August 16, 2013

The first "week" of school is over! I put week in quotation marks because we start school on a Wednesday, but believe me it feels like we've been in school a full week! I'm quite find of how they ease us back into things; the first week is 3 days, the second week is 4 days, and then the third week is the full five days.

This morning's fifth grade class was full of quite a few quotable students. The first came from a boy I'll call A. He came into the room just a few moments late because he'd been down in the special education room...

Me: Who can raise their hand and...
A: EXCUSE ME! I still remember your name. It's Miss Black.
Eventually we got around to discussing things they'd like to learn about in Spanish class this year...
Boy 1: Food
Me: Like our kind of food our foods that they eat in Spanish-speaking countries?
Boy 1: Spanish food. And can we learn it by October?
Me: There's a deadline?
Boy 1: Well, I'm going to Mexico in October so I need to know it by then.
Me: Oh, OK. Well I'll do my best to meet that deadline for you. What else would you guys like to learn? And do you have any other deadlines? Yes, A?
A: Trains.
Me: Maybe different types of transportation?
A: Nope. Just trains.
Me: Oh, well that's easy. A, say tren.
A: Tren
Me: There you go. Trains, done! One down. What else?
Boy 2: Birds.
Me: Birds? OK, do you have a time-frame you'd like to learn that by?
Boy 2: Hmm...by 8:30 today.
Me: I'll see what I can do. I don't know much bird vocabulary off the top of my head.
More students share their ideas, time passes, and it is now 8:26 a.m.
Boy 2: You have 4 minutes to teach me everything you know about birds.
Me: OK. Pájaro means bird. Let's see...aguila is eagle...pingüino is penguin. Loro is parrot.
Boy 2: What about falcon?
Me: I don't know that one.
Girl 1: How about owl?
Me: Búho
Girl 2: We learned that last year!
Me: I'm kind of terrified of you guys being bird weirdos.

Before my kindergarten class arrived, I discovered that "Totsey" is not called Totsey at home. She just decided that she wanted to be called Totsey at school. Luckily her teacher pointed out that it's not any version of her name so that's not really the best idea.

Discussing why it's a good idea to learn Spanish with a third grade class...

Boy 1: You might go to a country like Costa Rica or Puerto Rico and need to talk to people.
Me: Good job, there are 21 countries where people speak Spanish and you might want to travel there some day. What else?
Girl: If you go to Mexico.
Me: OK, more travel...what else?
Boy 2: Umm, maybe you'll go to Mexico or...New Mexico and someone falls down and you need to help them.
Me: Alright...so, travel and potential emergency situations. I think we've covered the travel aspect; what else?
Boy 3: China.
Me: They don't speak Spanish there. Trust me, that's where I was this summer. They speak Chinese.

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