I got home. A long day behind me. Another long day ahead. I unbuttoned my coat – it’s a nippy 59 degrees here – and reached into my pockets. Torn off sheets of stickers. “Awesome!” “Great Job!” they read. Even a confiscated marble. I feel like such a teacher.

I don’t have much energy to detail the events of the past weeks. I survived the hellish week and a half before Thanksgiving and most of what is getting me through the semester is the fact that winter break is just around the bend.

I got two new students in the past two weeks and have lost three in the same amount of time. It’s migrant season and students come and go as families follow the weather to find work. Many come from up North where they have been in the spring and summer. They are in and out of schools and the inconsistency is clear when they pick up a book to read. They have brilliant minds and insight but when it comes to sight words or reading, the gap is wide.

I’m wrapping up about 12 student projects for a district-wide technology competition – an extra task I was sidled into taking but, for the most part, have enjoyed. I’ve got to work with a group of 1st and 2nd graders on powerpoint, digital graphics and page layout projects about the lunar cycle and recycling. Our projects are due Friday and we have an all-day competition the following week. We’re working on little time – I had to teach them the lunar cycle since they don’t learn that until second semester 2nd grade! – and most of my students don’t have access to computer let alone the program at home. I have them do everything, from sounding out words in their self-created newsletter to inserting and resizing pictures they have drawn and scanned. Our projects may not be perfected (or even completed for that matter) but they are authentic. They are real. And by golly those kids have learned, willingly or not.

Tomorrow will be a long night. I will be burning each project to a CD along with a load of other submission nitty-gritties. It will be worth it, I hope. To see at least one of them win a prize. To see them dressed up and answering each question the judges toss at them. How did they get that particular picture in their project? How did they make the words “fade in” line by line. How did they get their own drawing into the computer. Well, a scanner of course, they will reply. And let me tell you  how you use it….

Only 2 more weeks and 2 more days.

Si

se

puede

Quote from one of my students as I’m handing out newspapers. One student notices the 1/2 page picture of Barack Obama under the fold. “Barack Obama” they cry and other join in. “Obama! O-BA-MA!”

One student is particularly jubilant. “Who’s that?” I ask him.

“No se” – (I don’t know) – he says right back to me, smiling and cheering all the while.