10:06 a.m. - 2005-07-14
J-E-S-S-I
Hello good people of the world. Today is thursday. That means I teach the children today. For those of you who don't know...the extemely low number that is my salary has forced me to take a second job. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I teach 5 current events classes to Kindergardeners through 5th grade. This has been highly entertaining.
On the first day we did lessons on he 4th of July. We did an acrostic poem of the word AMERICA and used my name as an example. I asked them for adjectives that described me, realizing mid sentence this could turn ugly if they don't like me, but here is what they came up with:
J oyful
E xcellent
S pecial
S assy
I ntelligent
Whew.
We also did word searches, drew our own flags and discussed what it means to be an American. They came up with stuff like "it means you're happy and free and can go to school."
Last week, I had prepared a unit on hurricanes, given the spike in such weather in the general Carribbean region lately. But then those damned terrorists had to go and ruin my lessons plans because obviously if I'm the curent events teacher, I have to talk about it. Hmmm, I thought, How do you discuss blown off limbs and sudden carnage inducing explosions to five year olds? Answer: You don't. You teach the hurricane lesson to them. But as for the 3rd graders and up, it would have been wrong to ignore the "event".
So we talked about it. I told them where London is (most of them have NO idea) and what happened. Many interesting questions came out of the discussion: (direct quotes)
What's a terrorist?
What's a bomb?
Can you hide from bombs?
Why do they do things like that?
Why should I care if it didn't happen here?
Was it Iraq that bombed those people?
Why are we in a war with Iraq?
Now, try being me and keeping your politics out of the discussion while trying to ecourage free thinking and logical questioning...sigh.
After we talked about it a little, many of them raised their hands with something to add. Here is a sampling:
3rd grader: "Miss Jessi, my dog died and so did my grandma."
4th grader: "On Channel 4 Action News I saw the people in London."
3rd grader: "Once we had a bear named Chessie and he died."
Me: "A bear? Really?"
Same 3rd grader: "Oh, wait, no. Not a bear. A dog."
In the first class, I began the discussion with "So, something happened today that was very big news. Did anyone watch the news this morning or hear it on the radio?"
A hand shoots up.
"Yes, do you know?"
"Kennywood Park is getting a new ride next year!"
(Whooping and cheering from the rest of the students and me thinking hmmm, this London thing is gonna be a real downer now.)
I did do the hurricane lesson with the 2nd graders. Here is a snippet of that discussion:
Me: "So, we don't have to worry about hurricanes coming through Pittsburgh like people in other places do. Why is that? Does anyone know? It has to do with where the hurricanes start... (pause, waiting to see if anyone is catching on) Think about it...Hurricanes happen in places like Florida and Georgian and South Carolina and Cuba and Jamaica (pointing to these places on the map.) (pause) There's something that these places have that we don't have. What is it?
A female 8 year old's hand shoots up and I call on her.
A big smile is on her face as she triumphantly answers..."Hurricanes!"
