And the Winner is. . .

This is suppose to be a joke. We don't think of ourselves as that important. But we have had our choice after a lot of prayer and thinking, and we feel like the Lord wants us to be in there.

A Little White Lie

Is it bad to lie to your students. The class just earned goldfish as a class pet on Monday. Today, one of them died. The students were pretty good about the fact that it died (many of them had pet death stories of their own). So I decided that during lunch I would throw the fish away. I didn't want the kids to know that I am insensitive, so I wrapped the sucker up in lots of paper towels and throw it in the trash can. Of course the first student to notice the fish gone, asked what happened. I simply told him I buried it (buried in paper towels right). He looks outside and asked if I buried it in that rock garden, since the rest of the area outside is cement. Sure why not, so I told them that was the place. The kid raced outside and started upturning the rocks to find the dead fish. They are so gullible, even when they didn't find him, they still believed me. Hopefully that isn't a too big of a sin.

No joking, ten minutes after I threw away the first fish, the second fish died. I tried to explain to the class that it died of a broken heart. The student feel fed them this week felt like he killed them and started crying for the next 15 minutes. I am just grateful that I am not in first grade. We would have a lot more tears.

Mark's Birthday

Last week was Mike's younger brother's birthday. His parents were going to be out-of-town, so we were in charge of throwing him a party. I wanted to make Mark a cake, but Mike said I should have Nicole Barber's supervision if I wanted to attempt any thing in the oven. I was pretty impress with the outcome. It is a devil's food cake with peanut butter cups inside. Instead of frosting, we made Gnosh (I have no idea how to spell that), but it is more of a chocolate fudge. Very, very good and rich.



I didn't want to ruin the top with all the peanut butter cups, so Mike and I thought it would be fun to put the candles around the candle like spokes on a tire. We didn't think about putting wax paper underneath it, so we had a colorful master piece of wax on the table after wards. Oops!

Journal

I know that this won't be as funny as it is when you know the student, but today is Friday, meaning that I get to read one journal entry that the students mark for me to read. There is a girl in my class is constantly doodles on all her papers. I wouldn't mind, but it is distracting her and she is falling behind. Well, I told her on Thursday that if she went the whole day without drawing, I would give her five class dollars (I big deal). Well this is what she wrote in her journal that day. . .

"I've been thinking about why I want to be a mega artist. It's good to be a strong writer, but the arts are important too. To get to be a stronger artist, I practice a lot on all my papers, but I'm getting paid to not draw. I want the money, but I really want to make my dreams come true. Well. . . I'm going to read now."

Isn't a teacher suppose to be a dream builder and not a dream crusher? Oh well, she didn't draw once that day so she got her five dollars and I got her attention. Maybe she will become a writer someday and look back how grateful she was for her fifth grade teacher to crush her artist dreams and secretly paying her to be a writer. Time can only tell.