Kids
Cut for those who don't like The Things Kids Say anecdotim
My dear little third graders, who I wish I'd had since the beginning of the year (and if I could have them next year, I'd do full time again. Though that probably isn't fair to them--they need a pretty and energetic young teacher, not a repeat performance old bat to look at every day) had a busy day.
Math included some reviews of all those impossible clots of irrational measures--four quarts a gallon, pints, oz, etc etc. There was a picture of a pitcher and a bottle of milk, both labeled ONE GALLON, and the question was, "Into which container can you pour a gallon of water?" Most kids answered both and moved on, but one child came up to me and asked me if the cap meant anything. I got him to repeat it two or three times, wondering if my brain was going, until he pointed out that the water could only go into the pitcher, because the milk container already had milk in it, the cap on top proved it!
The same child, later on, when I tucked an extremely dull reading comprehension lesson into a ten minute corner of time. (I have my own much more challenging and better written and engaging reading comp pieces--but we have to cover the curriculum ones, written in the thirties or so, as this is a Carden school. Miss Carden, so sterling in many ways, had horrible ideas about teaching math, and her idea of fiction was that it must at all times be useful and moral and packed with information, so she seems to have invented the "As You Know Bob" trope all on her own. All her little stories and plays are built around little ducks, or frogs, or cows, or birds, or children, telling each other things they already know--asking questions they themselves know the answer to--which is not exactly edge-of-the-seat material, especially when you add in that she was extremely fond of the passive voice.)
So anyway, today's lesson was three cows telling each other how much they enjoy their food, their shower baths twice a day, and how their milk is now taken by machines and they really prefer that to the old way--by hand--of just a year or two ago. The questions are as dull and painstaking as the text. But when I got to the question "How did the cows' milk get taken in the past?" my student somehow translated past into a spatial reference and not a time reference, and he said, with a slightly worried air at making a reference that was slightly risque, "The cows used to have milk taken from those things down where they pee."
Later in the day I had my creative writing class, which this trimester is the girls who are really earnest about it. (Two are working on novels.) But when we were finishing up, they got to talking. They were complaining about relatives. Two of them, just having hit the 13-year-old threshold, were complaining about how they got treated by their uncles especially, back in Lebanon, whenever they go back for family get-togethers. "They always send us out to get them things," one girl said. "I hate that! Their own kids don't have to go get them something to eat or drink or get the channel changer, just because they're boys." "Yeah," said the other. "And I get yelled at for showing my back when I'm wearing a T-shirt! They want us wearing turtle-necks when it's over a hundred degrees!" "Well at least when we go out I get to order for myself, unlike the Saudi girls. They even have to crouch over and only take a bite under their veil if nobody is looking their way." The Chinese girl listened in fascinated horror, then said, "My sister and I have to do all the work when we go back to China, but at least we get to wear what we want." The Polish girl crossed her arms. "Hah! I don't have to wait on anybody in Poland." Then she admitted, "Well, yeah, I have to help my grandmother."
And I was thinking, fifty years ago, when I was in elementary school, it was white bread all the way--and when a kid came from Texas, everybody regarded him as if he'd come from Mars.
My dear little third graders, who I wish I'd had since the beginning of the year (and if I could have them next year, I'd do full time again. Though that probably isn't fair to them--they need a pretty and energetic young teacher, not a repeat performance old bat to look at every day) had a busy day.
Math included some reviews of all those impossible clots of irrational measures--four quarts a gallon, pints, oz, etc etc. There was a picture of a pitcher and a bottle of milk, both labeled ONE GALLON, and the question was, "Into which container can you pour a gallon of water?" Most kids answered both and moved on, but one child came up to me and asked me if the cap meant anything. I got him to repeat it two or three times, wondering if my brain was going, until he pointed out that the water could only go into the pitcher, because the milk container already had milk in it, the cap on top proved it!
The same child, later on, when I tucked an extremely dull reading comprehension lesson into a ten minute corner of time. (I have my own much more challenging and better written and engaging reading comp pieces--but we have to cover the curriculum ones, written in the thirties or so, as this is a Carden school. Miss Carden, so sterling in many ways, had horrible ideas about teaching math, and her idea of fiction was that it must at all times be useful and moral and packed with information, so she seems to have invented the "As You Know Bob" trope all on her own. All her little stories and plays are built around little ducks, or frogs, or cows, or birds, or children, telling each other things they already know--asking questions they themselves know the answer to--which is not exactly edge-of-the-seat material, especially when you add in that she was extremely fond of the passive voice.)
So anyway, today's lesson was three cows telling each other how much they enjoy their food, their shower baths twice a day, and how their milk is now taken by machines and they really prefer that to the old way--by hand--of just a year or two ago. The questions are as dull and painstaking as the text. But when I got to the question "How did the cows' milk get taken in the past?" my student somehow translated past into a spatial reference and not a time reference, and he said, with a slightly worried air at making a reference that was slightly risque, "The cows used to have milk taken from those things down where they pee."
Later in the day I had my creative writing class, which this trimester is the girls who are really earnest about it. (Two are working on novels.) But when we were finishing up, they got to talking. They were complaining about relatives. Two of them, just having hit the 13-year-old threshold, were complaining about how they got treated by their uncles especially, back in Lebanon, whenever they go back for family get-togethers. "They always send us out to get them things," one girl said. "I hate that! Their own kids don't have to go get them something to eat or drink or get the channel changer, just because they're boys." "Yeah," said the other. "And I get yelled at for showing my back when I'm wearing a T-shirt! They want us wearing turtle-necks when it's over a hundred degrees!" "Well at least when we go out I get to order for myself, unlike the Saudi girls. They even have to crouch over and only take a bite under their veil if nobody is looking their way." The Chinese girl listened in fascinated horror, then said, "My sister and I have to do all the work when we go back to China, but at least we get to wear what we want." The Polish girl crossed her arms. "Hah! I don't have to wait on anybody in Poland." Then she admitted, "Well, yeah, I have to help my grandmother."
And I was thinking, fifty years ago, when I was in elementary school, it was white bread all the way--and when a kid came from Texas, everybody regarded him as if he'd come from Mars.