Thursday, January 13, 2011

Deep thoughts from small minds

This afternoon we were reading a "Scholastic News" (remember those ? Ah the joy of little magazines in elementary school. Life was so much simpler back then...) about Martin Luther King Jr. I figured since I had brought up the fact that we have no school on Monday @ least twice today (can we sense any excitement for that event on my part ?) we should do some of our activities for that holiday before the fact. That way they would go home and tell their parents "I know why we don't have school on Monday" and I would look like the oh so wonderful teacher I am. Ok I am not but I can @ least try to fool someone. I digress though...

So I was talking about him and we were reading our little reader and EC's hand shoots up the instant we start talking. She then poses a good question. "If the whites were the ones that were not letting the blacks do things, why would white people celebrate him ?" I didn't know whether to let my jaw drop in surprise of such an astute comment from a 6 year old, or to just laugh b/c how in the world did she come up with that ? I think I chose to smile and say "you are right, but the whites didn't do it to be mean, they just didn't know that it was wrong". Then I decided that was an intense conversation and most of my class had no idea what we were talking about, so we moved on in our little reader.

IK, my "challenge" of a child, blurts out.... "hey, this guy... he got shot. Someone shot him, and he died". Now that is a true statement but you should have seen the little looks the rest of the class gave me. They all stared up @ me wanting me to tell them that IK was lying, but alas I had to inform them that he did indeed get shot. The next question "why !?" was answered with "because someone didn't like what he was doing". Little KM pipes in "that's a sad story"

The best part was at the end when we were getting ready to go back to our desks. EC then raises her hand and says " Do you think that if MLK had not lived, we would let the Haitians into our country today ?" Oh EC... you are the reason I love teaching. Fabulous, easy going and so kind to all.  Even to IK, who I make you help and he repays you by yelling at you and pulling you off the slide...