back to teaching

it's a great feeling i get when i walk out of a successful lesson.
and today i had two.
finally! i was back in the classroom after over a week long absense. Last week i was gone for the MYC and this week i wasn't needed on tues. and thur. and wednesday was a holiday. oh, and monday we had off because we "worked" on Sunday (we watched junior high school kids from the north perform).

wow. i just sneezed really loudly
and no one said "bless you" or "gesundheit". and that's still really weird to me.
not because they don't use English..i mean duh! but because nothing is said at all when someone sneezes. I come from two cultures that take that very seriously. My grandfather used to have a joke that whenever he sneezed and no one said anything, he would say, "Bud zdorov, Aron Isaikovich." Translated, "Be healthy, Aron Isaikovich"....Aaron was his name...so get it? he used the saying himself to shame whoever was nearby, his granddaughters, to remember what they're supposed to say.
"bud' zdorov" is the russian equavalent to "gesundheit" a saying i use most often, partially due to the fact that i've lived in Milwaukee for so long.

ok.. off track
today, in the classroom i actually used something that they taught me in all those long and boring education classes at the university. I used multiple disciplines in the classroom. That is to say, creating as many connections to the material for kids as possible, so as to get everyone involved on one level or another.
my plan wasn't so intricate, but it never has to be. Sometimes all it takes is bringing in a map of a place you're reading abuot in a goofy story, or like what i did today, bringing paintings and photos to give examples of what is discussed.
Today, the 3rd graders were reviewing the pronoun, "that" and the construction, "This is a painting thatMonet painted."
To tell you the truth, it's a bit strained...i would personally forgoe the "that" in regular conversation, but nevemind that.
So i told them about Van Gogh's ear, and how to pronounce Monet, and Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and its prominance in movies, and i even brought in a new concept car from Nissan.
Multidisciplining.
Turns out Elina is not just a talking English robot. Turns out, she actually knows other things. wow!

Anyways. It's quite a high coming out of a successful lesson.