A perfectionist in the making

On Friday, just as I was about to leave, I got a call from the office.

It was 'Julie's' dad, and he wanted to talk about how she was doing since he missed Parent-Teacher Conferences.

Did I mention it was a Friday afternoon?
Did I mention he hadn't called ahead to schedule this?
Did I mention I send home my contact information EVERY week?

I went and talked to him anyway. Julie is my best and brightest. And I don't just mean in comparison to her peers with hearing loss, I mean in comparison to her general education peers. Her language level is very high. She outperformed all of her general education class on the math assessment.

I appreciate so much that her parents are so involved and proactive in working with her. But I sense that there's a lot of pressure on her to succeed. Dad barely heard me when I told her she was ABOVE grade level in language arts. He wanted a laundry list of things to drill her on at home.

When I told dad that when Julie grows up, she is going to SHINE, his only response was:

"She'd better."

Sigh.

a healthy injustice

My school got this grant for a fruits and vegetables program. It means that every day, at about 2 o'clock, the lunch ladies visit each classroom and drop off a baggie of cut fruits or veggies for every child as a snack. This happens in each room: pre-k to fifth grade. They are not allowed to bring the food home, they must eat it at school.

via

Oh. Were you concerned that this was maybe disruptive to our teaching? Yes. Yes it is.

However, I have the unique opportunity to capitalize upon this interruption as an excuse for a vocabulary lesson (my general education colleagues aren't this lucky). My students with hearing loss typically have language delays. So we talk about "peeling" and "slices" and "fruit" and "seed" and "sticky".

So for now, it's not too much of a problem - unless you think it's more important to develop good writing skills.

Sigh.

I should really start closing the door when I teach

I was teaching similes and metaphors to my fifth graders this morning. It was a rather difficult concept for them to grasp because of vocabulary and overall language issues. But I tried my darndest. I had a wonderful PowerPoint presentation complete with response cards that the students held up to identify which sentence was a simile, and which was a metaphor.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself and my kick-butt lesson.

And then we got to the end. The last slide said to get with a partner and come up with as many metaphors and similes about chocolate as they could. When the timer beeped, I checked their papers and it was pretty disastrous.

Exhibit A: "The chocolate is melty as a cow"

Exhibit B: "The chocolate is so good I like it and I also like chips and cookies and pizza and hamburgers...."

You see what I was dealing with here. I overestimated their readiness for this kind of activity.

So I quickly backtracked and explained in detail how to create a similes and metaphors. First, we made a list that described chocolate. We came up with: yummy, hard, brown, smooth, melty. Then we took the words one by one and thought of something else that was also smooth (for example) that we could compare it to. Then we made a simile: "This chocolate is as smooth as a feather".

Then we got to "brown".

"Okay", I told my kiddos, "think of something brown". All of my students looked around the room. Then I said: "Okay, now let's fill in the blank: 'This chocolate is as brown as....."

Silence.

Then my whitest kid turns to my blackest kid and (very innocently and triumphantly) points at him and says "YOU!"

Modern day miracles

After nearly five years as a teacher, there aren't very many "firsts" left for me. But recently I found myself in the midst of quite a "first": the mother of one of my students claimed he had been miraculously cured of his deafness.

"Sean" is a fourth grader who is profoundly deaf in both ears. He wears a cochlear implant and does quite well with it (without it, he cannot hear ANY speech sounds). He is quite intelligible, bright, and friendly.

Three weeks ago, he took off his cochlear implant and declared loudly (in slightly less intelligible speech) that he could hear and he didn't need it anymore. Thinking he was just messing around, I pointed for him to put it back on and then explained that the doctor/audiologist said he must wear it to hear. He grinned sheepishly and put it back on.

Later that day, my colleague told me that she had run into his mother at church and she had told her that Sean had been miraculously healed over spring break!

Now. I believe God still does miracles. But I also believe that miracles are not the usual way that He reveals himself. So over the next few days, every time Sean had his cochlear implant off (changing batteries, or what have you), we would loudly shout his name from varying distances.

No response.

Since Sean was obediently wearing his implant at school every day, I forgot all about the issue and went on with life.

Until Friday. Friday, his mother was at school to pick Sean up and we had a conversation in the stairwell. She told me that Sean had something to tell me. He told me that he had misplaced something and then we had the ODDEST conversation with him repeating himself and never directly answering my questions.

Then his mom turned to me after he had walked away and asked me, beaming: "Did you notice anything about Sean? He had that whole conversation with you without his implant on! He's been healed! We've had a miracle!"

I was at such a loss, I think all I managed was "Oh!". Thankfully, I had to give my attention to my other students so I was off the hook.

About twenty minutes later when the final bell had rung, she came into my classroom to expand further on this miracle. Something about a prophecy and three days and some prayer. I was quiet for a minute and she said: "You look amazed!", to which I replied: "This is an amazing situation!"

I put on my warmest smile and asked as tactfully as I could if the audiologist had confirmed his new hearing. Her response? "God doesn't need an audiologist to confirm his miracles!"

True. Since there was nothing appropriate left for me to say I quickly changed the subject, and Mom left as happy as she was when she came in.

I'm not a parent, and I'm obviously not a parent of a child with special needs. But I can understand wanting your child to be healed. I don't know how long Mom is going to hold on to this miracle, but I do know it's not my place to contradict her hope.

Red and yellow, black, and white...

Nothing noteworthy happened today at school, so I will relay a story from about a month ago. I would have related it at the time but I was too busy railing against my job back then to be in the mood.

So we were reading a story called "Sees Behind Trees" about a Native American boy who can hardly see but needs to prove himself with a bow and arrow in order to become a man. Before reading any story, I start by tapping prior knowledge and building background. I didn't get very far before I realized my 8 fifth graders didn't know what "Native American" was.

At that point, I realized I had to define and give examples of "race". (I have two African American students, five Hispanic students, and one Caucasian student). So I gave examples using my students because they already know what "African American" is and what "Hispanic" is. I also said that different races and cultures are known for different things. Like Asians eat a lot of rice. And Hispanics eat a lot of tortillas. And... before I could go any further, an African American girl piped up in the back with "I LIKE FRIED CHICKEN!"

But it gets better, folks. I was pointing out which students were what (you know, to make sure everyone knew what "race" is. You can never be too explicit when you're dealing with kids with language impairments!). And I said: "Alice and Martha are African American. Jose, Norma, Gabriel, Luis, and Roberto are Hispanic". Then before I could say another word, my one Caucasian kid shouts out: "WHAT AM I? I know, I'm WHITE". And I said "White isn't really a race."

Then, he ventured: "....French?"

Musical intelligence in action

We were reading about the Iditarod Race, held in Alaska every year. We came across the word "champion", and because students who are deaf/hard-of-hearing usually have vocabulary difficulties, I stopped to see if anyone knew what that word meant.

"Does anyone know what 'champion' means?"
(No one did).

In a fit of inspiration, I sang this line (hamming it up, as I usually like to do): "Weee are the champions, my frieeeeeends....."

Eight faces stared at me blankly, some clearly confused as to why their teacher had just broken into song. There was deadpan silence for about two seconds.

Then, from the back, one of my fifth graders stated matter-of-factly: "Queen"

Ahhhh, there is hope for this generation after all!!

Some Statistics For You

Probability of getting struck by lightning: 1 in 600,000

Probability of winning the lottery: 1 in 18,000,000

Probability of a student you taught 3000 miles away in California moving to Michigan and ending up at your school on your caseload: I have no idea. But it just happened to me today!!!

Bonk

Today my kids discovered the noise an empty gatorade bottle makes when you bonk it against your head or your arm. It was truly a novel noise to them.

In related news, I have a headache.

Literally!

I sometimes marvel at my students' concrete grasp of language. Today, at an assembly, we saw an incredible production of "By the Great Horn Spoon" by a drama company. So many costumes, great folksy music, and hilarious actors. I realized right away that much of the story line was over my kids' heads with sophisticated vocabulary, accents, and whatnot. But that was okay, because the performance was entertaining in so many other ways.

And I was kept entertained by laughing at my students (in a good way, I promise). At one point, the actors were pretending that they were on a boat and landing in San Fransisco. All six actors excitedly pointed to the back of the room and shouted "LOOK!" There were at least one hundred other kids in the auditorium--my kids were the only ones to look behind them, eagerly trying to see what the actors were looking at. Then they looked at me and said "What?" "What is it?".

Later in the program one of the actors was giving a "haircut" to another actor. He had a huge curly black wig, complete with beard. The "barber" cut furiously at the air, threw fake tufts above his head (taken from inside his sleeve, no doubt), then lifted up a towel in front of his hairy customer and gave a couple of shakes. When he lowered the towel, the customer magically had a nice tailored haircut... the difference was huge! It was all quite comical--especially when I heard an audible gasp of shock and awe from one of my girls :)

I Think I Can, I Think I Can

As a teacher of the deaf/hard-of-hearing, one of my pet peeves is when my kids expect me to talk for them when they are perfectly able to talk for themselves...

Today, during a math lesson, one of my students had to go see our on-site audiologist because of a problem with his hearing aid. He missed out on the explanation part of the lesson, and when he got back, the rest of the kids were busily working on their assignment. So he sat down at his desk, looked at his assignment/paper and raised his hand for help. When I got to his desk, he pointed at his paper... Silently. Expectantly. I decided not to say anything and wait him out. It didn't work (turns out, I had used up all of my patience earlier in the morning). So I prompted him: "Use your words to ask me for help". Well, he looked at his paper, then looked up at me, then back down to his paper, and clearly he was struggling to put together a sentence in a question form. He finally said "I don't know how to do it". Being the stickler that I am, I said: "Can you ask me with a question?"

Then, he looked up at me through his white-blond hair with his big blue eyes surrounded by freckles and said: "Can you teach me?"

The Lighter Side

There is lots going on at work. LOTS. Between district testing, IEP testing, IEP writing (I have two in the next week), planning for parent-teacher conferences next week, trying to put together my St. Patrick's Day unit, getting things ready for my new student (yes folks, that would be number 11!), and all the other daily stuff I need to do to keep my classroom running, I'm left feeling like this.

But instead of sharing the headaches, I'll share the lighter moments:

1. One of my students, as we were walking toward the bus at the end of the day, looked up at me and asked: "What grade you?".
"Grade??? I'm finished with all the grades. I did all of them!"
"What?!?!?!?!?! But Mrs. L say she 17 grade".
[And apparently Mrs. L thought it would be funny to take advantage of his naivety. It was.]

2. Yesterday, as I was walking to my desk, one of my students said "Sorry Mrs. B" quite sheepishly. "Why?" I inquired (suspiciously). "I roop". "You did what?" Then he made a gesture clearly indicating a burp and said "I roop!" Ohhhhhhh. A roop. Of course!

3. The other day I was teaching irregular plurals. I explained that when there's only one, we call it "singular". Pointing to the word "singular" on the board, one of my students piped up with "Noooooo, that's the phone!"
[get it? get it? Cingular? The phone company? Oh. Guess you had to be there...]

4. When my students tasted cottage cheese yesterday, I was surprised to find out how many of them didn't like it! When they went to write about it, one student (my slacker) felt SO strongly about it, he took the trouble to look up the word "nasty" in the dictionary. Hmmm. I suppose that's an A for effort...

Food Frenzy

My kids (and I) are really getting into this nutrition unit. Monday we tried pomelo, Tuesday we had mango, and on Wednesday, I felt like being a little mean, so I brought radishes in for their "taste books" (I know, I know...). They took one look at those little red bulbs with the roots sticking out and declared "I don't like it". "New rule", I said, "no saying 'I don't like it' until you've tried it" (so much for the declaration I made to my parents a long time ago that I would never utter those words to my kids). Everyone got half a radish. On "three", we tasted it. On about "five", we all said "Ewwww". Well, at least I got to introduce new vocabulary words like "gross" and "bitter", so it wasn't all for nothing.

Today I wanted to make it up to them so I brought in a papaya. Papayas are sweet fruit so I thought I would easily win them all back. Unfortunately, I managed to pick the only ripe papaya that tasted more bitter than an orange peel. It was very disappointing. I'm not sure they will trust whatever I hand them tomorrow. We shall see...

Hello Pomelo!

Today marked the beginning of a brand new thematic unit (designed by yours truly) on health and nutrition. Much of it is centered around the food pyramid and all of that good vocabulary--I was a little alarmed two weeks ago when our speech therapist said my kids didn't know the word "meat".
Anyways, as part of the unit, I had the kids design the cover to a "Taste Book". There are about ten lined pages inside. Each day, we're going to taste some exotic and/or uncommon food and write some sentences about it (its name, what food group it belongs to, what it looks like, and what it tastes like). Today's new taste sensation was a pomelo, which is kind of like a yellow, sweet grapefruit. Everyone really enjoyed it... And I'm patting myself on the back for something fun to show off at our Open House in May! Now, I just need to think of other uncommon food items to bring in daily for the next two weeks. Suggestions anyone?

Later in the day, we were using our sentence patterns to tell each other what our favorite food in each food group was. I went first: "My favorite grain is cereal". A few other kids went next, then one student said "My favorite grain is DONUTS!"

Yeah. Me too, kid, me too.

Say What?

One of my students took the cake in terms of inadvertently charming comments today. In every instance, he got it just wrong enough to make me smile...

9:40 AM
I'm teaching my students that "kn" makes the "n" sound because the "k" is silent. I have several examples and several pictures, one of which is a knot. I said "When you tie your shoes, you make a knot". Suddenly I hear said student proclaim in a loud voice, pointing to his feet: "like my SNICKERS!!"

1:30 PM
My students had just come back from the third grade general ed. class next door... we had paired them up with a buddy and they got to ask each other questions (along the lines of "What's your favorite--?"). Then we all went outside and played with a giant parachute. When we got back to class, said student told everyone in the class how happy he was that he had a new "boyfriend". You can imagine my frantic correction that followed!

2:20 PM
I had my students run two laps around the track this afternoon. They were quite exhausted coming around the final bend and into their second lap... I kept shouting: "One more lap!" as they ran by. As he passed by me, said student (panting quite heavily from all the running), replied "But my heart (pant, pant...), it's BROKEN!"

(My) Kids say the darndest things...

From the Funny Farm

In the last five minutes of the school day today, we practiced spelling our "words of the week". I usually like to do something really corny as we spell each word (makes it a game instead of a drill). Today I told the kids we were going to lasso each letter with invisible rope. At the end of the spelling, we shout the word and bring in the cow. The kids were excellent cowboys.

As we lined up outside for the bus, one of my students said: "I gonna eat my cow!". Another student turned to him with a look of utter disgust and said: "We no eat cow!". I told this second student that whenever you eat a hamburger, you're eating cow. He replied: "but milk?". You should have seen his look of amazement when he realized that both milk and meat come from cows. The first student suddenly exclaimed: "I eat sheep too!"

I thought this amusing incident was over, but about two minutes later as we approached the school gate, the first student said: "What do chicken make". I told him: "Well... chicken is chicken". He looked puzzled, so I added: "you know, like chicken nuggets!"

"Oh.... COOL!"

Letters to Santa

It's recess time, and I couldn't resist copying a letter one of my students wrote in her classroom journal. Here it is, word for word, just as she wrote it:

"Dear Santa Claus,
Please give me a puppy. I would like to play with Sant Claus. would you give me a teddy bear. I would give you a cookies. I would like a crayons. you make me lap [laugh] Santa Claus. I would like a Book. and I would like a apple. Please Santa, I would wait for Santa.
Love,_________"

Awwwwww. In the midst of their hyperactivity this week, they still manage to be precious...

Bathroom Talk

I had a really fun activity planned for today's "Fun Day Friday" time (kids can only participate if they've turned in their homework!). Unfortunately, I had to cancel it because I was forced to spend that time lecturing my students on the importance of proper bathroom behavior instead. Apparently, two of my students were observed by another staff member to be rough-housing in the bathroom, as well as peeking under the doors, locking doors, etc. The culprits wouldn't admit it to the other staff member, even though they had been identified by said staff. Well, after a long lecture, two detention slips, and quite a few teary eyes as I packed away all of the ingredients for my "haystacks" recipe, I decided that I would at least read them a story.

So I pulled my "Haystacks" book which I borrowed from the public library. I hadn't read it yet, so I decided now would be a good time. Well.... the book is all about farms, and farmers and hay. Near the end, it had a drawing of all that was left after the cows and pigs ate the hay. So my kids learned a new word today: manure. They were all quite shocked and grossed out when the next picture showed the manure being spread all over the field and I explained how it helps to grow our food. One student was particularly expressive and I saw visible relief on his face when I explained that the manure wasn't actually on the corn, just that it helped it grow. He later put his head in his hands and said, (in what I think was a statement intended to communicate overwhelming shock): "This is really a new day for me!"

"Ooey-gooey" and other vocabulary

On Friday, I got up the nerve to carve jack-o-lanterns with the kids. I wanted to do it last year, but chickened out because I thought my students at the time would start a pumpkin gut fight and I wanted to avoid that. But with my sweet, gentle class this year, the only thing holding me back was the mess. So... armed with two pumpkins we headed outside. The kids' jobs were to scoop out the goo and count the seeds. My job (and my aide) was to wield the knife and create a fantastic face.


The kids absolutely loved it. I'm guessing all but maybe two had never had this experience before. Some were really into it and even ventured to taste it. At one point, the science teacher asked me (jokingly), what academic content standard I was working on that afternoon :). The thing is, you can't teach vocabulary and language structure in a vacuum--and of course I'm only too happy to ditch the worksheets and do something fun!!
The jack-o-lanterns turned out great, and I think the kids even learned something....

"Have Weekend!!"

Ever since the beginning of the year, when I discovered that my students didn't know that "weekend" meant Saturday and Sunday, I try to use the word whenever I can. On Fridays I always say something like "Have a good weekend!" or "What will you do this weekend?". On Mondays, I always talk about how I had a fun weekend and ask if they had a fun weekend. Well, yesterday (Friday), one of my students had to leave early. Another student popped up and, while waving enthusiastically, said "Have weekend!!" It was too cute...


I had a great Friday yesterday (it made up for all the rest of the days of this past week). For Fun Day Friday, we made pumpkin pie pudding. Since they all finished their homework, they all got to participate and they were SO excited (every kid I know loves to cook!). I mixed two boxes of instant vanilla pudding with four cups of milk--and I made a total mess because I was using a slotted spoon... The kids thought that was quite funny. Later, when they were all enjoying their pudding (with a spoonful of whipped topping), I opened the tub of whipped cream and put some in my mouth. I accidentally got some whipped cream on the side of my mouth, but I didn't wipe it away. The kids all started laughing and pointing--I kept saying "What? What's wrong? Why are you laughing?"--but none of them had the language to tell me what was wrong. And they were laughing too hard. One boy was literally in tears. The closest anyone got to telling me was saying "your mouth!". It was all quite memorable. We took lots of pictures, and I would love to post one of all of my students, but for confidentiality reasons, I can't.... so I'll post this one instead :)

Wasted Wednesday

Day Two went well. I'm discovering more and more about my new set of kids and my two new students. My second new student started in my class today (transportation issues yesterday). He's darling but from what I can tell, he has very little oral language--he's been signing all of his answers to me. I just lean in and say "I didn't hear you" and then he tries to say it out loud, but he is very shy about it :). He must think I'm pretty stupid for not understanding his signs!

Wednesday is our meeting day, so after the early dismissal I got a little bit of work done then headed over to the lounge. Our principal won us all over by provided free ice cream bars and popsicles for us, but quickly lost our admiration when he made us sit through a forty minute video we had all seen before (some had seen it twice before) at other staff meetings with him. So there we were, alternating between licking our ice cream, glaring at him, and checking our watches, and all the while he's standing there, smiling and laughing, clearly loving every minute of his favorite motivational video! Ah, meetings...the weekly waste of time :).