Glimpses

Glimpses from my classroom this week that once again make me thankful for what I have, the things I've experienced, and where I have come from:

• A girl desperate to invite her friends to her birthday party, writes out 'invitations' on scraps of torn loose leaf paper.
• A boy returns one of my books he borrowed and brought home, and the pages reek of cigarette smoke.
• On the cigarette-smoke theme, I bend over to help a girl and her hair and clothes reek of smoke.
• I tell the kids, "Multiplication flash cards are available at the dollar store, surely you have a dollar?" When most of them say no, I say, "Well, then you can make your own. You have paper at home, right?" There wasn't an overwhelming response of "yes".
• When doing word work with nouns and verbs, no one knew what a captain was. No one knew what the word ponder meant. And those weren't the only two unknown words.

What kills me about all of this, and I know I've written about it before, is that we live in Ann Arbor. It's a college town. You don't expect things like this. And I really don't think the people in this town, other than the people who live near the school, do either.

Again, I find myself in the short time I have with these kids, giving them as much worldly exposure and experiences as possible. But there's only so much time in summer school, especially with shortened days and trying to fit in as much reading, math and writing to catch them up for 5th grade in the fall.

"If I ran the zoo..."