.
One boy in my class wrote a story about Lizard-Zilla who saved the village from Monster-Moth. Obviously. That same day a girl wrote about a boy who dreamed that there was a cat-zilla the size of the empire state building attacking New York.
A girl in my class gave a riveting speech about the “spirit bear”. And I quote: “There is an animal called the spirit bear and it needs our help. The spirit bear is a white bear living in British Columbia. It is not a freak of nature, it is not an albino it is GENEITCALLY UNIQUE and it is going to go extinct if we do not help it! We have to take action to save the Spirit Bear. YOU CAN HELP! Tell your friends and get involved”. This speech continued for upwards of 5 minutes, essentially repeating the main points until our fearless environmentalist was almost in tears. Needless to say I am doing my part by sharing the Spirit Bear’s crisis here, with you.
That same girl told me that if she could have anything in the world for her birthday she would have a “light snow”. While holding back laughter I asked why she wouldn’t want a heavy snow and she responded in a disgruntled tone that “a heavy snow would be terrible. A heavy snow leads to black ice, car crashes and serious injury. Of course I wouldn’t want a heavy snow A light snow is just right”. Obviously. What kind of kid wants a lot of snow to build a snowman and go sledding anyways?
One day we were talking about MLK and making a list of our dream for the world and kids were saying things like, “everyone will have friends”, “everyone would be safe” and the SAME girl proceeded to stand up and say, “My dream is for everyone in the world to have shelter, water, food, clothes and… health care.” Yes, she is 7.
These are just a few of the moments that make the exhaustion and stress of school worth it… precious, outlandish little moments that we get to peer into little human’s brains.
Also - we get to do fun projects like this turkey.
And make pinch pots.
And read cute poems like this... (p.s. I truly love everything in this poem).
And every now and then... I get a card like this, which makes it all worth it.
