Interesting Day

I had a great class with my kids today. It’s weird for me to call them my kids. Should I call them the kids instead of my kids? I remind myself of my third grade teacher for some reason. I can still remember all my teachers’ names and what they looked like. Can you?

K-1 Mrs. Blackburn
2 Mrs. Freitag
3 Mrs. Johnson-Roidt
4 Mrs. Boesler
5 Mrs. Crawford
6 Mr. Hanson.

Mrs. Freitag’s class was awesome. I remember it was my first day at public school after going to the private school and it was so scary. I had already learned everything that we would learn that year, because private school kids are naturally smarter, and I really resent the public school system for not letting me go into the grade ahead. I still feel that way. That class is where the clique formed that remained for the next ten years! Except for Kelci, she was in Mrs. Welch’s class. Mrs. Welch always yelled and looked scary. But Mrs. Freitag was like a combination of your grandmother and some divine being. She was awesome because she used colored chalk on the blackboard! We played some hardcore heads-up 7-up in that class. I totally cheated by looking at the reflection on my desk of whoever was walking by, or looking at their shoes but that was a little more obvious. In Mrs. Freitag’s class was Sara, Noah, Andy, Megan A., Doug, Siah and who else? Wasn’t Neil in Mrs. Welch’s class?

Megan Sanders came in 3rd grade but I knew her before then from an art class we took together. Then she dated Doug for.ev.er and Sara and Siah did too. Kelci and Megan Arndt had awesome haircuts. Once in 3rd grade I had awful allergies and I sneezed and a big string of snot shot out and connected from the desk to my nose. And who was that kid… Jess knows… Tim Robinson? He had a round head and was red-faced and had round glasses to match his round head. He laughed at me the loudest and Brittany Bugles or Biggles or Baggles went and grabbed some tissue for me. Later on she became stepsisters with Kayla Hensley. We had to do those standardized reading tests and I got 100% on mine. Later on Mrs. Johnson-Roidt was talking about the grade results and said that one student did so well that she and another teacher had thought that they (I) cheated! I can’t help it that I went to a private school and had an advantage. I remember feeling ashamed at being smart and even tried to appear dumber than I was after that!

In 4th grade the class was divided into reading group A on the right side and reading group B on the left side. Group A consisted of myself, Jess, Andy, Alix, Doug, Neil and who else? We had to write stories about the geographical features of the United States, and Doug’s stories were always the best. He had one story with some characters named Justin Time and Maiden China. How clever! He said that the Grand Canyon was made because of a giant sad toddler dragging his teddy bear, and his tears flowed to the east and filled in the Great Lakes. Did I just blow your mind or what?

Anyway, I think my lesson today was rather successful. First, I need to say that most of this lesson was stolen and modified from the Indonesian Teacher’s Handbook from Heather Akin. What a wonderful resource!

We talked about culture and stereotypes. First I told them to think about culture and what things comprise culture. We came up with a list of food, music, clothing, language, religion, and traditions. I told them to rank those items according to what was most important to them, and many put religion first. Language and tradition were always near the top, and music, clothing, and food were near the bottom. We tallied the results for the entire class, and then I had them make another list of how their grandparents might answer. Many of them put religion first, always followed by language. We tallied these results and compared them, which led to a wonderful discussion about cultural change over time. We talked about how language has changed in importance because their grandparents and their parents were forced to learn Russian in schools. Now people are learning English instead of Russian.

Next we talked about stereotypes. To get them started, I showed a map of the United States and pointed to different areas and imitated different regional dialects, which was funny and made them laugh. I showed them which areas are thought to be lazy, fat, rich, and black. When I talked about black people I think they were a little shocked and taken off guard, because it’s more offensive for them to use that term than to say Negro. I was glad that last night after dinner Marek and I had had a conversation about the different terms so I was a little prepared for their reactions.

We made a list on the board with two columns labeled group and judgment. I started them off with the groups boys and girls, and the judgments that boys like sports and girls like pink. They picked up on it pretty quickly from there and ran with this activity. This was probably the most successful classroom activity I’ve done so far.

I wanted to see what kind of stereotypes they had about Americans and if they knew what stereotypes they themselves had placed upon them. I told them to draw or write some stereotypes for Poles and for Americans, and the results were so interesting that I saved their work and would love to show it off when I get home.

Without giving any prompts, many of the results turned out to be quite similar. Many polish stereotypes revolved around alcohol and work ethic, and the American ones were fast food and fat people. I was really impressed!

I told them that in the States, kids their age are only educated about Poland in the context of the holocaust. I had them make a list of five things: where they are from, something they like, something they don’t like, something they love, and something they believe. Then I said if they could have their voices heard around the world, what would they say about being Polish? How could they tell people that Polish life isn't all about the holocaust? They used their prompts from the list I had them make and each wrote a letter to the world that said “Dear World, I am Polish and…”. I went around to each student and corrected their sentences and told them to write a final draft on a nice piece of crisp paper. I had each of them hold up their letters and I photographed their smiling faces. The younger kids did a similar activity, except I had them write I AM POLISH! And draw a picture of some feature of Polish life. They will be sent to the printer and I’ll post them around the classroom hopefully next week!

That's all for now. I need to take a nap! Leave me comments or send me an e-mail, please!

Do widzenia,

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