aaaand Fast-forward

to now. I am employed. I have to choose some benefits soon. I'm currently sitting a house, two dogs, and one cat.

I might be acquiring an Hispanic accent. Is "hispanic" capitalized?

At my job, I say things all the time like, "Jayden*, can you please stop hitting the desk with your pencil even though you don't want to?" "Kayla, can you sit up and pay attention to Mrs./ Mr./ Miss ___, even if it's hard?" And my precious little students are learning to grit their teeth, stop fidgeting, and say through sometimes clenched teeth "Yes."

Some stories: while playing a math game with a first grader, I corrected her sentence "I'm winning you!" (perfect, btw, in Spanish.) She asked me how I knew it was right. I explained that I had already completed first grade, so I already learned that. She was very surprised to find out that I was not, in fact, a very tall first grader. "You're a teacher?!!?" she remarked in unbelief.

I was supposed to teach the first graders how to use the playground equipment. I had been told that first graders are not as imaginative these days. I spent about ten minutes imagining it was a giant travel machine in preparation. (Seriously, how awesome would a road trip on a vehicle that looked like a jungle gym be??) When it was recess time. I went over the rules - going down the slide on your bottom, no tag or chase at this school, no pushing, etc.). Then I said "We're going to imagine it's a giant magical machine. It's a..." and Marissa yelled out "MARSHMELLOW MACHINE!" I was taken aback and agreed. Then the kids dispersed to play random games of catching chocolate fish, strawberry fish, and gummy worm fish from the chocolate syrup sea. Clearly, this group needed no instruction on imagination.

Thoughts...

There's a lot of room for improvement in education. My school is awesome. They do a great job helping students "to excellence." We are well-funded. However, it's a dynamic field and always will be. I remain convinced that all students should sit on exercise balls. Yep. All. Not just the ones who need extra movement. I watched seventeen six year-olds sit and look ("Do not touch") at laptop computers we placed on their desks for five minutes. They could control themselves on exercise balls.

Technology in the classroom is way behind the technology curve. This is something that will change. I taught some very small students "Ctrl+Alt+Delete" today. And how to use a trackpad to "tickle" the computer awake.

We have this natural curiosity that is sometimes squelched in today's structured learning environments. Today I caught Guillermo measuring his pencil with the ruler on his name card. I didn't have the heard to ask him to please put his pencil in a safe place while the teacher was talking.

Bilingual schools - I think it would be unbelievable to get some positive enforcement of Spanish in our schools. We learned syllables today. We could clap Spanish words too, point out that they also have sílabas, and see that in "ca-sa" there are dos. The date could be done in Spanish every other day, small things like that anchor concepts and meaning in two languages and that would have exceedingly great results.

Again - I reemphasize - I love my school. They are doing a fantastic job. I'm often blown away by the teaching that happens there. However, I have been trained to look for means of improving things, so that is what I do.

*All names changed.