I was just sitting back recently thinking about how much I love my job. For those of you who don't know this, I am a second grade teacher in an inner city school in St. Paul, Minnesota.
My classroom is made up of 75% ELL kids and 25% kids of color. Most years I am the only whitey! This year I had the privilige of being the Language Academy (LA) classroom. This means that I have the students who are newcomers to America clustered in my room.
These kids are expecially why I like my job. There are 5 (there were 4 but one of them moved to Cali) newcomers in my classroom. Two of them are from Myanmar (Burma) and speak KaRen. One is from Mexico, one is from China (she just got here in March), and my brand new new-comer is from Kenya (she's Somalian). They are especially exciting to work with because they pick up things so quickly.
Don't get me wrong. It's harder than heck to teach these kids. You have to start with the ABC's and the sounds the letters make. Sounds easy but then remember you have 20 other kids who are reading around grade level and need to be taught too. But it is a fun challenge and I love it.
I want to talk about my new girl from China. It took her some time to settle down when she got here. She was always over excited and thrusted her hands in people's faces requently. She found out I was scared of snakes and thought it would be funny to shove a picture book of snakes into my face DAILY!!! Not so much.
Her hand shoving was annoying and she actually scared me because I thought she might accidentally hit me. In fact (as horribly un-PC and wrong culture as this sounds) I nicknamed her The Grudge because she was so threatening. (I believe without a little personal humor teaching would kill a regular person so I take it upon myself to keep really improper things in my head to laugh at - - or just post them on my blog for the world to see!) It took about three weeks but I finally was able to model for her what we do in the classroom when we are excited and it ain't shoving our hands in people's faces!
So now we are at a nice happy place. She's picking up English, reading at a level 4 and able to speak in basic sentences. She's very bright so she had that going for her.
Funny thing about her though. . . she looks at EVERY single object in my classroom and if it's made in China will shout out, "Made in China!". This is funny and hard not to laugh at in the middle of teaching. But she is just so excited.
Oh and do you know HOW MANY things are made in China? I mean do you REALLY know how many things are made in China? Apparently everything in my classroom is made in China because she yells it out 5 different times a day!
Gotta love my job. Kids rock.
5 comments:
Thanks for the laugh...I also teach and a good laugh is always welcomed. I enjoyed my first day off and slept in! This MN weather kept me out of my garden and indoors...I finally had time to put all the winter clothes away!
CONGRATS:)
I can tell that you really do love your job and I bet it is very rewarding. I hope you enjoy your time off for the summer! Those kids are lucky to have you!
I'm totally cracking up! "Made in China, Made in China!"
The thing that impresses me most about you as a teacher is how in the world you can keep from having a melt-down at about 1:00 in the afternoon. Really, it's a rare thing to be able to tolerate 30 kids for 6 or 7 hours a day! I fully support the un-PC thoughts running through your mind. It's a fabulous coping mechanism.
Ok- you put me as "ELL Anne" on your blogroll?? Come on! "FatJ" will get way more hits:)
Too funny! You are great at your job. Its awesome what we do and the kids we work with...
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