"I'm thankful....for foodstamps"

My contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was the sweet potato dish: sweet potahtoes, granny smith apples, pecans, maple syrup, cinnamon, and nutmeg, made in the crock pot. Although it looks like steaming vomit, it tasted good.

Notable Quotables, Project Bernarda, and playing deaf

It's very hard to choose one quote from this past week, so I'll list a few:

"I made a discovery this weekend. I discovered that Domino's pizza is delicious when you're drunk on malt liquor."--16 year old in freshman math class

Freshman science class in response to science teacher talking about chemical bonds:

"Bond, what's a bond?" "James Bond!" "007!" "I love James Bond!"

"I was driving on the highway, and my contact fell out, so of course I stick it under my tongue and kept driving...."--4th grade teacher telling a story at lunch

In Junior high after school film club, making a film about zombies. The film is a mockumentary about zombie research, and the teacher asked the junior high students to shout out potential interviewees:

"A zombie!" "A zombie doctor!" "Someone who was bitten by a zombie!" "A JEW!"

"So on Thanksgiving day, we'll have our sons over, and their 2, MAYBE 3, girlfriends with them."

-7th grade English teacher trying to set me up with her 35 year old son while the 7th graders listen in

"No Joe! You can't play deaf! Whenever you play deaf, the story can't move along!"

-After school teacher to high school drama student who was leading improv games for the junior high kids. His character was driving a car, picked up a hitchhiker, and she started singing Christmas carols. He started doing "sign language" to sing along.

So I guess you could say I was thoroughly entertained over the past week and a half. Even though the junior high kids sometimes drive me absolutely crazy, they still manage to make me laugh a lot, perhaps even when I shouldn't be laughing.

My big project now is PROJECT: BERNARDA. She's the new freshman with zero English. I am working with her one period a day solely on practicing English and working on her homework, in addition to sitting in on her classes to help her then. I'm really invested in helping her to get better with her English, though I've also been getting frustrated because she sometimes seems to let her extreme shyness get in the way of her retaining information. I ask "how are you" every day, and while she's getting better at responding (usually "good"), more often than not she just smiles and puts her head down, saying that she forgot. I don't believe that she actually forgot, but whatever. She is definitely getting better. I had Liz ambush her the other day and ask her what her name was, and she answered correctly after some hesitation. Progress.

Tuesday, the 17th, we had our americorps-organized family cooking and healthy food night at Morton high school. One girl came. So we just ate the food. The next night, the Mossyrock junior high cooking club made dinner for their parents. We had about 30 people. Not sure what the secret was there, but we're going to try the health night again, perhaps at Mossyrock and Morton on different nights.

Monday night of this week, we had our Migrant Parents night, and family math night. That turned out to be a success as well. Basically the program is federally funded, and the money goes toward organizing migrant families in the community, ultimately with the intention of being more connected with the school and organizing events to practice math and literacy skills. This is the first year of the program in Mossyrock, so it's been somewhat slow; the next meeting of parents isn't until March, though I'm hoping there will be a reading or literacy night organized before then. It was really nice meeting the parents of elementary kids I've been working with.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, it's practically here. We're having a big bash at one of the americorps houses, complete with tons of food, wine, and a massive fort made out of blankets and pillows. Liz and I also made pilgrim hats and Indian feathers out of construction paper (while watching ELF), so it's going to be festive. And once that's over, it's the Christmas season!!!!!

"I wanna go to Macy's!" "God, why do you say such random crap all the time?"

The past week has been all kinds of crazy, from hitting Portland for my second weekend, to working at the school bookfair, to being a translator for parent-teacher conferences, and getting a new student.

1. Portland

Once again, I'm loving the fact that I live less than 2 hours from Portland, and got to spend a weekend there hanging out with Andrea, Lauren, Liz, and even Wyatt. At one point I was literally surrounded by friends from practically every part of my life, from elementary, to high school, to college, to the trailer life. It was pretty sensational. Of course, the weekend was also packed with sampling lots and lots of fine Portland cuisine: my personal favorite was eating grilled cheese sandwiches in an old school bus, though drinking dutch chocolate pudding ("VLA") out of a milk carton (or watching Andrea do it) was also a highlight. We also got to visit a couple of breweries, I think I sampled a total of 14 different Portland beers that weekend. AND I got to drink my first Starbucks peppermint mocha of the season. Merry Christmas to me. (Christmas sidenote: there is a mysterious wooden christmas tree on the side of the street on which it says, 'Christmas in the Mountains--December 5th!' What does it mean? I don't know, but I'm excited).

2. La llegada de Bernarda

So I lost Noe, my 17 year old student who I just started working with, to Mexico. Yep, lost another one, but this time I gained a student, and she has a lot of work ahead of her. Apparently Bernarda just showed up at school at the end of last week with no paperwork or evidence of educational background. She also has zero English, and was put in freshman classes even though there's no way of knowing how much she really knows. Apparently her older brother is her guardian, and when he was being interviewed, he was very hesitant to give much information that could be useful in placing her, so she is still an enigma. Maybe I can get something out of her.

Anyway, I've mostly just worked with her in math class, and she seems to be ok at that (that usually seems to be the ESL kids' strongest subject). She's been put in all the same classes as another ESL girl, so I guess that girl can translate for her when I'm not around. I'm excited about the challenge of working with her, but I'm automatically skeptical about how long she'll be sticking around.

3. Mossyrock seems to love taking their half days, and this past week, 3 of the 5 days were half days so teachers could do parent-teacher conferences. Since I didn't have classes to help out in during the afternoon, I staffed the bookfair. I actually thought it would be a lot more exciting than it was, but it was mostly just sitting around and occasionally working the cash register. On Thursday Liz read Harry Potter aloud to me while we waited to be done, that was one way to stay entertained. I would say it was cool to see kids get excited about books and reading, but they seemed more interested in computer games, comic books, etc. I got to see some class-A parenting too while sitting in there, with parents constantly telling their kids to shut up or threatening them with punishments if they didn't do this or that.

4. Translating at conferences, on the other hand, was a real trip. I was a bit nervous because I don't think I've ever officially been a "translator" before, only done it casually. For the most part, the parents seemed grateful to have me there because they really only spoke Spanish. The teachers would just go through the report cards, what each letter meant, etc., and I would explain that. I still don't think they really got what the components of the report card meant, but they got the gist. The hard part was, for the majority of these students, there were lots of subjects in which they were very low, so I had to be the one to explain to the parents that they their kids really couldn't read, spell, or do math. The main thing I had to communicate was the importance of the kids practicing reading at home, but that's hard to imagine them doing since they can't read with their parents, seeing as how the parents themselves can't read a word of English. The parents also seemed the most concerned with their kids' behavior, sometimes even more so than with academics. But behavior was not usually an issue.

Though I don't like delivering bad news, and am concerned that there's so so much work to be done to get these kids up to where they should be, I really enjoyed being the translator. I would definitely do it again (and surely will have to on various occasions).

Things I've "learned" this week:

1. Washington weather isn't ALWAYS bad

2. 7th grade boys can be major wimps (but for the most part I enjoy junior high kids, surprisingly)

3. The 6th grade teachers spend all of 15-20 minutes a day on math

4. Female teachers are "funny"

So thus far, November has been nothing but sunny in Morton, Washington. When I woke up on Sunday morning, and the sun was shining through the windows, I was both disoriented and ecstatic. I even went on a long walk, on my street, without having to wear a raincoat. All I was missing was a dog. The weather is definitely about to turn back to the rainy norm in the near future, but at least I got a taste of vitamin D.

I have continued to work in the afterschool program with the junior high kids. The program attracts a range of kids, from those who really need help catching up on their work, to those who come to play basketball, to those who just want a fun place to hang out. We have different clubs every day, and my "sports club," which is pretty much just basketball, has been a hit. We actually attracted some good players this week, so the competition has been more interesting. Of course, some of the 7th grade boys aren't down with that--a couple of them like to whine A LOT about how the other boys are cheating (as they themselves double, triple, then quadruple dribble). Today, just after we picked teams, one of the boys (Aaron) just walked away to the other side of the court. When I asked him why, he said it was because the teams weren't "fair." What a baby (yes, I called him that to his face), and a poor sport. After he left, however, the game we got going went well (we lost 40-38. I let the other team win, of course).

I went into this job kind of dreading working with junior high kids, yet they've become my favorite age group to work with. Somehow, they're mature enough to have conversations with and talk with rationally, yet they also hold a sort of innocence about them, and they don't feel like they're too cool to hang out with "teachers" like myself. They actually want to be involved, rather than sit back in an act of indifference.

6th grade, on the other hand, has become increasingly frustrating (not because of the kids, but rather the teachers). I was assigned to work with them during their math time, since math is the area that so many kids need major help in. However, particularly in one of the math classes, the teacher doesn't get going until at least 5 or 10 minutes after I arrive. Her approach to teaching math (and probably other subjects as well) seems to be to try to embarrass the kids rather than teach them. She started class today by handing out a quiz, and saying things like "I hope you know this, but I have a feeling most of you don't;" "we're going over the quiz, and we'll see who knows it and who doesn't;" and "let's see who we can pick on today." Since so many of these kids are in fact struggling in math, this type of "encouragement" does not seem to me to be the most effective way of supporting their learning. And she does in fact spend 5-10 minutes calling on different kids, and when they don't know the answers, she pauses for a painfully long time, makes some sarcastic comment about how they don't know anything, and moves on. On the one hand, I want to be there to help, but on the other, I don't want to support that type of teaching (or lack thereof).

At the high school level, I've begun working one on one with a 17-year-old ESL student named Noe, who apparently is not used to doing any work at all. Ever. I work with him in history and English, and he evidently has not turned in any work for either class. When I started making him write an essay and answer history questions, he just seemed to laugh in disbelief that he should be applying himself in school. I learned the ESL teacher's theory about this laughter, however: "he seems to think teachers, mostly female teachers, are funny." Awesome. I don't quite know what to do with that, but apparently I am an extremely funny female teacher. Anyway, regardless of the difficulty of getting him used to working, he does do the assignments if I help him, so I'm hoping that now that I'll be by his side more often, he'll learn to do some of the work on his own. And maybe even cut back on the laughing.

Substitute teacher quote of the week, addressing an overly-affectionate boy and his girlfriend in front of the whole math class:

"Braden, I wanna tell you something. I have a daughter who is a junior, and if I saw her boyfriend feeling her up and down like you are with Savannah right now, I would have to call her daddy and have him give that boy a talking to. I'm this close to doing that right now, so keep your hands out of her business. And Savannah, you gotta learn to just SLAP those hands away!"