I absolutely love my job, but at the same time something happens everyday that breaks my heart. This last week one of my Hispanic students came to me after I read a book about Jackie Robinson and told me that he is worried that his family will have to go to Mexico because his dad doesn't have money for his papers. This isn't something an 8 year old should worry about. I also had two students that didn't not have usable book bags. One didn't have a zipper and another's had huge holes where the straps used to be. Thankfully I go to Teacher's Treasures once a month to get free supplies that have been donated and I happened to have two book bags from my last visits. Everyday I have one student that tries to steal breakfast to put in his book bag for later. Sadly I have to watch him morning because I am only given enough breakfast for every child in my class. My school has such a high poverty rate that every child receives a free breakfast and lunch. These are just a few of the stories from last week.
Now for the good news. We are finally allowed to teach Science! You heard me right, previous to the week we were teaching Reading, Writing, and Math with Science or Social Studies time allotted for 15 minutes before dismissal, which is when we are packing up getting ready to leave. I love that I get to share these experiences with them. Here's a couple of pictures of us doing experiments in small groups.
Don't tell anyone but I also sneak in other activities like dying fabric and weaving with yarn when we are reading a story about Native American's weaving rugs because my students have no background knowledge on what weaving is and not all of them have dyed Easter Eggs before.
I also love that we get to celebrate our diversity and actually learn about influential African Americans. You would think that all schools do this, but they don't. My sons probably won't learn about Madam CJ Walker or George Washington Carver in school because the trend in education right now is to teach skills. I'm so proud of my class. They all memorized their speeches for their Wax Museum presentation. They were assigned an influential African American and we did research on them. Then made a speech for them to memorize. We had all of the second grade because "Wax Museum" figures that came to life and told their speech when someone pushed their button. It nice to see them dress up as their person too.
