Snippets From a 2nd Grade Classroom

 

Mom Huang

4/29/22

Today in school: I have one student who was in a state all day, dysregulated, and totally out of sorts. I have different hand signals I taught the students so they can ask for things they need during a lesson without disrupting the lesson (a tissue, to use the bathroom, etc.) I was teaching math, and he came right up to me waving 3 fingers on each of his skinny little hands frantically. 3 calm fingers at your chest means you need water. I looked at him blankly. 'I don't know what 6 fingers mean. Do you want 2 cups of water?' He burst into a huge grin, the first one of the day. 

4/28/22

Working with Ms. Day's class, 22 students were smooshed on the carpet grasping their mini whiteboards and markers as I taught them how to represent place value addends on a place value chart drawing dots, or using the chip model. I gave a quiet signal, and they did not respond appropriately. I walked over to give myself a point on the whiteboard. I came back, and Jonathan's hand was up. 'Yes?' I asked him. 'When you were walking over to the board, Gabriela smelled your foot.' I didn't know how to respond. I have been working on being kinder. I looked at her. 'How did it smell?' She does not speak English. Jonathan translated for her. She told him she was looking at my toenail polish. She liked the flowers. Clearly there are multiple competing lessons happening during my math lessons. I have to have faith that some math will sink in, despite the colorful distractions.

6/30/22

Summer school:  Half the students, but twice the diversity of learners. I am doing my best to introduce a new art lesson every week. Yesterday I cautiously led a lesson in self-portraits with chalk pastels. My students are 7 and 8 years old, and all of this is brand new to most of them. 

I modelled step by step how to draw each facial feature. I had many students stumped on how to begin drawing an eye, even after the demonstration. I modelled on their papers directly, with their permission, in hopes of them using this extra support to draw their second eye. For some, this was all they needed. For others, something was still holding them back from attempting to mimic the eye sketch in front of them. I hadn't anticipated them not being able to do this. I had been dreaming of being my school's art teacher for a while now. This moment made me seriously reconsider the potential for joy in this dream. We had 30 minutes until dismissal time, and we hadn't even gotten to the messy chalk coloring part yet. 'OK, what can we add to our eyes? We need upper eyelids and eyelashes.' As I started demonstrating a method for quickly drawing eyelashes, Alvin said in his brusk monotone voice, 'I'm not a girl. I don't have those.' In actuality, he had long curly eyelashes. 'It's not a boy or a girl thing, Alvin- most people have eyelashes. They protect your eyes from things getting in them.' He looked straight ahead to process what I'd said, and then let me help him draw some inoffensive looking little whisps above the round little globes on his page that were his version of eyes.  

The last 10 minutes of the school day were a countdown in major teacher-pressure. Realizing that I would need to put the room back in order without enlisting help from the  students was helpful. I needed to focus on helping them clean off the chalk from their hands and packing up in an orderly fashion. None of this felt calm. Somehow we pulled it off. With one minute to go, I opted to draw a winner from our weekly raffle ticket can. Isaiah won the tiger keychain. There was an eery quiet in the room. The kids knew I was stressed and barely reacted. Our usual exchange of positive reflections-routine at the end of the day had been replaced with a stressed-out teacher barking orders out. I felt like I'd let them down. 

The next day I reflected. How could this have gone smoother? Breaking the lesson into two parts would help; as would giving the students more opportunities to practice drawing themselves with easier materials first, like pencils and crayons. I also considered my own comfort level with chalk pastels. I really like using them, but it definitely takes a few tries to feel comfortable and confident with them. I sat down today and spent a little time working on a portrait to see what I could learn. I worked off of an image (something I hadn't given my students.) I really like this photograph on the cover of Eddie Huang's 'Fresh Off The Boat' memoir. An awesome candid family photo where everyone looks serious except him and his mom- his mom is smiling like she has a secret joke, and he is making some goofy face while eating a snack. I drew his mom.

What did I learn: Kids (and grown ups) need time to find their groove with new materials, with low pressure (read: the adult is not on a time limit to have everyone create a masterpiece and have their hands immaculately cleaned within 30 minutes.) I need to set more realistic goals, give more time, maybe have a helper during art, and definitely break it down into multiple sessions. I think to be realistic, with messy materials like paint and chalk, I should ideally have a 1:5 ratio of teacher to student. OK, there's a start.

2nd Graders and Spelling Bees

 

When Zaila Avant-garde, 14, won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee on July 8, 2021, she became the first Black American to win in the competition’s history.

Three weeks to prepare 22 2nd graders for a schoolwide spelling bee.

450 words on the Scripps Official 2022 Word List.

Too many words, too little time. I will use my mind-reading skills and pick out the likeliest words to be on the test.

I scanned the 3 page list for curiosities. Vuvuzela. An onomatopoeia? (If anyone’s curious, I would have spelled that word correctly on a spelling bee- except for the fact that I thought the ‘t’ was an ‘n’. My 2nd graders are doomed…)

VUVUZELA! Whatever it was, I needed to find out RIGHT NOW!! I am not sure how the general population would fare on a spelling bee, but I, being not so well-read or news-worldly, would definitely have to do some serious memorizing.  

A vuvuzela, in case you need to know, is a long horn made popular at South African football matches in the 1990s. The sound from youtube videos of hundreds of fans blowing them during a game reminds me of many bees buzzing. 

I played the video for my class to familiarize them with the instrument, in hopes of solidifying their understanding of ‘vuvuzela’ and thus motivating them further to commit the spelling of the word to memory. (If this method succeeded, I would no doubt need to move in with my students to solidify their understanding of the remaining 449 words from the list.)

I played the video. My students made pensive curious expressions, from what I could gather from the exposed parts of their faces (we are still all masked.) Arian raised her hand. ‘It sounds like the sound a parasaurolophus makes when it’s mating.’ Another valuable youtube video I showed them in the past! 

My kids survived the spelling bee. There were tears shed. There were vows ‘to never be in another spelling bee again.’ The bee was held on ZOOM, and we had to stay masked. The sound was not great, and 2nd graders don’t know how to ask to have the word used in a sentence. Not that this would help- the sentences that other participants were treated to had strings of words in them that sounded like passages from 1950s textbooks.

Fast forward two weeks, and I am employing some spelling bee prep tricks for our upcoming weekly spelling test. ‘Who can spell ‘grapple’ like a spelling bee contestant?’ Now that we’ve suffered through the granddaddy of spelling tests, we are actually enjoying our little ten-word challenge. I think I will continue torturing my students with spelling bees in the future, as I’ve noticed my students are much more interested in reading since the experience. 

The event brought some unexpected surprises. I initially thought the non-participants would just want to do their own thing on the computer, and gave them a choice. The class unanimously chose to watch the competition as an audience. None cheered more enthusiastically than Dylan. Initially, I’d prearranged to have her taken out of the classroom for this important event, by her managing special education teacher, as her meltdowns, specifically during spelling tests, were loud and disruptive. It would not have been possible for the spelling bee contestants to be heard over Dylan’s outbursts. But when Ms. H. came to pick Dylan up at 9:00, it was clear that Dylan was committed to giving 100% to her new role of audience participant and cheerleader. Every time a participant spelled a word correctly, Dylan would jump out of her seat, throw her arms up in the air and shout out, ‘Congratulations! Good Job!!’ 

At one point the judge on zoom asked us to hold our applause until the end. I didn’t have the heart to tell Dylan. Truthfully, what is the point of a spelling bee with 7 and 8 years old if you can’t cheer loudly with your friends? It’s not like we were blowing vuvuzelas in anybody’s ears. 

Seriously, congratulations to all of our Terrific Pteranodon spelling bee contestants!

Post Haiku:

Spell ‘vuvuzela.’

Language of origin, please?

Hadrosauridese.

Code Purple

Thursday snuck up on me this morning, and I nearly forgot that I'd planned on having an art lesson first thing today with my 2nd grade students. I arrived at school with 20 minutes to set up our project room for a tempera cake painting class. In case you're not familiar, tempera cakes are not edible- they are tempera paint pucks that are dry and very easy to store. I flew into our suite nearly knocking Ms. Day over, and noticed several tables were missing from the project room. I definitely had more than 20 minutes worth of set up ahead of me, but didn't pause to figure out what shortcuts I could have taken. Looking back, I did not need to have all the paints organized for each student- the project we would be working on was painting portraits of our desk pets. I imagine students would only needed 2 or 3 different colors for this. I pushed on until the room was student-ready. I looked at my watch and was shocked to see that I was now 7 minutes late for picking up my little charges in the cafeteria. I rushed over, and upon seeing me enter the hall, the majority of my students raced to line up. With a poker face, I told them that running is unacceptable, and had them sit down again, and then line up nicely. Seems hypocritical, as I myself wasn't following the rules. But teachers get this- students love structure and expectations. One little friend however, was set off by her routine being broken, possibly. As I was walking the students down the outdoor corridor,  Dylan was screaming at the back of the line, 'I don't want to be last!' Her screams and cries were pervasive throughout the school. A teacher's aide was walking with her and trying to calm her down. The rest of the class was too stunned to respond, and walked into the classroom like cautious deer scanning for predators. Even with my microphone on full volume, Dylan's wails were overriding my directions to bring water bottles to their bins. I tried to have Dylan stay outside with the aide until she was calm, but she wasn't having it. I've lived through a few of Dylan's meltdowns this year, and they all seem to ride out in a predictable pattern: she flips out about not getting her way about something, screams and cries and tantrums for about 5 minutes, then after sitting in her own space away from the class says 'I feel better now' and rejoins the class like nothing had bothered her. Recently, I tried using a simple breathing strategy to help her regulate her emotions. We have an expandable ball that I use with the class when they come in  from lunch recess to help them regroup. We breathe in together as I expand the bright purple sphere, and exhale as I contract it again. It's kind of like magic. They always focus much better during math when I remember to do this transitional activity first. On this day, the ball didn't help Dylan the first time. She really just needs to cry out her frustration. When I heard another lull in the crying, I approached her again with the ball. She accepted the help, and after 4 breaths, she was back with the class, completely engaged in painting the background for Cynthia, her desk pet kitty. Despite the rocky start, the class was so committed to the painting process- doing it, observing their peers in action, and in general, happy to be in a different space. As I escorted them to their morning recess and started preparing for my math lesson with Ms. Day's class, I realized that in my haste I had forgotten to put on my N95 mask. Due to the recent uptick in covid cases, our school district gave staff the new directive of having to wear this more protective face mask. I was having issues with it. On Monday, the nose piece cut into my skin and left a red mark. On Tuesday, I tried a different one, which was slightly too tight and thus pulled my ears down like Dumbo. It's hard to feel competent in front of a class with something pulling your ears out to the sides. I wondered if anyone would even notice if I just kept my soft, comfortable, inoffensive cloth mask on. I was going to test it. I greeted Ms. Day's class with a squirt of hand sanitizer for each student that entered from the playground. As I called tables to the carpet inviting them to sit horse-shoe style, Timmy called out with his strident articulate little voice, 'Hey, I thought no one's allowed to wear those masks anymore!' How did he know?? I don't allow kids to call out so I ignored him. He waited a second, then pointed an accusing finger at me and said louder, 'Hey, we're not supposed to wear cloth masks!' I calmly asked him to sit at a little table in the back, as I didn't appreciate being pointed at, and his calling out without raising his hand. When the class was occupied, I walked over to chat with him. 'You had something very important to say, but I don't like being pointed at.' I explained that he was right, staff is supposed to wear the N95 masks, and the students will be required to wear surgical masks starting next week as well. The whole class and I had a brief discussion about our feelings about these masks. I shared that I liked them because they made me feel safe, but sometimes they're really annoying. They all seemed to have thumbs up in response to their opinion of them, which is kind of surprising, but I noticed students often tend to agree with their teachers. I often remind them when I'm soliciting their opinions on matters, that whatever their answer is is OK- they do not have to agree with me. But I guess when you are being directed day after day on all of your affairs from hygiene to morality to efficient mathematics strategies- you might be inclined to defer to the one who is speaking 90% of the time for opinions. Looking back at all of my teaching experience, I remember now a quote I learned during graduate school by teacher and psychotherapist Haim Ginott that really made me stop and consider the gravity of a teacher's responsibility for her students:

I have come to a frightening conclusion.

I am the decisive element in the classroom.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis

will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized

  

Squiggly Lines- From the Annals of a 2nd Grade Math Lesson

Ms. Day agreed to let me make long paths of masking tape on her carpet before school. In minutes, I had one 3-meter squiggle and one 5-meter zigzag running across the middle of her brightly colored meeting carpet. Her 2nd grade students would no doubt wonder what we were up to. Later that morning, I brought her class in from recess and asked them to sit in a circle around the tape. This may sound like an easy task to accomplish. It was not. Several students froze in a standing position on the carpet, like deer caught in the headlights. I guided the confused to the perimeter of the carpet. Shilo was sitting in between the tape paths staring straight ahead. I asked him to return to his seat. He started screaming repeatedly, ‘I DIDN’T TOUCH THE TAPE!’ Clearly Ms. Day had gone over the ‘don’t touch the tape’ directive I had requested earlier. I didn’t engage. I had bigger fish to fry. The class and I discussed and recorded reasonable estimates for the lengths of the two tape paths. Then I pulled out my red yarn. “How could I use this piece of yarn to measure the squiggly path?’ Many hands flew up in the air. I called Jaylani up and handed her the yarn. She took one end and placed it by the beginning of the squiggly tape path, then carefully stretched the yarn into a straight line until it reached the end of the path. I asked her to sit back down so everyone could observe. I wasn’t sure what to say next. The class I taught this lesson to yesterday just measured it the way I expected them to measure it, by covering the path with the yarn exactly so they could get an exact measurement of the length of the path. I didn’t explain anything. I asked if anyone else wanted to try it a different way. The next student walked over to the beginning of the path and pulled the yarn a centimeter closer to the end of the path and sat back down. The next 3 kids did the exact same thing, but the last one went a step further and rolled the excess yarn that had now developed into a neat little ball. I giggled silently into my mask. ‘Guys, we’re going to need to do something VERY different if we want to measure this path accurately. Does anyone else have any ideas?’ Dallas raised his hand, and had a confident smile on his face. He always does, and his answers never make sense, mathematically. I had a good feeling this time though. He came up, picked up the red yarn, placed the end at a random spot on the squiggly path, and laid the yarn down precisely over the tape. I assisted him. And now Ms. Day’s class knows how to measure squiggly lines. We still had our problem set to complete, but the kids were too antsy to focus any longer. I had several students pull up the tape paths and we scrunched the masking tape into a little ball. I lined the students up and brought them outside. Again we had to form a circle, but this time there was no descent. We took that tape ball and played a raucous game of ‘hot potato.’ The kids loved it. Whenever someone dropped the ball, that person had to sit in the middle. They screamed in glee.

Moral: Masking tape is more fun than we realized.

 

Ima

 

Sari's Wedding

When I was 18 years old, I bought a one-way ticket to Tel Aviv for $800 that I earned working at Fotomat. It was the first major decision I made towards a future after high school and I was numb with my fear of the complete unknown. I learned the Hebrew alphabet, and also one phrase that a woman from Beth Israel synagogue taught me: ‘Al t’gabi’- ‘Don’t touch me.’ This immediately brought to mind a mass of disembodied arms chasing after me down the Ben Gurion airport corridors. Somehow the idea of worrying about not being able to properly chastise them seemed the least of my problems.
I had signed up for a six month program on Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu- a religious agricultural community. The plan included 6 days a week of Hebrew and Israeli culture studies mixed with various work assignments like pomegranate picking and milking cows. My program, called an Ulpan, was for young people around the world between 18-35 years old. In addition to our group, there were also a handful of other young military groups from both France and Israel who worked on the kibbutz. Social opportunities were rich, and my whole world opened up.

I quickly became friends with a woman from Ohio. She was a little older than me, and she would look out for me like a big sister. One weekend she left the kibbutz to spend shabbat with the family of one of the girls serving Sherut Leumi. (This was an alternative military service offered to young people who objected to joining the Israeli Army for religious reasons.)

Shoshana continued to spend weekends at Tsivia’s family's house. It was about this time that I began to feel very disconnected from the people on the kibbutz. The people who lived there full time were both welcoming and distant; they had their own families who lived with them and they ate meals together. On Shabbat especially, when we weren’t working, I felt like an outsider. This feeling stayed with me. When Shoshana invited me one weekend to go to Tsivia’s family’s house, I didn’t think twice.

The 2-½ hours of bus rides to Kiriat Ata on a Friday afternoon were filled with sleeping soldiers with their rifles resting nearby, religious men and women loaded with fresh baked goods for the sabbath, and a wide variety of humanity that represented the country at that time.

When we finally arrived, I was introduced to many daughters- too many for me to keep track of. Each one was dressed in her finest dress, and some had freshly washed hair still wet, while others waited patiently for their turns in the bathroom. Tvisia’s mother was introduced to me as ‘Ima’- Mom. She had the cutest shy little smile when she met me. I remember she was wearing an apron (it’s not that my memory is so great- she was almost always wearing an apron!) and she apologized in Hebrew to me for not knowing any English. I assured her that it was refreshing to meet an Israeli that didn’t speak English, and I was excited that maybe now I would finally learn to speak Hebrew. She handed me a brush and some hair accessories, and asked if I’d be able to help fix the twins’ hair. Rachel and Shulamit were these tiny little muffins of little girls, and within minutes, they each had two little ‘kookiote’- ponytails. That would come to be my job when visiting. I was the kookiote person. This is what it looks like to make someone feel like part of the family.

The Shabbat dinners at the Dan family’s house were pure joy. Delicious food, tons of singing around a very long table, and always a friendly person to talk to. On many occasions Ima and I would get a chance to check in over washing the dishes after everyone had gone to sleep. Her goal was to have all of her daughters married, eventually. When she shared this with me, I realized that she considered me in this esteemed group.

I was to learn that she and her dear husband Shimon had 5 biological daughters, and 5 adopted daughters. How they had the energy and love to share with so many so selflessly was a mystery to me. And yet I knew without a doubt that this family loved me. They provided me with the nurturing care and stability that I was lacking.

And then the time came for me to leave Israel. And I left, and I did not keep in touch. I was no longer religious, and I was once again in a new situation, but this time with no container to hold me. I found my way through odd jobs, and eventually back to college. I had a few rough years where my life was spiraling into a bad direction.

This family was so good to me, I have no idea why I didn’t keep in touch. I guess I just felt like we were in two completely different worlds, and I didn’t know how to make it work, so I did nothing.

I went back to school and got my master’s to become a teacher. I have been working for the past 8 years in mostly high needs schools in the lower elementary grades. Every year I come across a handful of little girls that remind me of myself when I was their age. They have this sadness about them- maybe they are missing their mother, or they are hungry, or they are just not getting enough attention at home. Or maybe worse things are happening. I try to give my students a safe, stable classroom environment. I make sure to offer art and drama so that they have opportunities to express themselves, and to just have those meditative experiences art offers, that they may be craving. I started realizing that I was becoming the safe harbor for children that Ima had been for me. And It made me proud of myself, and also her- and it made me realize that I wanted to contact her.

I searched the internet, and was able to find her old address. I planned on calling her, but I didn't have her phone number. I could have mailed a letter. Why didn’t I do that?

More time passed, and the momentum had faded.

Fast-forward a few months, and I received this email from my sister saying Shoshana had requested I call her as she had urgent news. I knew right away that Ima had passed away.

I did call Shoshana, and Ima did pass away. A beautiful light has been extinguished in the world. Her legacy of kindness and emotional tzedakah (righteousness or tithing) will live on through her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

I had not made contact in over three decades. Despite religious differences, this family mattered very much to me during a time in my life that I really needed them. I'd like to be there for them this time. Maybe a visit in the future. I'll pack extra hair accessories in case they're needed.

A Quiet Thanksgiving

 

Birds in the Bamboo Watercolor by: Aoki

Sitting in my 150 square foot studio apartment, looking out a window. When the blinds are open, there are reminders of possibilities I hadn't considered. For one, letting the world come in a little. Thanksgiving is a few weeks away, and in normal years, aka before corona virus, a plan would magically formulate for a family gathering with little preparation on my part. Someone else would host, someone else would organize sleeping arrangements and elaborate shopping and cooking agendas. Being a 2nd grade teacher has given me a pass on those staples of the holiday. As my thoughts of a destination with a specific home in which to celebrate the feast dance through my mind, I see a distant flash of iridescent green. A little hummingbird investigates a leaf on a very tall bamboo plant, perhaps hoping for an edible reward. And since I'm lucky enough to have two windows within view, I see the same bird dash over to the bushy tree with sunny-side up looking blossoms. Maybe I can learn from her. Thanksgiving can be many small noshes in many beautiful nooks.   

Cheers!

Well, here I am all dressed up in my sequined sweater, obediently sitting with my cup of hot mead. OK, my family is doing a seder of sorts, and one of my jobs is to say the kiddush- blessing over the first glass of wine. Which traditionally is supposed to be red. But in these times of social distancing, it's wiser to use what is on hand. So an old bottle of chardonnay that's been sitting in my fridge for an unknown length of time will suffice. And since it's a little chilly in my apartment, why not heat it up, add some honey, and create my own mead? All this, with 7 minutes to go for the once a year seder, this time to be conducted over video conferencing. Good to have your priorities in check. The last time I drank a good (actually amazing) mead was when I took my mentee A. and her brother to the Dickens Faire in San Fransisco last winter. I wasn't planning on drinking anything potent, but why should the kids have all the fun? After an hour of watching them play darts in a perfect rendition of a 19th century London pub, I decided to break my fast and indulge. Well, it worked out well for me. As the kids were later playing a raucus game of toss the hammer, apparently I was cheering a little too loudly for A's tastes. "You're making a scene!" she scolded. This coming from a 5th grader, who just last year, as we sat in a Chinese restaurant waiting for our food, braced herself by holding tight to the edge of the table, puffed her cheeks out, and did a countdown.. for what could have been a very ill-mannered act, particularly to the quiet family off to the side trying to enjoy their buffet. Luckily I put the kibosh on the plan before any offensive sprays could disperse. And on this day, as I try to sign in to Zoom.. I realize something:  meetings that take place over multiple time zones are not my thing. I had another hour to go. No sense in wasting a nice warm mug of mead. L'Chaim and Chag Sameach. Wishing the world peace, serenity, hope, health, and your own cup of comfort.