I have a confession to make. I don't like Harry Potter. I know, I'm an English teacher and I am supposed to love it, but I just don't. I read the first one and, unlike the rest of the world, I just didn't care what happened to Harry enough to read the rest. I tried giving it a shot and found the second one incredibly boring. So I gave up. I also found the first movie incredibly boring, and I watched just enough to get to the scene where he eats the nasty jellybeans. So anyway, I am not loving the latest Harry Potter movie release that spawned another Entertainment Weekly cover with that kid on it. That kid is so not how I pictured Harry Potter when I read the book...the Harry Potter that I pictured looked exactly like one of my students. That kid creeps me out. Sorry.
We had a really great field trip today. I managed to be responsible for my group of kids, and felt very at ease and in charge. I was so proud of myself, and I was proud of my kids. I had been debating with myself over whether or not to give the homeroom kids a party. The ones in my group were from my homeroom, and they were awfully good, so I am thinking I am going to do the party thing. I have to go to the dreaded Wal-Mart, though, because they have the cheapest chips and cookies there. They had been whining about how all the other homerooms had parties, etc, so I was getting pretty annoyed with them. We had a long talk about it and how whining doesn't make me want to give them parties. They've been fairly non-whiny though, so I guess I can surprise them with it. I remember when I surprised the honors kids with a party last year on the day we got back from vacation, and they thought it was the best thing in the world.
I'm feeling sort of weird about the end of the school year. Unlike at my old school, I will not get to see these kids again in the hallways or have a chance to have them in class again. They may come visit, since the high school is just down the road, but I won't have the chance to have them as students again. It is also hard to know how to say goodbye to them. They have a promotion ceremony, but eighth grade graduation doesn't have the finality and ceremony of high school graduation. I don't feel like I am releasing them out into the big, bad world yet. So it's a different feeling for me this year. I definitely have some favorites and not-so-favorites, but there are no students that I will miss as much as I miss some of my old kids.
It really started to make me think about the job of teaching. The idea that every year you have to say goodbye to so many people--some of them you only think of as acquaintances because they barely let you get to know them, but some of were so special and precious that it is hard to imagine letting them go. But you do, every single year.
One of my students this year that I didn't really notice that much, or feel that close to, wrote to me in her journal entry. I ran into her at the library, and she said that it had been cool running into me that day. She said that she is really glad she is in my class because I am so full of joy and am always smiling. Even when kids are rude, I never yell or get mad like other teachers. I thought that was incredible, not because it was so flattering and sweet, but because it came from a student I never felt much of a connection with. It made me think of a writing prompt I heard somewhere, which was something like, "Write about the teacher you don't remember." It made me think about writing about the students I don't remember. Already there are some that are fading fast from my memory. I look at their pictures and I remember whether they were nice or not, but I don't remember anything particular about them like I do with most of the others. It's kind of sad to me that I will only remember the ones that were incredibly difficult and the ones who were exceptionally kind. There are a bunch of nice, good kids in there that will be forgotten.
The teacher that popped into my mind for the teacher that I don't remember was my ninth grade science teacher. The only thing that I really remember about him was one time he ranted to the class about how he is over forty and still is having skin problems like a teenager. He was a nice guy, though, now that I think about it.
I haven't tried that prompt on the kids because here's what they would say: "How can we write about it if we can't remember them?" Those clever kids.
I showed the kids a documentary about Anne Frank, and it really was eye- opening for me when we were talking about the Holocaust and Anne Frank how little they know about the whole thing. I thought that would have been the topic that was beaten to death, along with Martin Luther King Jr., in history in elementary school. I know more about the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement than any other time period in history. I know that we learned about MLK every single year in elementary school, but maybe I got into the Holocaust on my own? I just remember being fascinated by the topic for a long period of time.
My coughing is driving Justin crazy. I even bought cough syrup to try to get rid of it. I haven't had this problem in a really long time.
