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!