Why I Do What I Do

There are days, and yes, sometimes weeks, months and years, that I wonder why I put myself through my job.  I put so much of my heart and soul into what I do, and it often seems like no one really cares.

Last week a note went home informing families about this week being Teacher Appreciation Week.  To me, I thought it felt kind of contrived.  I thought, well, if they have to be told to show appreciation, is it really sincere?

My answer today was a resounding yes.  My students brought me notes, flowers, and in one case bubble gum (hehehe).  The most touching were the notes.  One was a card that the little girl made at home.  I could tell she spent quite some time on it.  Just the fact that she took the time and did her very best on a card for me meant so much.  Here it is:

Front of the card

The picture in the frame says "I love school"  There's a cat that says "meow, meow" and the green thing on the right is the Statue of Liberty.

Then during my reading group time, my early finishers hit the writing materials and I got this wonderful sweet note:

As much as I love this note, my favorite thing is really how great this little boy did with his writing!  He even remembered the apostrophe in won't!  When school started he could only write a few words.  Yes, today was a day that I loved teaching.

Plant Progress

Our Brassica Rapa plants are doing great!  They're 6-8 inches tall and have been flowering.  We pollinated them last Friday and this Monday.  Now, they will get fairly ugly as they grow seed pods, and then finally we let them dry out and die so we can collect the seeds.  All the pictures I took have kids in them, so I don't have a current picture to post here.  

World Cultures

A couple of weeks ago, our school did a multicultural fair.  Each grade level took a continent and did a project on it, and shared.  It was an awesome night especially since it gave us a chance to celebrate the many different cultures in my school.  First grade got the continent of Australia.  Our students did animal reports and made coral reef aquariums.  They turned out really great.  Here are a few pictures.

Our passport station.  Students would get their passports stamped for visiting.

Our activity was matching Australian phrases and words with American English.

This is how some of my students' reports looked.

The first page of one of the reports.

Coral Reef Aquariums.  I made this one big because it's hard to see.  The inside has fish and coral and there's sand, too.

So this long post will hopefully make up for my recent lack of updates.  Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all my teacher friends.  

Joell