Team Jesus

Recently, I have a few students who apparently have been introduced to the Twilight series. I have not read any of the books or watched the movies, but today two of my students asked me whose team am I on? Knowing what they were talking about, I told the children, "I'm Team Jesus." Kateri corrects me saying, "No, Ms. J. I am team Jacob, because Edward is pale. Are you team Jacob or team Edward."

"Neither, I have not taken part in the Twilight movies, therefore I choose to just be team Jesus."

Something that Starts with the Letter D that is Hot

Yeah, I don't even know what the correct answer is. Today when I went to pick my class up from Spanish, they were playing this game while standing in line. I think I walked in the first answer I heard was a hot dog. They were told no, so Joseph says, "a dad."

Mrs. F. says, "No, Dad's are not hot."

"I guess that would depend on the dad," I say softly back. I know inappropriate.

We begin walking back to class and Celine says, "Ms. J. did you know that Thomas guessed your name for something hot that begins with a D?"

I can hear many things as a teacher, so my typical comment when walking in the hallways and not knowing what to say is, "Oh, that is nice!"

Celine quick to respond, "But you told us that it isn't nice to say someone looks hot, we were supposed to say they look pretty, beautiful or handsome."

"Yes, Celine you are right, I did say that."

How much are you worth?

The school auction is approaching rather quickly, tomorrow. The auction is my school's largest fundraiser, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars. It is a fun night, shared with the school faculty, school parents, clergy, and community. Every year the teachers donate items to do with children. This year our teacher donations will be taken out of the silent auction and put into the live auction, in hopes to raise more money for the school.

I decided that with the auction being tomorrow, I would tell the children about the auction baskets that I will be involved in. The goal is to get the children interested in the baskets, so they will tell their parents to bid on the basket. I say, "Okay class, tomorrow is the auction, so Ms. J. wants to share with you the auction baskets she will be in, and if you like that basket idea tell your mom and dad."

Celine says, "Wait a minute. You are going to be in a basket."

"No, but that would be funny. What if I jumped out and said buy me?"

I have the cutest students because Cronius immediately says, "but Ms. J. you are priceless."

Cosmas says, "I will pay a $1,000 for you."

Cronius replies back, "Cosmas, there is any amount of money you could spend to buy Ms. J., that is why she is priceless."

After lunch and recess, the children return to class. As Cronius was walking in the door he says, "Ms. J. I have determined that the only way someone could have you is by being in your class. So they can pay money to be in your class."

What can I say, my students really know how to make their teacher feel loved.

e-Harmony

Today my class began reading the story, "Sarah, Plain, and Tall." This is still one of my childhood favorites. As we were reading in the book, I asked some questions about the story. One of the questions I asked was, "Why did Papa put an ad in the newspaper looking for a wife?"

Kateri answers first, "Well, Anna was getting older and she needed a mother to teach her how to be a lady."

"Great answer Kateri, are there any other answers?"

Ralph, "Well, he needed a wife, so he put an ad in the paper."

"Okay, Ralph, but why the paper?"

"Because he needed a wife," says Joseph.

"Alright boys and girls, I want you to think, why would a person write an ad in the paper for a wife."

Agnes raised her hand to answer, "Probably because they did not have a computer and so he couldn't use e-Harmony."

I can do that!

Today the children had off for parent-teacher conferences. I had a break in my conferences and was watching one of my student's two year old brother play with the water fountain in the hallway. When the preschool class came in from outside, he followed them into their room and one of the teachers asked if I wanted to watch their science experiment. I love science, so I went in to join them. The preschool teacher takes two eggs and the goal of the day was to see if you can break the egg with one hand, which is supposed to be impossible. Of course, give me a challenge and I am game. I said, "I can do that!" I take my turn, squeeze with all my might and the preschool teacher says, "see you can see she is squeezing hard, because her fingertips are turning red." All of a sudden the egg makes a popping noise. The next thing I know is that I have closed my entire fist, and egg is flying in the air landing on the children who either think this is awesome or have started crying. I look over to the two year who was sitting front and center for this activity and he has egg all over, but is laughing. I help clean up the mess and one of the little preschoolers comes up to me and says, "How did you get super strong powers?" Needless to say, I don't think I will be welcome in the preschool class for a while.

Ms. J. is kind of energetic?

Today, I took a few minutes to work on two of our Christmas songs for the Christmas program at the end of the month. The children will also be recorded for one of the songs to be put on the radio, which I believe that date is coming soon. I definitely want the children to do well. I have a class of beautiful singers, but recently some of the boys do not want to sing because they can't hit high notes like the girls. I also have the very talented Agnes who is trying to shine by singing louder than every other child in the class.

I begin by having every child sing the first line of Joy to the World and separate them into three groups. I had a group of three girls and one boy who could really hit the high notes, another group of three girls and one boy, and then finally a group of all boys. Aidan sees the groups and while everyone else is changing seats to sit in the same group, Aidan says, "Ms. J. isn't it funny how all the kids that can hit the high notes are all the energetic kids."

"Hmm, I didn't notice that."

Aidan had a point though, it did seem like some of the active children in the class were in that group. I also couldn't help, but to think that Aidan had phrased his comment in such a nice way.

We begin with everyone singing. "Okay, in my group 1, I want you to remember that the goal is to sing beautifully as a class. There are many beautiful voices in the classroom individually, but the goal is to sound beautiful together." I didn't want Agnes to be singled out, so I phrase this for the entire group. "Now group 3, you are twice the size of both groups, so I do not need you to sing loudly, because you are the largest of groups, we will not have any problems hearing you."

"Now, I will sing the first couple of lines for you to listen to and then we will sing again."

This is a very awkward time for me, as I do not believe I'm a good singer, even the thought of singing in front of children by myself makes me nervous.

"Ms. J. you should be in group 1," Aidan says.

"Thank you for letting me know."

"That kind of makes since, you are kind of energetic, too."

I do not know whether to take this as a compliment or insult.

Rocky

Gosh, it seems like forever since my last entry. Now that I'm done with report cards, things have settled down a bit. Tonight I am realizing that sometimes the stressful events in life are a blessing. They make us remember to enjoy the little things and appreciate even the smallest of things. Working on report cards was such a stressful time for me. I helped this year with getting all report cards printed, having a program that wasn't really set up correctly to begin with and going back into the programming to fix it. I had very little time last week to spend with my students and when I was with them, I wasn't, I was being pulled in so many directions or had so many other things on my mind. I actually missed being with my students, or my children as I usually call them.

This week, has been a more relaxing week. I am enjoying their company and teaching! I think the children enjoy having me being back this week as well. Although I am nervous about leaving them again in December for a meeting, because they didn't enjoy having a sub. Today we were discussing in our religion books about Joseph, we started studying Joseph last week, about how his brothers sold him, how he could interpret dreams, and how he became a governor in Egypt. This week we are focusing on how his brothers who are in need of food for the family come to Egypt. I always begin my religion lesson with questions reviewing the day before and I call on students to answer. Many hands have been going up lately because the children are finding the old testament very interesting and they keep craving for more. So, I ask the students, "Why do the brothers travel to Egypt?"

I see Celine has her hand up, "Celine."

"Well, ..."

"Remember, if this is a story or a question that doesn't relate to our lesson, ask or tell me after our lesson."

I'm really trying to work with the children on staying on topic.

"I know, Ms. J, but you see this picture, don't you think it looks like Rocky."

Celine points to one of the pictures in the religion book.

"Why, it sure does!" I'm quite amazed myself at the resemblance.

"I want to see," most of the children say.

Up out of their desks they go, heading over to Celine's. I do not know why, because all the children had the same book on their desk.

"Look in your own book," I suggest to the children.

I laugh, thinking that I have missed a week of the little things the kids say, find and do and it feels good to enjoy these little moments with them.

New Catholic Trading Cards

One of the things that drives me crazy with teaching fourth grade is the children's obsession with wanting to cut paper, drawing on paper, and making random things out of trash. I know I sound crazy right now, but you see at the end of the day I'm the one picking up all of it off the floor and finding their desk full of random pieces of paper. I try to stop the children as much as possible with this, for example the students are not allowed to keep scissors, crayons, colored pencils, and markers in their desk. I also do no allow paper in their desk, yes you read that correctly, paper is not allowed in their desk. I guess you can say I'm a little OCD.

Then there are days, that the children somehow bypass these small rules, usually when we have some form of craft. This morning the children made cards to go to the local Catholic High School for their generosity with paying for our field trip. Unfortunately, this makes it harder to keep the kids from creating things at their desk, that later end up on the floor. This morning while completing attendance, Cronius comes to me and says he wants to show me something. I glance over and of course it is a small cut piece of paper and I'm thinking, SERIOUSLY! Then of course, I have one of those moments, where you desperately want to be upset, but the child does or says something which changes your mood.

"Ms. J. do you know how there are card games like Pokemon?"

"Yes, Cronius."

"Well, I have decided to make a card game."

"Oh."

"Here is the first card, it is Jesus, he is worth 1,000 points. I want you to have him."

"Thank you, Cronius, you are such a sweet boy." (See what I mean, I am no longer mad at him for cutting and making things in my class.)

"Ms. J."

"Yes."

"Well, I was thinking that I could make a God card, too, God would be worth 10,000 points and because I do not know what he looks like I will put a question mark."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"Also, I want to make saint cards, too. Do you think you can get me some pictures of saints, so I know what they look like?"

"Sure, I can do that." (WHAT? Now I am supporting his cutting and coloring habit.)

What can I say, how do you stop a child from making a Catholic trading card game?

Let's just say I ended the day with retail therapy!

Last night, I had a dream that I ran out of stickers for my graded papers. I know, crazy, right? I hardly ever dream of school, but I did last night and I was stressed over STICKERS! Really, I think I was just stressed with preparing grades for report cards and preparing for today's field trip.

Field trips always stress me out. I think I feel overwhelmed with taking the children out somewhere new, what if I lose one and what if they get hurt? It is funny how the children are so excited about the field trip, and I'm desperately trying to be excited for them, but deep down I'm a nervous wreck.

To help with some of the anxiety of the field trip, I stayed late on Thursday making sure everything I needed was put together, so I wasn't going crazy looking for them in the morning. I picked the outfit I was going to wear for today and had it ready on the edge of my bed. I had everything ready to make for an easy morning. I woke up this morning, got ready to go and headed out the door.

On my ride to school, I PASSED one of my students in their vehicle. (Passed is capitalized for a reason, this is important information that will come in handy, later.) I was thrown off guard, when Joseph's little sister started yelling, "HI, MS. J" and waving her arms to get my attention. I have heard my name called in a store, across a parking lot, and at a church, never have I heard my name while driving from another car.

I get to school and had a fight with the copy machine, unfortunately the copy machine won. The children enter the classroom at 8:00 and I warn them that I know they are excited about the field trip, but I'm stressed because I am worried about something happening and that we are not leaving until we finish our two tests and quiz. The children begin taking their normal Friday tests. We finish up in enough time to use the bathrooms before leaving.

I line the children up by their chaperone and count them twice before heading out to the bus. We get outside and the chaperones inform us, that the bus is not here. I reply, "He is probably running a few minutes late and will be here soon." Five minutes pass, there is not a bus in sight. Ten minutes, I call the student who is my teacher's aide, "Please ask Mrs. A if she can call the bus driver because he is not here." Mrs. A, is the third grade teacher who was also attending the field trip with us.

Mrs. A meets me outside and says, "The bus driver did not know he was driving us today."

Pause. Truly at a moment like this you are speechless, you kind of do the head shake with open mouth, meaning what are we going to do.

I bring my students back to class and we send for the principal of the school, who is currently in Mass with the other classes. Mrs. A and I begin tossing around the idea of carpooling over for the field trip. Mr. G comes down to our crazy mess, and agrees to let us carpool to the field trip. We sit the children in the hallway to match them with parents to carpool over and Mrs. A and I realize that we may be driving for this field trip.

"I can drive, but I have to stop for gas." I told her.

"J-E-S-T-I-N-E!" yells Mrs. A, her hands come flying up, so at this point I know she is stressed.

"I DIDN'T REALIZE WE WERE GOING TO HAVE TO DRIVE," I yelled back.

Mrs. A and I were not mad at each other, but just frustrated with the situation. We start placing children with parents for carpool and I have two student left. I go in my room to get my keys and cannot find them anywhere. Stressed beyond belief, I have two fourth graders helping, looking in their desks? One of the parents walks in the classroom and says they will put the back seats of their van up, so we can ride with him. We get in the van, I call the place we are visiting and let them know we are on our way, at this point I'm ready for my nap.

We arrive to our location and our greeted outdoors, the woman asks if we are ready to begin. My response was, "I don't know if all my students are here, I need to count them." All the children made it safely there and we begin out field trip. The children and chaperones start without me. Upon entering the building, I was told that someone called our field trip and asked to pay for the entire trip and the place we were visiting needed to know if that was okay. We were renting a bus from a local Catholic High School, who felt bad that the driver they hired for us, did not come, which was so sweet of them to do. Unsure of what the policy was, I ask Mrs. A. who also didn't know, so I called the school. Mr. G said that was fine, so thank you to the person who paid our classes, the children had a wonderful time.

I was now free to join my class for the rest of the field trip. After we were finished we went outside and had lunch in the pavilion. I must say I am addicted to www.weather.com, but that certainly did not prepare us for how chilly it would be outside. We had another location that we were to visit, but at this point, we decided just to arrive back to school early. Many of the parents did not know where the other place was, and we would be spending a lot of time outdoors in the cold.

While driving back, Joseph says, "Mr. S, I think you should have let Ms. J. drive."

Mr. S. asks, "Why is that?"

"Well, she could probably get us back to school a lot faster, she passed my mom on our way to school this morning."

So, if that wasn't embarrassing enough. We end up stopping at a traffic light, where Raphael says, "Ms. J. that man in the truck next to us is looking at you."

"He is not looking at me."

All the children go, "Yes, he is, look."

I look and the man is not looking at me. "See, he is not looking at me."

"Now he is," says one of the boys.

"Do you think that man is attractive?" asks Raphael.

At this point, I needed to be out of the van. This was going downhill and downhill fast.

We arrived back to school early and had a movie day with the children. The parents really came together helping to make hot chocolate and provide the children with endless sweets. The children in the end had an awesome day. They loved the field trip and the afternoon movie. We may have had a rough start, but in the end the children had a blast, saying it was their favorite day of school so far.

Jacob and Esau

First of all, I apologize for taking a break from posting. Life has been rather busy, especially school. The class and I have spent the past week seeing how many things we can cram into one day. The realization that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming soon has definitely occurred to me, as we are now getting to the point in the year where we get to see how many activities we get to add to our day. This is partly my fault with overbooking myself to do many things in one day. For example, Monday I scheduled myself for a belated Mole Day celebration, conference, Spelling Bee club, and an after school meeting, which actually was over shortly after I arrived.

Today we began studying Jacob and Esau, this is one of my favorite chapters to cover in Religion. To begin our new chapter, I began by talking to the students about their own families and the order of the children in their families. I decided to pick one child and have them name all the children in their family. I then told the children that many years ago, that the oldest son would inherit the families belongings and so we talked about who would inherit the family's wealth. We then also talked about a family that had all daughters and the rule of marriage, typically the oldest daughter needed to get married before the younger daughters, which we would concentrate more about later in the week.

My students could not believe it, why would parents give everything to just one child? We then discussed how this is not a typical custom for many families today. I used the example of my family, where my parents hope is to split everything evenly between my siblings and I.

Agnes then asks, "What did they do in the case of twin boys?"

"That is a great question, Agnes. We are going to read about that right now."

We begin reading our religion book, where the students learn that Jacob and Esau are in fact twin boys. Esau being the oldest and Jacob the youngest. We go on to read how Esau is willing to give away his birthright to Jacob over food. We end up stopping at this point for the children to go to music class.

"Ms. J. in third grade Mrs. A. used to read to us and she always stopped at the good parts and now you are making us stop at the good part, too." Celine tells me.

"I'm sorry, but we have to go to music, but we will read more later today besides this will give us something to look forward to."

"I really want to know what happens next." says Joseph. "Can we read ahead?"

"No, let us all find out together, then it will be a surprise."

Like most Tuesdays, after music class the pastor of the church comes to visit our class. I was so happy because often times the priest will ask the children what we are studying in class and usually only a hand or two go up to answer his question. As a teacher, you sit there and say to yourself, I know I am teaching them something. Today, many hands go up as the children were very excited with the story of Jacob and Esau.

Cronius raises his hand and asks, "Father I do not understand, why would Esau just give up his birthright for food?"

Father responds back saying, "Well, we do not know how long Esau was out hunting, maybe he didn't eat for a week, he could have been very hungry."

Father begins talking more with the children about Jacob and Esau and begins to go beyond what we have studied about the two brothers. He ends our lesson with a closing prayer. It does not take him long to leave our classroom before Ralph says, "Ms. J. you told us we could not read ahead because you wanted us to be surprised, but Father just told us something that is going to happen."

"I'm sure Father didn't realize we haven't gotten that far in our studies and everyone was so eager to find out what happened next. Now you know."

"Well, I'm just saying, it isn't a surprise anymore."

"Trust me there is more to the story that Father hasn't told you, yet."

"Like?"

"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise."

Sometimes I do not understand children, they are so eager to know something, but get upset if you ruin the surprise by telling them information too soon. On the other hand, I am eager for tomorrow's lesson myself, where we will study about Jacob being the one tricked.

Oh dear, the things students say in class.

Today one of my children came in late. She had to get a cavity filled and the poor thing, her mouth was swollen coming into lunch. Unsure if she was even chewing correctly, she decided to save her lunch for later because she thought that her food was falling out of her mouth, which it wasn't. As the day moved on and the medicine was wearing off; her mouth began to hurt. Unsure of what to do, we tried a few things, but it really didn't work. I finally told her I didn't know how to help her, so another student responds, "Well, I know something."

"Okay," at this point I need some advice, and I was somehow willing to hear a fourth grader's idea. Maybe this probably wasn't the best choice.

"Well, once I hurt my mouth and so my parents gave me a little bit of alcohol to make it better."

"I cannot give her alcohol."

The child responds back hearing what the other child said, "WHAT???"

I quickly lined the class up to go to special and took the child to the office for a fresh new set of ideas, this time from adults.

On a side note to add to the comments of children thinking I'm old, I was also asked if games were invented yet when I was a kid.

Ms. J better watch out!

Today we began lining up to go to lunch and thankfully today I remembered to actually bring a lunch. Today like most days that I bring a lunch, I brought in a frozen dinner. The nice thing about frozen dinners is that you do not have to prepare anything in the morning, so I enjoy just grabbing one out of the freezer and heading out the door. I went to my bag and grabbed my lunch as the children were lining up and was like usual followed by Cronius. Cronius always follows me when we line up, he usually has many things he wants to share. However today, Cronius says, "Ms. J. you better stay away from Mr. G and Mr. P!"

"Why is that?" I ask.

"Well you see, there is a commercial with a woman getting ready to eat a frozen dinner and she is attacked by a man who wants her food."

"Oh, I haven't seen that commercial."

"Yes, well you are a woman and Mr. G. and Mr. P. are men and they might attack you for your lunch."

"Well, I will stay away from them while I'm eating my lunch then, I definitely do not want to be attacked."

Has anyone actually seen this commercial?

Ms. J's Newspaper Club

Last year, I sat in the eighth grade graduation listening to one of the eighth grader's speak on their experience at the school. They mentioned every grade and something that was special about each grade. He said fourth grade was the year of clubs. I thought, I have a club, the spelling bee club, but the kids aren't really much into making their own clubs. This year, clubs are all the rage. There is the Cronius Club, the Percy Jackson Club, and poor Agnes has tried making the Agnes Club, but it wasn't very successful.

Every morning, we add any prayer petitions to our morning prayer. The other morning, Cronius mentions the miners who were caught in the mine. I do not have cable, and had not heard any news on this happening, so I said, "oh, dear, I did not hear about that, I hope they will be alright." The children went into more detail about what was happening. We had morning prayer and then we started our day, but little did I know, the children made plans to start a new club the Ms. J. Newspaper Club.

During recess the children used this time to begin making a newspaper for me. The newspaper is too precious not to post.

Ms. J. is afraid of ALL bugs

So, today we returned back to class from recess, of course it is my recess week, and hardly any children talk to me outside, but the minute we walk in they have a million things to tell me. Raphael noticed that there was a dead moth in the marker holder of the board (I have no idea what you call that). I step back and the children ask me why, I said I am afraid of bugs.

Raphael then decides to pick it up and toss it in my direction. I scream and majority of my class laughs. Celine takes the time to come and rub my back and try to comfort me and says that her sister is afraid of bugs, too. The class then asks why I am afraid of bugs. I said I do not know why, I just am, bugs and most things that are dead.

Cronius then says, "How can you be afraid of God's creatures?"

I said, "I guess the same way people are afraid of heights, water, and clowns."

"Are you afraid of all bugs?" Celine asked.

"Yes," I respond back.

"What about lady bugs?"

"Yes."

"What about butterflies?"

"I like them from a distance, but not too close to me."

Later in the day, I took the time to talk to Raphael. I told him despite me being afraid of bugs or not the fact that he tossed a bug at a teacher is not very nice, in the future I would greatly appreciate it if he doesn't toss bugs at me because I am very afraid of them. Raphael felt badly for what he had done, so at the end of the day he gave me a card to apologize.

Ms. J is a ninja!

Roughly half my class plays on the same soccer league and team. I try to show support to my students and their extra curricular activities by going to some of their games and programs. This past Saturday, I went to watch one of two games that my students were playing. The kids played a great game and the final score ended in a 0-0 match.

Thanks to Christopher Columbus, we had a three day weekend from school, which is always awesome. When my students walked in today, Ralph walks up to me and asks, "Ms. J. why were you dressed up as a ninja at the soccer game?"

Having no idea what he was talking about, I say, "What do you mean?"

"Well, you were wearing all black, you looked like a ninja."

"Oh!" I replied back.

For the record I would like to say, I was not wearing all black. I wore a pair of blue jeans and a black shirt, my shoes were not even black. I actually thought I was doing a pretty good job, I even wore my hair down when I typically mostly wear it up. Maybe one black shirt is a little much, but I love that shirt, so I will choose to be a ninja.

I have finally learned how to knit

After years of attempting to try and teach myself how to knit, I have finally become successful, thanks to the wonderful videos knitters have posted on youtube. I made my first item which was an infant sized hat. It wasn't perfect, but I was happy because it was the first thing I ever made. I managed to finish it this morning while I was in morning care. So, today I asked the class, whose mom was having a baby? Adrian announced this the other day, so he raised his hand and I said okay I will give this to your mom as a gift and that I would try to make another item to go with. Adrian was very excited and says, "Oh, good because my mom doesn't have any hats for the baby."

At the end of the day one of the children was looking at the hat, commenting on how little it was and cute. When up walks another child, who grabs the hat and sticks it on his head. Needless to say the hat is now stretched out and too big to fit an infant. Adrian walks up shortly after to see what happened, I tell him it will be alright that I will make the baby a new hat. Adrian replies back, "Well, do you think you could make a pink one, it is a girl."

For the record the original hat was a very light color of mint green, I thought it could go either way, but maybe I'm wrong.

Never Underestimate Ms. J.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I help a couple mornings each week with morning care. What usually happens is I go to school and I will have a few minutes to print up my morning work assignment for the children and pass it out before going to the parish hall to help with morning care. When I get to morning care Mr. D. is usually waiting for me to arrive in the off chance that a child arrives before 7am, which has happened before. Mr. D. is so nice, he will usually spend the first couple minutes just talking to me as I wait for the first child to arrive.

This morning I decided to tell Mr. D. about my trip to Walmart. On Sunday I went to Walmart and was approached by a guy who told me he had been following me around because he thought I was attractive. He then asked for my phone number, so that we could go out for a while, then he would ask me to move in, and later get married. Yeah, I know SCARY! Mr. D. tells me that I should get some pepper spray. I was like that is not a bad idea. Mr. D. is a very caring man, so he also tells me things I should do to my house to help keep me safe at home. So, he then tells me that I should get my dad to buy me a rifle or shot gun for my house. He said you should never underestimate a woman holding a gun.

At that moment one of my students walks in with his father. The father goes to sign in and tells me, "don't worry Ms. J. I'm just signing Raphael in for the day and I have no complaints."

Angel Encounters

I'm trying to get better about keeping some notes on the day for things to write about in this blog. Last Friday I had a couple things that happened, in the end I felt that the hairy chest comment by far was the funniest. When the children came in today, one of the children noticed in small handwriting that there a list of things that happened on the board from Friday, and asked about why those things were written on the board. My class knows that I write a blog and so someone quickly says, I think they were ideas to write in the blog.

The child scanned the list and then asked why the word angels was written on the board. I said that while half the class was in library, the children that were in class with me started talking about angel encounters. Ralph then says, "Well I don't get why that would be funny?"

Ralph wasn't in the room at the time, so I say, "Well, Raphael made a comment about angel encounters. He told Ms. J. that he has met an angel before and her name was Ms. J.."

When he originally said this I laughed and thought someone is trying to get some extra credit points.

Celine heard about what Raphael said and instantly says, "Raphael you are sucking up to Ms. J.."

Raphael is quick to answer back, "No, I'm not."

Celine along with the rest of the class, "Yes, you are."

I knew at this moment that this this was a story that didn't deserve to be left off the blog.

Native Americans

Today we began a new unit in social studies on Native Americans and I read the class a book on how the Native Americans took great care of the earth and pleaded with American's to do the same. In the book, it shows male Native Americans not wearing a shirt. Celine was the first to mention this and up until this point I did not even notice. I respond back saying that they didn't have much clothing to wear that is why. Celine then brings up the point that the women have tops to their outfits. Hmm, puzzled I just say oh, let's continue with the story. After the next page Celine says it is probably so they could tell the difference because all the Native Americans had long hair, so they had to be able to tell who was a boy and who was a girl. I praise Celine for such a great answer.

After the book is finished, Cosmas then asks if we could maybe put on a play about Native Americans. I said I would have to think about that, thinking that that probably will not work we are getting ready to start practicing for our Christmas program. He tries to help me agree to the issue by saying that the boys would just wear t-shirts, that they didn't have to go shirtless. Regina then responds back asking why they would wear t-shirts, when the Native Americans didn't wear t-shirts. I respond back to Regina saying that we attend a Catholic school and we practice modesty, so it would not be appropriate for the boys not to wear a shirt. Raphael then hears this and mentions that when he goes to the pool, he doesn't wear a shirt. I respond back saying that the pool is different, but we are a school and all children must wear shirts. Agnes then tries to agree with me on the issue and said, "besides we do not want to see your chest hair." Who would have thought a fourth grader with chest hair?

Grading Papers

I'm grading papers to go out tomorrow. In the morning I always give a writing assignment. Recently the children wrote about putting on a holiday pageant. They needed to say what holiday they would pick and what kind of program they would put on. This is what Adrian wrote:

"I would pick Christmas. I would pick Christmas because a big person could be Santa Clause. Everybody else could be an elf. Ms. J. could be the head elf."

So, okay I'm a petite person at just 5 feet tall. I am sitting her wondering did my student just call me short?

Pick Me Ups

To encourage students to do homework, I have a homework pass lottery every day. If the students do all their homework, they receive a ticket and I draw out a name every day from my basket and that child gets one free homework assignment pass. I find this works very well, the children want to receive their tickets. I have a class of mostly boys, 10 boys to 7 girls, so naturally I tend to pick a boy's name most days. So far this year, a girl has only won one time. As I pulled the name I slowly reveal one letter at a time. You should have seen the look on the girls faces when they realized that again I had pulled out another boys name.

I love this system with the tickets, it has reduced a lot of the problems I had last year with students not turning in their homework. Today, after seeing the girls's faces, I realized I needed to give a girl the opportunity to win one of those homework passes. I decided I would give Raphael his pass and draw out another name, I pulled out Maximus. Not showing the class whose name I pulled out I threw it back in the basket. Immediately, Joseph calls me out as being unfair.

Well, if there is one thing I do not like, it is being called unfair as a teacher. I work hard not to be an unfair teacher, I stick to classroom jobs like they are the law, no child is allowed to do someone else's job. I work hard to hear all sides of the stories and do not get mad, but instead encourage the children to see the other persons side and why they would be upset. So, I responded back to Joseph, "How am I being unfair? Raphael will still get his homework pass. I just would like to give an opportunity for a girl to receive a pass, too."

Joseph tells me, "but you already drew a name."

"I realize this and I would never take Raphael's pass away from him, but in order for this lottery to work (meaning the kids continue to do their homework), I need to draw another name out for the girls. This will not happen everyday. It is just that the girls I notice are beginning to feel like they will never win and this might discourage them from doing their homework. Right now they do not care what girl receives the free homework pass, but just want to know that a girl is capable of winning."

The girls in the class begin to shake their heads yes and smiles appear as they realize that one of them will be the winner of a free homework pass.

Joseph asks, "if the girls start winning all the time, will you do this for the boys?"

"Of course, I will, we will call this pick me ups, because sometimes we need that boost in knowing we can win. So, today the girls got a pick me up and maybe later in the year I will have to do a pick me up for the boys."

Joseph is satisfied with this answer and no longer sees it as being unfair.

I love massages

I can't believe I forgot about this earlier when I wrote up my blog, this is the reason why I try and write things down throughout the day. I will have to start doing that again. So, all day long Cronius would want to tell me something and to get my attention he would tap me on my arm, shoulder, and back. Every time I reminded Cronius that poking and tapping is not the way to get my attention. At the end of the day he comes up to me and taps me on the back to get my attention.

"Cronius, Ms. J. has asked you all day to not tap her," I say.

"I know, I keep forgetting."

I tap Cronius on the shoulder and say, "Cronius this is what I have been feeling all day, would you like to feel this all day."

"Well, it actually feels like a massage, and I love massages Ms. J."

I guess that didn't work out too well for me.

Cain and Seth Get Married

I enjoy fourth grade religion because we get a little more detailed in our religion studies. We began studying Adam and Eve, Cain killing Abel, and today we discussed the birth of Seth and how eventually Cain and Seth get married. My class seems to take many things very literal and it ends up causing a lot of questions.

After reading about the birth of Seth in our book, we learn that Cain and Seth marry. In fact in the book it says, "Cain and Seth marry." Okay, as an adult reading this I take this to mean that Cain and Seth marry women, but my class took this to mean Cain and Seth marry each other. "Why would they marry each other?" one of the children ask.

"They do not marry each other, they marry women," I respond.

"Well, it says Cain and Seth marry," says Cosmas.

"Yes, and they do get married just not to each other." To help my literal children I also add, "If Cain and Seth married each other the book would say Cain and Seth marry each other, but it doesn't so we know they married women."

This brings up a whole new problem now, earlier this week Cronius asked me who did Adam and Eve's children marry. I told him that the children may have married each other, but the best person to ask was Father. Cronius wastes no time and finds Father that day in the school and asks his question. He comes back saying that Father told him that there was probably a time when it was okay for the children to marry each other.

So today, the same question comes up in the class, "who did Cain and Seth marry?"

"Cronius had the same question the other day and he asked Father, Cronius will you share what Father told you."

"Well, he said that it probably was okay for them to marry their brothers and sisters because there was no one else for them to marry," Conius tells the class.

"That is disgusting!" says Kateri.

Trying to help the problem, I said, "years ago Cain and Seth probably did not find it disgusting and if there was no one else for them to marry, they had to marry siblings."

So, Raphael decides to change the topic slightly, "I heard in some states it is legal for cousins to get married."

"Yes, that is true, in Louisiana it is legal for cousins to marry," says Celine.

Could this lesson get anymore off topic, why yes because Joseph then says, "Is that why in some states men can marry men?"

Hmm, not exactly a good question to hear in school, I quickly say, "Joseph, we do not support that, God tells us that marriage is between a man and a woman."

"People can really marry their cousins in Louisiana?" asks one of the girls.

"Yes, isn't it gross," Celine answers.

"Well then, my sister should go there because she really likes her cousin," the other girl says.

"Okay class, we have really gotten off topic and now Ms. J. wants everyone to know something. We do not talk about our families in negative or embarrassing ways. If we want to make a comment about our families we need to ask ourselves three questions. Would we be mad if that family member was sharing a story about us like the one we are getting ready to share with the class? Would we feel embarrassed? Would we be upset? If you answer yes to any of those questions, we do not share that story with the class."

When teaching young children you must remember, stories are often exaggerated and our not typically interpreted well. The way I see it the one child's sister does not want to marry her cousin, instead she probably gets along well with her cousin.

Second Calls

We do not have buses at my school and so at the end of the day the children pack up and I ask them to complete homework while they wait for their ride. When their parent arrives in the car pool line and they are near the building, the child's name gets said over the intercom and the child leaves to go home. This year I am working hard with the children to keep their desks looking nice and neat. Therefore the only items they are allowed to have in their desk are books. I do not allow them to keep paper, pencils and pens in their desk at the end of the day.

To help them with keeping a clean desk, I walk around the end of the day to inspect each desk. Slowly but surely the children are catching on and I only have a couple students now who need those reminders. I get to Agnes' desk today though, and it has paper, scissors (which are not allowed at the desk unless we are cutting), pencils and pens. It is a complete mess. I call Agnes over to clean her desk.

Agnes begins messing around with the items in her desk and then her name is called. She grabs her backpack and two lunch boxes (she forgot one yesterday) and begins to leave the classroom.

"Wait Agnes, did you clean your desk?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Well, just wait until I inspect your desk before you leave." I get to her desk and realize she has really not done anything but move her mess around to new locations in the desk. "Agnes this is not clean. You need to clean this before you leave."

"My name was just called."

"Well, you will have to get a second call then, so you can clean out your desk."

"I have somewhere, where I need to go."

"Well Ms. J told you before your name was called to clean your desk and now you will have to learn to get that done before the end of the day."

Agnes was not happy with me, but she quickly got the point she wasn't leaving until her desk was clean. I don't think we will have this problem again tomorrow.

Agnes is on a roll!

Every morning I give my students morning work. This typically consists of a few math problems from our previous lesson in math, two sentences that need to be corrected with proper proof reading marks, and a writing entry. I have really been on the children about writing in complete sentences, writing more than one sentence and writing neatly. At 8:10 students are considered tardy, I stop greeting students at the door and I begin going around looking at morning work. I pass by Agnes' desk and look at her work, I see her handwriting which I know she can write a little neater and I say, "Agnes, nice handwriting." I said this meaning Agnes, please write neater. This class takes things literally, so I should have just said that comment to Agnes the way I was thinking it, because Agnes gets a huge smile on her face and replies, "Oh, thank you!"

Last school year, I posted a few times on how the children think I am old. I recall one of my students last year asking me if I had pictures in color when I was their age. Today was one of those days. During math I typically take out the personal sized dry erase boards to practice math problems, because who doesn't love getting to write on dry erase boards! So, today the children got the dry erase boards out and after the lesson we began practicing as a group on our dry erase boards. I usually make the problems up in my head, but today I said that I was going to use my childhood phone number to make a problem. WIthout a second to think Agnes yells out, "Did you have a party line? My grandmother said that a long time ago that people had to share the same phone number with the street."

Walmart: One Stop Shopping

I picked today's blog mostly because I made stop at walmart today and as soon as I got into the parking lot, I remembered a funny story from a few years ago. A few years ago, I taught the very same class that I teach now in first grade. It was close to the Thanksgiving Day holiday and our class was preparing for a Thanksgiving Day Feast before we left for a long weekend. I volunteered to make apple pies for our feast and had invited Celine over to help because I am good friends with her mother.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Celine comes over to help make Thanksgiving apple pies. It suddenly occurs to me that I definitely do not have children. Because Celine begins to help make apple pies and she becomes thirsty. So, I make Celine some hot chocolate, because the only other thing I have to drink is water. I give Celine her hot chocolate and she says it is too hot and would like it to be cooled off. So, I make Celine some new hot chocolate, this time not so hot, and she decides she is hungry. I do not have a lot of food, so I make Celine a grilled cheese sandwich. Celine finishes her grilled cheese sandwich and would like more food to eat, so I tell her she is welcome to anything in the pantry or refrigerator. Celine begins to look for food, she does not find anything she wants, and so she tells me that I should go to walmart. "At walmart they have everything Ms. J.!"

We go back to school on Monday and Celine who now thinks I am poor tells the class that Ms. J. needs to go to walmart. She tells the children she came over and that I do not have any food to eat. Now three years later, we were lining up in class to go somewhere and Celine asks, "have you gone to walmart, yet, Ms. J.? Trust me they have everything there." Celine has not let me forget that walmart offers one stop shopping and has a large variety of food.

Did you know I have beautiful handwriting?

Scholastic books came in, hooray! They were very fast this year, I received the order before a week of submitting it. If you are a teacher, you know all about scholastic. I enjoy scholastic for the free books, but sometimes it seems like an endless job. First of all you have to separate all the little fliers. This year I am trying to get better as this is the second year I am the one sending out and submitting the orders. I am making a goal to send out the fliers the first of every month. Okay, so after you get all the fliers to send out, I do online ordering so I have to set that up for parents online and print out a sheet telling them how to order online. And then it begins...

As soon as a child submits an order whether online or they bring back the flier with money, they will ask every day if their books have come in. I explain to the children that the other students have until the 15th to submit their order. Of course, the 15th comes up and the questions about the books come back.

Have the books come in?

My mom ordered me some books, she said you would have them.

When will the books get here?

Seriously, it is like a child constantly asking, "Are we there yet?" It is enough to drive you crazy. In an effort to get all the books sent at one time, I have to put the paper orders online and then send a check. It seems like a lot of work, but oh well scholastic is nice to teachers and we end up getting free books for our work. Typically I have waited anywhere from a week and half to two weeks for books, so I was excited to get them so quickly to put the questions to rest.

Regina received as one of her ordered items a neon scratch book. Basically one of the books where you draw pictures with a wooden object that looks like a pencil without lead on a black piece of paper and color appears. Well, Regina quickly goes to work scratching off all the black. I say Regina, "you are supposed to draw pictures and write things and look at the cool colors it makes in the drawings." I write her name in cursive on the paper she has currently scratched off most of the black paint.

"Oh Ms. J. you have such beautiful handwriting!"

"I try, but don't see how cool your name looks with all the pretty colors?"

"Yes, but I just wanted to see what the color designs were behind the black."

Judge J and the Court of 4th Grade

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to attend a Tools for Teaching Workshop. It honestly was very fascinating and I have applied many of the things I learned over the summer into my classroom. One of the things I have added this year was the Telling Jar. If you teach you probably know that tattle telling is a very popular thing to do if you are a child. Now before I go any further I have a rule on tattle telling that I have used in previous years, which is "You are not allowed to tattle tell on someone if they are not hurting you, someone else, or themselves." I overall like my rule, but when I moved from first to fourth grade, I found that the children had a harder time getting over the drama.

So, this year I put in what is called the Tattle Tell Jar. During the school day if something happens that is really bothering a child, that child is allowed to write on a piece of paper what is bothering them and put it in the jar. At the end of the day if there is anything in the jar, I will pull the slips of paper out. First I will ask the child if they are still bothered about what they wrote on the paper, if they are I will read the paper and as a class we will talk out the situation and make everything better. This has worked wonderfully, we have only used the jar one time this year.

Today after arriving back from music class there were a number of unhappy children, it seems that they were having some issues with the drama. One of the children was extremely hurt, so I opted to have what the children call court earlier during the day versus the end. Court is how he handle the drama in the telling jar. I put the four children in different corners of the room and gave them an opportunity to give their own side of the story without interruptions. I explained to the children that Judge J. was going to call some witnesses, and that the witnesses were students who were not the best friends of the people standing because I need unbiased opinions of what happened.

I call to the stand Margaret. Margaret walks up to the middle of the class and I ask, "Margaret, were you in music class today?"

I know this seems like a silly question, it is. The entire class giggles, which is good because it causes everyone to relax some and those standing to not feel so upset or angry at someone.

Margaret answers, "yes."

"Did you hear Celine say something to Cosmas today during music?"

"No, I wasn't sitting near them."

Oh well, that witness didn't work out to well. "Okay Margaret, you may go sit down."

I call my next witness "Adrian."

"Adrian were you in music class today."

Again with the giggles, "yes."

"Did you hear Celine say anything to Cosmas today?"

"No" not even waiting for anything he turns around and goes back to his seat.

"I would like to call my next witness, Ambrose."

"Ambrose were you in music class today."

Again with more giggles, "yes."

"Did you hear Celine say something to Cosmas today?"

"Yes."

"Can you repeat what Celine said?"

"Cosmas, Cosmas we are not allowed to use those." (Cosmas was trying to clean his recorder during music class. Cosmas is new and did not know he is not allowed to clean the recorder during class.)

"Celine, is that what you said?"

"Yes."

"Ambrose did Celine say this in a nice or mean way?"

"I'm not exactly sure, I couldn't tell."

"Celine diid you mean to say what you said to Cosmas in a mean or nice way?"

"In a nice way, I didn't want him to get in trouble."

"Okay Celine, Ambrose had a hard time telling, so do you understand what Cosmas thought you were being mean to him and maybe bossy?"

"Yes."

"Please apologize to Cosmas."

Celine apologizes, one down a few more to go.

"Ambrose what did Cosmas say in return to Celine."

"Leave me alone."

"Did he say this in a mean or nice way?"

"Mean."

"Cosmas did you yell at Celine and tell her leave you alone."

"Yes, but I really meant to say you are not the boss of me."

"Cosmas, remember two wrongs do not make a right, if someone says something you don't like, you need to tell the teacher. It does not give you permission to yell at them and now you know Celine was only trying to help you so you did not get in trouble. Cosmas will you go and apologize to Celine."

Cosmas and Celine apologize and Cosmas hugs Celine for what he did. Celine returned to her desk and made Cosmas a card saying she was sorry. Court was working out rather well, but I still had two students standing.

Agnes was getting quite annoyed and was demanding her side of the story be retold. Before allowing her to tell it again, I decided that we ask if any of the people are still angry with Jospeh.

"No."

"Okay, Joseph you may go sit down. It seems that you are forgiven for whatever you have done."

"Now, Agnes before you tell your side of the story please know Judge J. is going to be very honest with you when you are done because you are using up my class time to retell your side which you have already done."

"I know." Agnes tells the whole story over.

"Agnes, Judge J. is very good at her job, you see Celine and Cosmas have apologized to each other already and have forgiven each other. Now the problems in music was between the two of them, it had nothing to do with Agnes."

"I know."

"Agnes you should have never joined in on their problem."

"I was trying to stick up for Cosmas."

"That was very nice of you to want to do that, but you see in the end a small problem has become such a big problem. You were also telling Celine what to do. Remember our reading from the other week about removing the log from someones eye, and how we must first remove the beam from our own eye first?"

"Yes."

"Well, Agnes you were yelling at Celine and telling her what to do because she was telling another student what to do. That is not fair, you can't correct someone by doing the same wrong thing to them that they are doing to someone else. Now please go and apologize to Celine for yelling at her."

The lesson of the day: stay out of other people's drama, it only makes things worse.

Poetry Fun

Today my class and I read some poetry and we discussed what the writer was trying to tell us. We read two poems, the first one took a little bit of thought, but the class caught on quickly to what the writer was trying to say. The second one took us a little bit longer to figure out. The writer was writing about the impact her ancestors had on her. Through her writing you quickly learned that her ancestors were Native Americans. This quickly started up some questions in the class, as to if people still live in teepees like the writer was writing about in her poem. I said, "yes."

Kateri asks, "Can you visit them?"

"Yes, many of them will invite people to come on their reservations and experience some of their culture."

We have a few minutes of questions and answers, until I finally get this question from Celine.

"Ms. J., I'm trying to understand, but why do the Native Americans not live in teepees anymore and stay in hotels?"

"Who said they live in hotels?"

"Well you said they live in a reservation, you know how when you stay at a hotel and you have to give a reservation?"

I laugh to myself and then explain to Celine what a reservation is.

Gizmo

Just to give an update Adrian read beautifully today at Mass. As a teacher you sit there and you can do nothing but take a deep breath of relief and smile. For a backup plan I sat at the front of the church today with my readers incase I needed take over with the reading, but thankfully I was not needed.

Today was Friday and on Fridays we bring out the class pet, Gizmo. Gizmo is a grey colored dwarf hamster and loved a little too much. At the beginning of the year, poor Gizmo tolerated a lot from the children constantly waking him. My rule to the children is that we do not wake Gizmo Monday through Thursday. I try to explain that we do not like others waking us during our sleep, so we need to be respectful and let Gizmo sleep during the day because he is nocturnal. On Fridays we will wake Gizmo and play with him, but overall we leave him be unless he is up on his own.

Typically on a usual Friday we will put Gizmo in a ball and let him run around the class, but today I took him out and put him in a giant bin and allowed groups of four children at a time to go and pet him and hold him. I was very pleased with Gizmo, he was very friendly with the children today, he can sometimes be grouchy and go to bite. Before hand I go over how to pet Gizmo, so we do not make him mad. The children sat patiently waiting their turn to go and pet Gizmo.

After Cronius' turn to pet Gizmo, he then says, "Ms. J. may I go wash my hands I think his penis touched me?"

Okay, I'm dealing with a class of children excited to play with Gizmo, so I ask myself did I hear that right? "What was that Cronius?"

"May I go wash my hands I think his penis touched me?"

Yes, my student just said penis and having him repeat it a second time caused another child to overhear and ask, "what did he say?"

"Nothing," I say.

I tell Cronius that is not a word we say in school. You can say that was a close call.

The Mass

Fourth grade at my school is the first year that the children are allowed to read the readings at Mass. In my first year working with fourth graders last year, this was such an exciting event, everyone wants to read at Mass! This week, it was announced that fourth grade had the responsibilities for the Mass. We would be responsible for the readings, gifts, and alter servers. As soon as the announcement was said over the intercom, I had five students immediately say they did not want to read. Eeek, this is not the same thing I got last year.

I picked my gift bearers, my readers, and my alter servers, I thought it was a done deal, until...

Today, on Thursday we always go up into the church to practice before we attend Mass on Friday. I begin by going over when you go up to read with the students, how to properly bow, and where the microphone should be when we read. At last it is time to let our readers take a turn reading, up comes Adrian to read and he begins to read and the tears begin to flow. What have I done? I have picked a child who is nervous to go up and read. Typically all children are nervous, but never had I have one to cry and running through my mind is,

"Dear Lord, it is Thursday and we say Mass tomorrow, what do I do?"

The children begin to ask why is Adrian crying?

"He has allergies," I tell them.

"But what is he allergic to, Ms. J.?" Regina asks.

"I have no idea." I sit there puzzled as to what I should do. I cannot let this child fall apart in front of the entire congregation tomorrow.

When it is time to leave I walk along beside Adrian and ask, "Did you want to read?"

"No." The tears begin to come back.

"Would you like me to ask another student?"

"No."

Tonight I pray that we make it through the Mass.

Character Sketches

Today we began brainstorming for our first writing assignment, which is to make a character sketch. To help the students understand what is expected of them we do one together. I explain to the students that they first want to generate a few ideas of what to write about and narrow those ideas down to one. I ask the children to help me come up with some ideas, so I call on some of the students.

Person 1: I call on Joseph and he responds, "Selena Gomez."

I begin to write on he board Celina Gomez. Although I have heard of the name before, I do not have cable and I do not keep up with teen celebrities. When writing the name I decided that maybe it is best to write C-E-L-I-N-A because it sounded close to the name Celine. The children were insulted, mostly the boys because of course some of them like Raphael were quick to say, "How can you do that Ms. J., I ♥ Selena Gomez. I decide to continue on with my lesson.


Person 2: I call on Cronius and he says, "K'neen."

Don't ask, I still have no idea who this person is.


Person 3: I call on Aaron, who says, "Gizmo."

Now Gizmo is our class hamster, so I write Gizmo's name on that board.


Person 4: I call on Ralph, who says, "How about Ralph?"

Yes, my student just nominated himself to be the person that we write our character sketch about.


Person 5: By this time I have called four boys, so I decide to pick a girl, Melanie, she says "Johnny Depp."

In my mind, I'm think ooh, we have a good person for our character sketch.


Now, that we have generated ideas, I tell the kids I want to pick the person that will be easiest for me to write about. I tell the kids that I'm sorry Selena Gomez and K'neen have to go, because I really don't know much about these people. I then take Gizmo off the list and say it would be hard to write a character sketch on our class pet and it would be much easier to use a person. The choices we are left with are Ralph and Johnny Depp. Being a nice teacher I take a class vote and of course we are a classroom full of boys, so we began brainstorming ideas to write about Ralph. I go through how to brainstorm and set the children loose to begin brainstorming their own character sketch.

Half way through the assignment Agnes comes to me, "Ms. J. I am going to do my character sketch on Joseph and there is something I want to write down, but I'm not sure it will be appropriate." As a teacher you hear this, you immediately think it probably isn't appropriate. I write down a word on the paper and ask Agnes if this is the word she would like to use, she says, "yes."

"Well, by writing that word down you know that the other children will see this, right?"

"Yes, Ms. J. but they know this already."

"Maybe we should ask Joseph how he would feel about this because he may not feel to comfortable with you writing this."

I call Joseph over to us, Agnes immediately begins to blush. I show Joseph the word, cute, and asks him if it will be okay if Agnes includes this in her paper.

Joseph asks, "What exactly does it mean?"

I write on the paper good looking.

Joseph is fine with Agnes writing this and now the fourth grade love is beginning. Thankfully in the lunchroom the children are still split like the Red Sea, girls on one side and boys on the other. Hopefully this year we will not have another proposal like we did last year.

The Lunch Bag

I have a policy in my class, you leave your lunch bag two days in a row at school and it gets moved to my closet. When the child finally realizes that I have it, we make a trade. In the first week of school, I moved Agnes' lunch bag into the closet. Mind you we are now in the third week of school and until today she has yet to ask me about it.

I tried dropping subtle hints, but she never thought to ask me about her lunch bag. There wasn't even a can I go check the lost and found for my lunch bag? Today I decided to drop a subtle hint to the children, actually not so subtle, others were getting ready to join the same club as Agnes if they left their lunch bag another day. So, I say, "Okay boys and girls, just to let you know when you leave your lunch bag two days in a row Ms. J. will take it and put it in her closet, we can then work out a trade for you to get the lunch bag back."

The class instantly starts laughing, that is everyone except Agnes. "Ms. J. I do not understand why everyone is laughing."

I quiet down the class and fifteen minutes later as we are packing up to go home, I do another reminder about lunch bags. Agnes finally realizes that I have it. She walks up to me and says, "Ms. J. can I have my lunch bag?"

"That depends, what are you willing to trade for it?"

"Silent lunch."

"No, I don't really want you sitting in silent lunch over this," I said. In my mind I'm thinking Agnes really needs the time in the lunch room to socialize, so she will not socialize as much in class.

"Five dollars."

"No, I do not want money, how about stacking chairs for the week?"

Agnes does not even take a second to think before she responds, "No, you hold onto it, I have another one I am using."

Who doesn't love popsicles and hamsters?

My Monday was starting off well, actually overall today was great, we were able to get in most of the lessons I had planned. One of the things I love about fourth grade is encouraging the students to make their own opinions and to begin small debates. Today for our social studies activity we broke off into groups of four. I first asked the students as a group to pick the student with the best handwriting, 3 out of 4 groups did not have a problem with this. Hooray, we are off to a great start! For the group with difficulty I asked the student that seemed the least argumentative at this point about wanting to write to be the recorder, knowing if I pick one of the three that did, it could be bad.

The students were now ready for the assignment.

I tell my class, "Okay class, what we are going to do is come up with 20 ways we use water. We do not want to go over 20 (so I write a big 20 on the board). Now I will give you a suggestion that you might not think of and that is that a toilet uses water. One suggestion that you will probably think of for using water is a pool. I will give you five minutes to come up with 20 ways we use water."

The groups get to work and in the end I have only one group that ends with 20 ways, two groups that come very close and one that has 11.

"We are currently facing a drought and we are being forced to conserve water, you will have three minutes to discuss with your group what five ways we use water that you are willing to cross off your list."

I was very impressed, I still remember hearing Ambrose tell his group to cross off swimming pools because it was going to start getting cold out.

"We still have not had any rain and the president has issued a state of emergency, we must conserve water before we run out. You will have three minutes to cross five more items off your list."

One group is unsuccessful and their household dies because they ran out of uses for water. They handled the news well and I'm sure next time they will work a bit faster. We had a small amount of time to discuss this while the other groups were still finishing up on their time. The timer goes off and I begin with the group that is unsuccessful on wether or not they have the necessary things to survive. They said no, and I move onto the next group.

"What are the ways you can still use water?"

They read off their list and they are left with all the necessary items, but then Celine speaks up.

"I still think we should have kept the popsicles and got rid of the toilet, all you need is a backyard and a shovel!"

Celine's statement by far has to be the funniest thing said in class today and it still makes me smile and laugh. Celine got the assignment and used some higher level thinking to keep some of her wants during the drought. On the other hand I must give credit to another student for saying probably the sweetest thing to me today and that is Gwen.

Over the weekend, my hamster died. One of the children brought up my hamster today and I told the class that she passed away. Gwen immediately tells me she will get me another one. I tell Gwen that I would like to wait awhile before getting another one. At lunch Gwen asks me how long is awhile? I tell her that I'm not sure I just want to give myself time to grieve the loss of Fiona. Gwen then says, "When my hamster Sarah died, I got a new hamster the next day and it made me happy. Maybe a new one will make you happy, too."

Best Buds, Scapulars, and Black Marks on the Floor

The teacher in me wants to put the title in alphabetical order, but I'm forcing myself to be okay with chronological order. It was an eventful day, not only was it a Friday, but we also had a fire drill. Awesomely, I got to the be the one to pull the alarm!

Fridays tend to be test days, at least in my class, we will typically have a reading and spelling test every Friday. During the reading test, Margaret came up to me to tell me Gwen was crying. I stop what I was doing and ask Gwen to join me at the round table, so I could ask her what was wrong without having to worry about all the children budding in on the conversation. Gwen says Celine is mad at her and she doesn't know why. I asked her how she knew that Celine was mad at her and she said that Celine is playing with other girls in the class and she rather play with them than her. I told Gwen that everything will work out and it is probably a misunderstanding and to give me some time later today to talk with Celine. Ultimately, I didn't want to go from Gwen to Celine right away making Celine feel that she was in trouble.

On our way to library I walk beside Celine and just as she is getting ready to go in I pull her to the side discreetly. I ask Celine if something was wrong between her Gwen, that they are best friends, but Gwen feels that she is mad at her. Celine responds back saying that Gwen doesn't sit at lunch with her and is playing with other girls in the class. I said okay to Celine and let her continue into library. When they both came out I sat down with them and explained that the two of them are upset over the same thing. I told them that although they are best friends, that sometimes they will want to play with other children, and the important thing is to try not to be jealous. Friends sometimes need a break, but that will help them to build a stronger friendship. Celine and Gwen hug each other and walk back to their seats. I smile seeing two little girls happy again, I couldn't let a friendship die that I saw start in first grade.

A little later in the day Father came to visit our class. He began talking about scapulars and the promises and indulgences you receive by wearing one as well as praying the rosary daily. Immediately, I thought about the fact that I was not wearing one. To make this visit worse, he asked the children why they weren't wearing the scapulars that he had given them. This is one of the moments where as a teacher you want to put your head down and cry, asking yourself why did they just say that. Joseph immediately yells out his broke, other children chime in with the same response and then of course we had the others that say they lost theirs. Now in hopes to be the good Catholic teacher that I want to be, I will be finishing this blog and order a class set of of scapulars, so that we can receive our indulgences.

At the end of the day I told the children I would like to have a clean classroom before the weekend. I wanted them to wipe their desk, their chair, I needed the teacher's aide to clean white boards, the sweeper to sweep the classroom, and everyone to make sure their belongings were neatly put away in cubbies. This started out GREAT! I was thinking to myself, oh I can't wait to do this again. The children went straight to cleaning and were down to getting on their hands and knees to wipe the marks off the floor. It was the most wonderful present the children could ever give me, but too good to be true. Because of all of a sudden Regina learns something new. You know how when children learn something that they think is cool they want to show everyone and do it repeatedly? Well, Regina wanted to show off her knew found skill, which once shown the other children wanted to learn too. REGINA LEARNED HOW TO MAKE BLACK MARKS ON THE FLOOR!

"How do you do that?" asked Maximus.

"Like this" says Regina with a squeal in her voice. She bends her leg at the knee and swings forward full swing so the bottom of her shoe gracefully hits the bottom of the floor to make this huge black mark, which she considers awesome.

The next thing I know I now have half the class trying this out marking up my once beautiful floor.

F.S.A: Future Stalkers of America

When I was leaving school today, I was running different things through my head of what I could write about. My first thought originally was to write about my morning with Leo. He isn't in my class, but in first grade. He was the only child I was caring for in morning care for most of the morning and he had much to say, like how his mom used to work for the government and would shove people on a plane and say go back home! I'm sure it wasn't exactly like that. You have to love how children process information!

Then I thought about how the school librarian gave us a book today, O is for Old Dominion. We study Virginia History in fourth grade and the librarian thought we would like having the book. Immediately upon seeing this, one of my students goes oh is that about Kings Dominion before we called it Kings Dominion, it was Old Dominion?

Very cute things happening today, but when I sat down to think about actually writing something up, something came into my head that happened today and I just have to write about it. Last year, my students told me that they googled me. At that point I was like hmm, I need to google myself and see what they are finding. When I started this blog I began trying to promote it on some public pages on facebook and quickly changed my last name, so that it wouldn't show up in a google search.

At the very beginning of the school year, one of the students had mentioned that they saw me on youtube, being that I have an account it wasn't a big deal to me and I don't put anything on there that I wouldn't want children to see. Immediately Agnes asked how she could find me on youtube. I told her that I wasn't going to promote my youtube videos to the class, so if she planned on seeing my videos she would have to do all the work. In my mind, I knew that this wouldn't necessarily be an easy task for her to accomplish.

Today at school Agnes says, "Ms. J. I tried typing in your first name, then your last name, and both your first and last name and I could not find you on youtube."

I laughed to myself thinking, wow I have hid this well from my students. So, I respond back saying, "Oh!"

"What is your middle name Ms. J., I really want to find you on youtube?"

I tell her that she does not need to know my middle name. Before Agnes is able to pop out another question about finding me on youtube, Cosmas goes, "Hey, Agnes did you know last night I found your address online and I can make directions to get to your house?"

"Cosmas, do you live close to Agnes?" I asked.

"No, but last night I found her address and you can click for directions."

There you have it, by fourth grade, children already will begin searching you online and find out where you live.

Bad Parenting

If you are a parent, there is one thing you should know and that is how much your child loves you and what they are willing to do to not make you feel bad. This morning Cronius came into class, his mother made him a special lunch today, a sloppy joe, his favorite. The problem with his lunch today was that it ended up leaking inside his backpack. It got on his homework and apparently leaked on other items in his lunch bag.

Cronius was handling the day well, until we started getting close to the end of the day. He came up to me, crying, and said he had a feeling in his stomach. Immediately trying to cheer him up, I told him we needed some background music like in the movies. I decided to play Horton Hears a Who, "I Can't Stop This Feeling." Okay, he had a feeling, I instantly thought of the song. I put the song on and he responds I think this helping, but when the song ended, he was still upset.

I decided to sit him down at the round table with me to have the first of many small counseling sessions I will have with students this year. It seems that Cronius first off didn't want to turn in the homework that all the lunch leaked on today, he didn't want to get a bad grade. I decided let's tackle one problem at a time. My response was that homework was a material object, who cares if it got wet, oh well, things happen. Cronius said then he will get a bad grade and he won't be able to go to college. I tell Cronius that colleges won't care if he forgot to turn in his homework in fourth grade. He told me they will, so I asked him what is stopping him from turning in his homework today. He said it was wet and one of the papers was torn because it got wet. I handled the problem by telling him to turn in his work. I can be very strict, but very understanding, wet papers, not a big deal.

This wasn't the end of Cronius' problems. You see deep down what was really bothering him was that he didn't want to make his mom feel bad that his lunch leaked on his homework and ruined the rest of his lunch. I asked him why this would make his mom feel bad? He answered because then his mom would feel like a bad parent. I told him he had two choices: one to not tell mom about the lunch leaking or to tell her. If he opted to not tell her, the problem would be if she ever packed the same lunch, he could encounter another leaky mess. If he decided to tell her, I don't think she would feel like a bad parent. "She will Ms. J." he said. Well, Cronius, the decision is yours, if I were you, I would let her know, because if the only thing she has done to be considered a bad parent is a leaking lunch, then your mom is doing a pretty awesome job!

Cronius left the round table in a pretty good mood, but I guess I will have to wait until tomorrow to find out what he decided to do.

Congratulations

This past weekend was a three day weekend for us at school. At the end of last school year, I signed up for the Rock N Roll Half Marathon in VA Beach. It was great, I finished later than I hoped, but in the end I did well with this being my first ever half marathon. I cannot wait to run another!

That night after the concert I had posted up my stats on facebook for the race and many of the teachers commented on my time. Today when I went to pick up my class from music the music teacher told me congratulations. Basically she was congratulating me for a job well done on my race. She then asked me if I told the kids, I said yes. Joseph immediately thinking that I was being congratulated for something else, says "you did not tell us you were getting married!" I instantly started laughing and said I wasn't getting married, but that Mrs. M. was just congratulating me on finishing my race.

Tonight as I write this I think back to when I taught this class in first grade and Celine came up to me one day in the hallway and said she was praying for my future husband, how cute is that? I guess in the end these kids are just ready for me to get married, but in their defense there are not many young single Catholic school teachers in our school, in fact I'm it. In my defense, I still figure I have some time before that.

BINGO

My 2010-2011 school year officially started on Monday. Due to moving and not having internet I have unfortunately waited until today to post on my blog. We are off to a great year and I love the fact that I have my original first class that I taught in first grade now in fourth grade. This class will have many entertaining stories to add to my blog. I still remember one of the girls in my class now, telling me in first grade, that she hopes when she grows up that her husband is great with kids and cannot smell. I originally thought she said spell, but she corrected me. When I asked why, she said because sometimes she toots. I also still have a drawing and journal entry that I made a copy by another little girl in my class, "What is your favorite thing about you and why?" She wrote, "My bottom. It wiggles." She also drew a picture of a bottom with wiggle marks.

Over the summer, I was fortunate enough to go to a three day workshop called, "Tools for Teaching." This year I'm incorporating as much as I possibly can into my classroom. One of the things I started this year is called P.A.T (preferred activity time). I give the children fifteen minutes at the end of every day to have some kind of educational game that does not involve reading and writing. The children have the chance to add additional time for P.A.T during breaks. To help reduce the amount of students constantly getting up to sharpen pencils, go to the bathroom, and getting water, I give the students 3 five minute break periods. I will stand by the door and during the five minutes they can get up walk around the class, go to the bathroom, get water, sharpen pencils, etc. After their five minutes they are not allowed to do any of those things, with the exception of one emergency bathroom pass for the day. If the students are all in their desk with the desks nice in straight in the classroom and trash off the floor before five minutes I give them the difference onto their P.A.T. Today the children were very excited because they got a little over 20 minutes of P.A.T.

Today's P.A.T. activity was multiplication bingo, very grade appropriate for my fourth graders. While we were playing Gwen was becoming very frustrated with the game. She wasn't getting many of the called numbers on her game board and unfortunately Cosmas, sitting right next to Gwen won the first game. Gwen instantly wanted to switch boards with Cosmas. In my head, I thought this would be a bad move because I would hold off calling those numbers that I just called, increasing the chance of her getting Bingo on the card she currently had, so I said no. Gwen's game didn't get much better. Trying to cheer her up some I jokingly told her not to grow up and be a professional bingo player. Of course, what was I thinking, to get a smile on one's face, I have started an open discussion among the others. Celine instantly says that she will grow up and play bingo. When asked why, she says that is what you do when you are an old person. Raphael sitting near Celine instantly agrees, he too wants to play bingo. Maximus on the other hand, after spending much of the game in the same boat as Gwen says, "it is best that he doesn't play bingo when he grows up."

As a teacher, I often think about the life skills I teach my students. Today's life skill was BINGO, will you grow up to be a BINGO player and will you be any good at the game? If left to Celine, of course she will, it doesn't matter to her if she wins or loses, just that she plays the game because that is what old people do.

Cornelius explains the cup check! YIKES

So, if you have kept up with blog, you may know some of my best and funniest things shared on my blog come from Cornelius. Today we went on a field trip and returned to school with an hour left in the day. I was hoping to get an hour of teaching in, but quickly learned that that might not be possible. I decided to put in a movie and went with a baseball theme, Angels in the Outfield. It was well liked by the kids even though, sections of the movie were muted. Of corse the funny part was when the angels help out and the baseball is going all over the place and one of the players gets that unwanted hit by the ball.

Cornelius used that as an opportunity to come up and tell me how he plays baseball. Which I already knew, I had gone to watch one of his games. He continues to tell me that in the real sport if you get hit, it isn't a big deal because you would be wearing a cup. He then says that sometimes you can even do a cup check, where a person would hit you with a baseball bat and you wouldn't even feel anything!

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You want me to touch what?!?

There is hardly ever a dull day and the students surprise me with what they can come up with or questions they can ask. Today a student comes up to me shortly after returning from the bathroom, literally he sat down realized something and came up to me. He says, "Ms. J. I went to the bathroom and I don't know how, but there is a wet spot on the back of pants." He turns around and shows me, it is one spot, really kind of odd.

"Touch it, Ms. J." he says.

"Oh, I see it, I don't need to touch it."

"Seriously it is wet, touch it."

"That would be very inappropriate of me to do that, just go to the office and they may have an answer."

He goes to the office and comes back shortly after. I asked what they said. He says, "they had no idea, maybe I just missed target!"

The things teachers will do for their students

Today was like any other day, at the end of the day I'm left with a messy room and a couple students who I'm trying to motivate to leave my classroom because I use the classroom to tutor in the afternoon. At the end of the day I was motivating Matthew to leave, he was starting to panic over the fact that he could not find his Spanish flashcards he was making at the end of the day that are due tomorrow. He went on how he thought they might have been thrown away. Needing to use the classroom, I did what almost any teacher would do and was going through the trash looking for them. After digging through the trash and not finding them, I go over to his binder and look inside his pencil pouch. I found a set of cards like the ones he was making and asked him if these were the ones he was looking for. "Yes, those are them!" There was not a thank you or I'm sorry you had to dig in the trash, but it was more of now I don't have to worry about not having my Spanish homework. I'm left feeling like I just went through the trash to find what was in safe keeping the entire time.

The Music Program

Tonight was the Spring music program for fourth grade. It was a very entertaining night as for the first time I learned that my fourth grade students have come to the age where they feel they are too cool to do certain things. For our music program students were reading major speeches given at the time of war: Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death," Roosevelt's "A day that will live in infamy," and Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address." As a class we have practiced the speeches over and over and sang the songs to go along with each speech. What I really didn't realize was that in music the kids had learned some motions to go along with each song. At tonights program all but one stood still to sing. There was one song in particular that the children were to squat up and down to the beat of the music and when the time came all the children looked at each other laughed, and had the look of our we seriously going to do this. All in all it was a cute program just seeing how much the children have grown up.

The Annunciation

We are nearing the end of the school year and are days seem packed. Currently, we are preparing for our music program for next Monday. When we were getting ready to begin our classroom practice, we were visited by one of our parish priest Fr. G. The children love when he comes to visit, he is great at taking interest in what they are doing and is usually very entertaining and funny. Today to talk about Mary, since May is the month of Mary and how you can use the Gospel according to Luke to get the prayer, "Hail Mary."

During the lesson, he started off with something the children would be familiar with, the Glorious Mysteries. He asked the children, "What is the first Glorious Mystery?"

Benedict, "The Annunciation."

"Who here can tell me what word we can derive from the annunciation?"

"Annunciate" said Benedict.

"A nun," says Thomas.

Clearly this is not what Fr. G. was expecting, "Or we could say announce." He did think it was funny and gave a little chuckle.

Roadkill Barbie

Have you ever wondered what children share with teachers? Yeah, I can answer that almost anything they hear that sounds the slightest bit interesting to them. These are things that a parent could have said to another adult and gets repeated by a fourth grader who probably has no idea what they are saying. Then there are things that they hear on television and the radio. An opening to a conversation that you know you will hear something you probably didn't want to hear, usually starts off something like this, "Ms. J. did you know?"

Today's conversation started like this, "Ms. J. I have TWO things to tell you!"

Oh, boy not just one but two things. So, they continue, "The first I heard on tv and the second on the radio."

Matthew continues, "Did you know in our state, that if you hit something, you can keep the roadkill and eat it."

Thinking in my head, I have once heard this. Benedict responds, "That is gross!" Matthew on the other hand didn't seem too disgusted by it.

"So, the second thing I heard on the radio. There was this woman and her husband made her mad, so she went to kick him, but instead fell through the window in front of a salon. Now she is suing the salon because she is saying that some of her items were stolen from her purse. You know if she didn't try to kick her husband she wouldn't have fell through the window."

I really do not know why I am choosing this to write about, I guess it is because of what happened on my way home today. As I was driving home a barbie doll came flying out the window in the car in front of me causing me to swerve my car, so that I did not run Barbie over. I immediately thought about Matthew and his story about roadkill.

Happy Birthday Ms. J.!

This past Friday, I celebrated my birthday and although it was not exactly a funny thing that was said or done in class, I still wanted to post this. My class can drive me crazy sometimes, but this past Friday I don't think I've ever felt so happy and proud to be their teacher. Friday we started a normal day, Mass in the morning, reading and spelling tests, pros and cons for the week, lunch, and recess. This past week was my week for recess duty. I love recess duty most days when it is nice, but usually not on Friday's because I do not have a break on Friday. I am usually stressed with the many things I need to get done in the school day without a break, spelling words and graded papers need to go home. I decided that on Friday I was not going to stress over the little things and just have fun with the kids at recess and initiated a boys versus girls game of kickball. We lost 19-1, but we had so much fun!

When it was time to come in, the third grade teacher stalled me for a brief moment, while the class went in the room. As I walked to our room I found the door decorated and I entered the classroom to find out that my class threw a surprise birthday party for me. They planned it out so well, they had pretzels, chips, cake, and brownies. They brought in drinks, plates, napkins, plastic utensils. Everything that was needed for a party was brought in and they managed with the help of the third grade teacher to decorate and get everything set up.

This had to be the best birthday gift I received this year for my birthday. Some of the children made cards, some brought in gifts of chocolate, and one of the children even sang me song. It is moments like this that remind me why I became a teacher!

You're going to be a rockstar Ms. J.

As many teachers typically do, or maybe I'm just assuming this because I do this, I am constantly asking the children what they would like to be when they grow up. I can get many different kinds of answers and for some of them, this is constantly changing. Today my class began making a music video for a song I made to help them to relax during our Terra Nova Testing. It is to the song Tik Tok. The children really enjoyed this and asked for another, so I began working on another song about plants to the song Telephone. At the end of the day the children asked me about it, so I sung what I have done so far.

A week ago Cornelius asked me if I thought the school would let him sing, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" for the talent show. I said no, but then I got to thinking that maybe I could help him out by changing the lyrics. It starts off a little something like this:

"Jesus went down to Galilee, he was looking to preach his word,
Try not sin, for I am here, and the Kingdom of God is near."

I have quite a bit more to the song done, and to Cornelius' request I sung what I have written so far. He really enjoyed it and said, "Wow, Ms. J., you are really good at this!" But my favorite was Matthew, who said, "Ms. J. when you are done teaching, you should be a rockstar!" I guess it is never too late to pursue your dreams of being a rockstar.

Go to school to learn to be a bachelor

A while back ago, Cornelius told the class that when he grows up he wants to be a bachelor, so that he could have a bachelor pad. He then went on to ask me about my bachelor pad. I told Cornelius that I'm a female, so I am not a bachelor, and therefore I do not have a bachelor pad.

Last week, Cornelius noticed my degree hanging on the wall of the classroom. He immediately comes up to me and starts asking me about my university that I went to. He then goes on to ask how does one get a bachelor's degree. I then asked him what he meant, he said that I had a bachelor's degree. I asked him if he thought my university taught you how to be a bachelor. He answered, yes. I explained that it was just the title for the degree and that I went to school for elementary education. How funny and cute is it, that Cornelius honestly thought that you can go to school to learn how to be a bachelor?