Thursday, May 12, 2011

1 Last Blog I Guess

So honestly, I have no idea if anyone is ever going to read this. I just needed to post this because I am still going to my VIPs school and I had an experience that...well...like geeze I wish I had it during the semester so I could've shared.

So yesterday I went to my school and my teacher wasn't there. But they didn't have a sub, they just shuffled the kids throughout the school. The teacher next door saw me and welcomed me it. She told me that a few of my kids ended up in her room and I was more than welcomed to stay.

I was then told that this classroom was an ESL room. Now all semester I've heard people talking about having kids who didn't speak English, and I didn't witness this. I didn't get it. Who would've thought that the ESL room was right next door to me. This isn't the part that I wanted to share, while interesting, it's not enough to get me to post knowing no one will read it.

This teacher then informed me of something extraordinary. This class was actually made up of many refugees from all over the world. Some survived Haiti, some from countries or cities that were going through a civil war. One little girl from from a town in Ethiopia and in the town there was a war going on. Her mother was killed by a soldier and her dad was assassinated. These kids were so young.
The extraordinary part was the progress that these kids had made. Most of them didn't know how to hold a pencil when they came to this school never mind write. The girl from Ethiopia, because of where she was from, spoke a foreign language. I asked, "well is there someone who can get a translator?" This teacher told me, while they worked one on one with a man who spoke many of their languages, where this girl was from, their tribe spoke a dialect, of a dialect of the language. Because of that, no one could translate her.
When I got there, I couldn't tell. It was amazing. The kids were actually writing, while messy, was very legible. In September, they were, scribbling basically, and here they were just months later writing whole words!!! This blew my mind. The little girl even came up to me and pet my hair because it looked "pretty".

I think my favorite part of this classroom was what I saw next. The teacher was going over measuring objects on the overhead with units of measurement such as blocks or paperclips. She would go around the classroom picking one student. Before she picked that one, she would tell them she didn't want any of the kids going AWWWW or being upset because they didn't get picked. What I saw instead amazed me!!!
Not only did the kids not complain when a fellow classmate got picked....they clapped and cheered. They were so happy that a fellow classmate got picked to go up!!! I was Amazed...and there isn't any other word to describe it.

My teacher told me, that she was lucky. When they handed out pink slips, her principal told her she didn't want her to reapply, she just wanted her back. Of course my teacher was ecstatic but at the same time, she didn't know why. She wished that the principal had told her what she liked in particular so that she could make sure to keep that up.

After being in this class for three hours, which honestly...flew by! I figured it out. Like, that's what I want. When I saw this teacher, you could tell. You could easily tell that this is what she wanted and that she loved doing it. Even more impressive, is that the kids were having fun. They were laughing, smiling.....and learning!!! I thought fun and learning in this school was an oxymoron!!!

So I know no one will read this, but this event meant way too much to me to not write down!   Have a great summer everyone

3 comments:

  1. I read this! Your story made me so happy to know that there are teachers who really do care. That's great that these kids were learning so quickly and can now write, which they never could do before! That's awesome!! Thanks for sharing :)

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  2. That is incredible.
    That teacher seems like she's really helping those kids.

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  3. wow thats wicked interesting, im glad you had that experience and shared it with me, i honestly went our Dr, bogads to see if she posted grades and saw you wrote something so i decided to check it out and im glad i did. that story makes me happy, thats really good to hear

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