well, it has certainly taken me long enough to reach 100 blog posts. it reminds me of first grade, with the 100 chart, where we carefully charted the first one hundred days of school. I brought in a ziploc baggy filled with 100 pennies. Even then, it registered that 100 is a lot more than I thought it was. and now i carry this memory with me, and wonder if anything that i do with those precious little children will be tucked away as one of those deep memories - the kind you carry with you for reasons that are nothing but mysterious.
to me, it doesn't matter if the kids leave my class speaking fluent english (they won't), but if they can remember learning a word, or a phrase, the emotion that bubbled to life when they first learned ______, even when they are 27 years old, well, i think that is significant. every time i see their eyes light up with understanding, creativity and passion, even if in the next minute they are off in their own world again, it gets me. the times in which i feel a true connection, even with the most difficult kid, those are the times that keep me coming back for more. i hold tight to those moments when that one kid just won't stop talking, or a spat breaks out between two girls who have already learned that particular girl-cruelness even in second grade. i keep planning, teaching, investing, working - in the hopes that the memory of one game, one song, one book, will be more powerful than those wild moments. that, just as i think back to that silly chart with the numbers 1-100 lined in neat rows of ten and that clear baggy of pennies so carefully counted out, they will reflect back with a smile when they hear english words.
thanks for sticking with me for 100 posts. ~love~
to me, it doesn't matter if the kids leave my class speaking fluent english (they won't), but if they can remember learning a word, or a phrase, the emotion that bubbled to life when they first learned ______, even when they are 27 years old, well, i think that is significant. every time i see their eyes light up with understanding, creativity and passion, even if in the next minute they are off in their own world again, it gets me. the times in which i feel a true connection, even with the most difficult kid, those are the times that keep me coming back for more. i hold tight to those moments when that one kid just won't stop talking, or a spat breaks out between two girls who have already learned that particular girl-cruelness even in second grade. i keep planning, teaching, investing, working - in the hopes that the memory of one game, one song, one book, will be more powerful than those wild moments. that, just as i think back to that silly chart with the numbers 1-100 lined in neat rows of ten and that clear baggy of pennies so carefully counted out, they will reflect back with a smile when they hear english words.
thanks for sticking with me for 100 posts. ~love~
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