25 April 2012

US History Class


We wrapped up World War II a couple of weeks ago and are now in the middle of the Cold War.  However, a student of mine in my ESL US History class mentioned a while ago that her grandmother was from Hiroshima.  (The student is an exchange student from Japan.)  She didn't know much about it, but was going to find out.  She has been prepared to talk to the class for several class periods, but I keep forgetting to let her talk and she is too shy to remind me.  Today, we remembered.

Here are the interesting things she told us today:

  • Her maternal grandma (who is still alive at 87 years old) was away to college when the bomb dropped, though Hiroshima was her home town.  She heard news of the bombings on the radio and returned home to see the aftermath 2 days after the blast.  She found her house completely gone and her mother (my student's great grandmother) dead.  My student referred to the bomb's center as "ground zero" and said her grandma's house was very close to it.
  • Her paternal grandpa (not living in Hiroshima, but in another town), survived and air raid during the war and was nearly bombed at one point.  He narrowly escaped.
  • Her paternal grandma (also not living in Hiroshima, but somewhere else) remembers learning in junior high-aged school about the US soldier.  She remembers reading in books about how evil he was, how to protect yourself from him, and how to fight him off.  It was part of the school curriculum.
This was all very interesting.  The student didn't have much more to say than what I just wrote.  She obviously had not be taught this information as a young girl because she had to find out from her mom in order to share with our class.  Though I don't have any personal connection to the bombs, knowing that my student does, really makes the world seem small and gives you a mighty appreciation for the safety and security we have as well as immense gratitude for the fact that our country (besides singular events in 1941 and 2001) has never been invaded, bombed, or occupied.  We are pretty lucky!

Unfortunately, to put a damper on this post.  I have several very rude students in this class, who, although were give specific instructions to be quiet and respectful to this particular student as she spoke, weren't.  Not all, but most of the rude ones are from a particular eastern European country.  Though I've never known anyone else from this particular country, I have made some harsh negative judgments about it just because of the kids in my class this year.  Though they were quiet for most of the student talking, they had rude and stupid questions, asked about China (not Japan, and when corrected responded with "whatever"), said they couldn't understand the student, etc.  These kids, of all kids, should have more sensitivity towards accepting people of different cultures.  I don't get it.  I was ready to kick them . . . hard.

I loved teaching this ESL class LAST YEAR.  It was so much fun.  The students (representing countries from Mexico and Honduras to Nepal and Thailand) just soaked up everything I told them, were eager to learn, and appreciated so much their good fortune of being able to live in the United States.  The class this year is a different story.  The majority of the students are rude and arrogant, fail to try to understand different perspectives from their own, have no respect for me or my classroom, and . . . I am ready for this school year's class to be finished.  There are about 4 kids in the class who I genuinely like and they try to do well.  The other 12 are just . . . ugh.  Of those 12, five of them are from the same country and tend to lead the disruptive behavior.  With this class, most days I feel like a 1st year teacher with no management skills and this class of 16 feels like 50.  Sigh.

I am grateful today that my Japanese student was able to give her little story.  Maybe one of these days the other students will have a change of heart and be nice.

22 April 2012

Sing-A-Long Yard Work



Sorry.  You'll have to turn your head sideways to see this video and you'll need to turn your volume up.  Molly was singing "Once There Was Snowman."  It was cute . . .  until the very end when she turns crazy!


RyAnn Baptism

Last Friday and Saturday we traveled to Rigby for RyAnn's baptism.  It may have been the world's longest baptism ever.  I counted around 15 baptismal candidates and the entire thing lasted more than two hours.  Holy Cow!!

RyAnn was pretty excited to be baptized, though, and it was nice to go for a ride and be with James' family.

Congratulations, RyAnn!

Molly

On the weekends, "Ma maaaa" is what she calls when she wakes up.  I looked at the clock and it was only 8:00.  That was the first I'd heard from her so she must not have been awake for very long.  After a few more pages from her, I got up and waddled into her room.

Oh my!  She had climbed from her bed to the top of her changing table and was sitting there with her legs crossed.  "Down, please," she said.  How in the world did she do that?  Just when I think I might have this girl figured out, she totally surprises me with something I never would have though of.  In addition, she had taken her pajamas off.  Oh my!

I got her down off her changing table and told her no.  I told her to get her jammies back on.  She immediately picked them up, threw them on the floor and said, "No jammies feet."  As much as she probably should have been in trouble for doing that, I thought, "I wouldn't want to put footed pajamas back on either."

She needed to put something on her diapered bottom.  It's Sunday morning.  I wasn't putting her in the bath anytime soon and she needed to at least put some pajama bottoms on, but her drawer was empty.  I left her to play in her room and went to find some.

I came back to find her in the closet (a likely hiding spot), she was emptying the box of her new brother's clothes, trying them on and saying, "Cute.  Cute."  Oh, this girl is crazy.  She did get told no and she did help me "cwean up" all the clothes she had pulled out of the box.  We put some pajama bottoms on and went on our way.

Maybe she had being calling "Ma Maaaa" longer that I thought and I was just too tired to hear it.  Note to self:  Molly shouldn't be left alone for too long.


Though we really do pay attention to her and she really doesn't get into to much mischief, lately we've had a couple of other minor disasters.  One night this week she had disappeared.  We found her.  She had climbed up on her bed, put her binker in her mouth, and was just chillin'.  We were trying to clean up dinner or something like that so we just left her there.  I went back to check on her a couple of minutes later and she had found a small bottle of baby lotion.  It wasn't a huge deal because she loves lotion and doesn't dump it out or anything like that, but this time she had decided to rub it in her eyes and I got there just before she screamed.

One other time this last week, also around dinner clean up time, she had a pen and was drawing on a pad of paper.  She was sitting at the kitchen table next to James.  I was doing something else.  Next thing we know, the kitchen chair cushion is covered in blue ink and so are the white bench cushions behind her.  I swear she moves with lightning speed.  Interestingly enough, stain remover will remove blue ink from white cushions, but not the red one.  Oh well.  At least we can just flip it over.