A 7 Year Old Mom?

I've read those crazy articles about children becoming Mom's at very young ages, 10 year olds even. I'm 23 years old, 24 in October and I am a teacher. I have been working with little kids lately but I still sub for high school classes sometimes and I tutor high school students. So, I was helping one 10th grader with his research paper and the day came when he was presenting his paper to his class and to the parents of his classmates. One of my colleagues asked me to find out whether the student she helped would also be presenting that day. So, I went to the group of 16 year old students who I know from teaching them German to ask whether Monika* was presenting today. They replied, "No, she presented yesterday." One girl, who I didn't know, who was sitting with them quickly asked, "Aww, why? Are you her Mom?"

UH, SERIOUSLY GIRL?! 16 Year Old Girl?! You think I could be a 16 year old's Mom?! Not possible, love. The boys were laughing so much, they're like, "That's our German teacher!"

It was a weird situation, I was totally surprised by her question, but I also thought it was really funny. I've been confused for a 15 year old many a times, but as a Mom of a 16 year old, never! Well, I guess I have been now :)

Not Lorelai Gilmore and not yet old enough to be! By the way, this was yesterday at the airport when I was picking up my sister and her hubby! And no worries, their last name isn't really Stankaroni ;) hahaha

*Name has been changed

Has anything like this ever happened to you?!  

I need to get back to the States and get carded all the time again so I can feel young. 

The kids at school are starting to make me feel old!

Spirit Week

It's Spirit Week at school so we've been dressing up all week long and it's brought back a lot of memories from my high school days at PV in PA and our different Spirit Week traditions. No Farmer Day here in Zagreb!

So this week, Monday was Fancy Day, Tuesday was Pajama Day (yes really, even us teachers wore pajamas to school!), and today was Dress as Your Favorite Book/Movie Character. Can you guess who I was?

 

Fishtail Braid - Much easier than I thought! (See picture instructions here)

The rest of the week continues with tomorrow being twin/triplet day (funnily enough we have a rather large amount of actual twins at our school!) and Friday is color day with each grade choosing a different color they will all wear. The week concludes with a great prize for the class that participated the most in the Spirit Week activities and I'm so proud that Grade 3 is leading the way so far with 100% of students (and teachers ;) ) participating everyday! 

The one day that was originally planned to take place but was later taken out was Switch Gender Days - I guess maybe was a bit too controversial or something. So I have to ask, does anyone do something like Spirit Week at your jobs? I assume if you're also a teacher you guys must have a Spirit Week but anyone else? Any Hawaiian Shirt Days or something like that? :) Would you ever wear pajamas to your place of employment?

Teacher Talk

Working in a school is great for adults to learn things everyday too. There are always new strategies to be learned and there are a few new things that have been working really well in our classrooms that I wanted to share with my fellow education enthusiasts!

Since I work at an international school, most of our students are English language learners. We, the teachers, as well as the students try to be very mindful of our speech so that students are learning proper English and not too much slang. The biggest thing we have noticed lately is the use of the words "gonna" and "wanna." In an effort to eliminate or decrease our usage of these slang words in our speech, we started brainstorming on how we could stop it. We thought about having a jar and putting a coin in every time we said it but then the students actually came up with a great idea! Every time we hear someone say "gonna" or "wanna," everyone snaps their fingers. When anyone says, "going to" or "want to" correctly, everyone claps their hands. Not only is it a nice way to feel happy and proud of your accomplishment for remembering to say "going to" instead of "gonna" by hearing a class of students giving you a round of applause, it is really not that disruptive for the classroom and it has improved everyone's speech and learning of the language! I love it!

Another thing we have been trying to make more adults aware of is the improper use of the word "there's." If you pay attention, you'll notice that people are often saying things like, "There's a lot of students in this classroom!" Think about it - There's is a contraction for There is. Would you say, "There is a lot of students in this classroom"? No! You would say, "There are a lot of students in this classroom." This is a big pet peeve of one of my colleagues so I've been trying to be more aware of it lately. 

My big speech pet peeve which one of my students does constantly is shortening "Can I" to sound like "Cay" (rhymes with Tie). It drives me crazy to hear someone say, "Cay go get this out of my backpack?"

Anyway, another colleague sent out this great blog post about 20 Teacher Tips for Beating Fatigue which you can read here. It's good not only for teachers but it's good for any job you have and basically for anyone who feels tired! (Who doesn't?) 

Happy Tuesday to all my Teachers out there!