Happy Birthday Nikki!

Today was my mentor teacher's 35th birthday. The students only had to be at school until noon today so the teachers could do report cards. Since the day was pretty much already shot, the fourth grade planned a little surprise party in the learning center just before lunch. It was sort of chaos getting everyone out of the two classrooms with all of the treats, down the hall, and into the learning center without being caught. We had other teachers come in to "borrow" our students and never bring them back. Eventually we all just kind of left as Nikki was out in the hall having a talk with one of the students. The kids have been so excited for this party for about a week and really went all out for it. A lot of them made cards, some made a banner, and a couple brought treats. Ms. Barber loved it and was pretty emotional about it all. I wanted to include some pictures of the kids while they are all happy and smiling at the party. If you were wondering, the school does have a dress code that you will notice, but a lot of kids don't follow it on Fridays for some reason even though they are supposed to.

Last but not least, I had to include a short video of Nikita dancing. This girl dances and shimmeys all day! Her hair is a little crazy because she had just put extensions in the night before and hadn't fixed them yet (she is amazing at doing her own hair in these crazy twists and braids). She cracks me up...

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

P.S.- I had to include something so funny that I read in this boy Jiheib's Reader's Workshop notebook in response to the question, "What makes a family a real family." I'm leaving out some parts at the beginning (I included some of the language he wrote it in) but I have the good parts down. He wrote, "I think family they need to get together and talk about their problem and spend time wiv each otha. We's a good, strong, black family who is just trying to stay outta the devil's hands. He aint going to get us though because we's in God's hands." I thought it was just so cute that he wrote that. This also told me that he is one of the few who are being taught morals and standards at home. Grading any form of written assignment at night is pure entertainment for me because of the funny things they say without even trying.

Post #2 tonight!

School is completely crazy! The major difficulty in teaching these fourth graders is that they all have the attitude of a fifteen-year-old, with the intelligence of a Kindergartener to a 1st grader. Literally, most of the students are on a Kindergarten or 1st grade reading level, and about a 2nd grade level of math. We have math fact challenges with Ms. Appel's class, and a lot of the students can't solve, at least not quickly, problems like 9-8, 5+6, and 10x1. They don't know this, yet we are trying to teach them how to convert fractions into like denominators by finding the lowest common denominator. It is quite the challenge! On the front page of the Washington Times last week there was an article about education. THe headline read, "VA and MD schools rank in the top 5 of Nation's schools." Underneath this, the subheading read, "The district falls into last place." DCPS was actually ranked #51 out of the 50 states plus the district! Yikes. To sum it all up, there is a lot of room for improvement. I know I already posted something tonight, but along with my soapbox rantings, I had to include a funny story that happened yesterday before I forget it. I was working with both my class and Ms. Appel's class when a litle girl from Ms. Appel's class named Satina came over to talk to me. She innocently asked, "Ms. Buttah (that is my attempt to type how they all say my name), Ms. Buttars, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I just burst out laughing and responded, "Satina! I am grown up. Why do you think I'm here? I'm going to be a teacher in a few months!" Her reply was that I was too little to be either a grown up or a teacher. This led me to ask the students how old they thought I was, the most common reply was 16 or 17! Jiheib even asked me if I knew how to drive! Oh yeah, one more thing!! Hillary, this really spacey girl in my class, called me mommy today. That is the second student to do this. Hillary already has two mommies, if you know what I mean, so I'm sure a third is about the last thing she needs!

Restaurant Week

Every January, Washington has a special week long event called Restaurant Week. A ton of really nice, expensive restaurants serve a 3-course meal for $30.08 (the cents are for the year). As an apartment, we were so excited to get dressed up and eat at a swanky restaurant for less than half the price. I know that by now some of you have looked at the picture below and are thinking that it shouldn't be attached to this post... continue reading. As we looked up some of our options, we decided to look at some of the restaurants' menus online. Apparently expensive=gross. Everything was duck confit, veal, mussels, goat cheese, calamari, etc. Eww, eww, eww! This discovery led us to do Restaurant Week our own way- in Chinatown. Chinatown was booming because the Wizards were playing New York at the Verizon Center. We walked around a little and then stopped by H&M (a much better use of our restaurant week funds). Finally, at around 8:30, we were all really hungry so we looked for a nearby place to eat our official Restaurant Week meal. And the winner was...(drumroll)... Fuddruckers!!

Meanies and Monuments

This post isn't in chronological order because I don't how to make the pictures be at the bottom of the post instead of the top! Yesterday, a few of my roommates and I decided that we should probably kick off living in D.C, especially because the weather has been nice, by seeing some of the monuments. We went to the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, and the White House. It was a lot of fun and I am coming to love my roommates more and more each day. We laid on the ground at the Washington Monument and put our feet up on it because from that perspective, it looks like you are walking on a granite pathway to Heaven!

Thursday and Friday were both kind of crazy at school. Mrs. Barber was gone Thursday so a substitute was supposed to be there but... surprise! No sub ever came so I was thrown to the wolves. The kids were absolutely crazy. You have to understand that schools here completely different than in Utah, so all of my skills and training don't really apply. All of the teachers just yell at and single out students all day, so that is all that they respond to. After hearing about what happened on Thursday, Mrs. Barber made me get tough on Friday. When the kids lined up in the morning, instead of hugging them and greeting them one by one like I usually do, I had to very firmly tell them to go put their stuff away and sit down on the rug with absolutely no talking. As soon as a couple kids starting talking I had to yell, "I SAID NO TALKING!" Then I had to sit them all down and tell them that I was disappointed in how the previous day had gone, how they need to respect me, yadda yadda. It was kind of funny and all I wanted to do was laugh but Nikki (Barber) insisted that I not even smile. After our little heart to heart, the kids were much better for me which was good because I was once again the sub for 1/2 the day so Mrs. Barber could help another teacher do something.

I had a real eye-opening experience on Friday that was absolutely heart-breaking. A little girl's father came in before school and asked if his daughter was supposed to do math or reader's workshop homework that week. We told him that she had homework every night. Apparently she had lied about this and had just done here reading homework. He told us that he would be back to talk to her later. Mrs. Barber went off on how he was such a great man and how he loved her so much. I guess she had a really rough child-hood up until she started living with him. He came back around 10:30 and made her come out in the hall to talk to him. He started yelling at her about how she disrespected him and herself and then started spanking her as hard as he could. The whole class went dead silent until he left. This man was probably 6'6", 275 lbs. The girl had tears running down her face and just came back to her seat and got back to work. It broke my heart that this is what is considererd an ideal parent in this school and that the previous day, the girl had asked me if I would be her mom. The worst part is, this kind of thing is not allowed to happen in the classroom or in the hallway (because of the cameras), so if a parent is going to do that they are allowed to take their child into an empty room and just close the door! Now I see why these kids are out of control. A line from the movie Little Women kept running through my head, "If you hit and humiliate a child, the only lesson the child will learn is to hit and humiliate." This is so true! The parents and teachers of these kids yell at them all day, so all they know how to do is yell when a problem arises. Their parents hit and beat them, and they end up getting into fights all of the time. I know I don't have a lot of influence being a student teacher for three more months, but I really hope that I can show by teaching and example how to deal with emotions, problems, and excitement in way that is different from what these kids know.

Jiheib, Darjanay, Tyjza, Nyjae, Tracie- "One of these names is not like the others"

Today was my first day in the classroom observing! We had a little bit of a problem finding the school from the metro stop because no one told us that we had to switch from the yellow line to the green line at L'Enfant Plaza and get off at the Waterfront/SEU stop. We got off at L'Enfant and walked really far until we somehow ended up behind the school! The kids in my class are so cute. I only have 15 students which is a blessing because as you can see from the title, the names are pretty tricky. The students wear modified uniforms meaning they provide their own clothes, they just have to be gray, white, or burgandy. I was feeling a little bad today for thinking that many of the boys in my class looked exactly the same because of their skin and hair until I heard a funny comment from a little girl in my roommate's class. She asked if my roommate Kami and her teacher Ms. Appel were twins because they have the same color of hair and skin. I wish you could see the two teachers side by side because they look nothing alike!

For anyone who has seen Grey's Anatomy, my cooperating teacher, Mrs. Barber, IS Dr. Bailey. They look, sound, act so much alike! It was crazy being the only white person in the class today and only have 3 white people in the entire school (my roommates and myself). I already love the culture. Everyone is so friendly and outgoing and I can't wait to start teaching!

The adventure begins!

I have never been a blogger, so all of this is very new to me! I didn't plan on starting a blog, but I wanted a way to update friends and family over the next few months, as well as keep a sort of journal for myself. I just moved to Washington D.C. on the 4th of January to do my student teaching in a fourth grade class at an inner-city school until April. There are eight of us teachers from BYU out here, and seven of us live together (the other is married). We live in an amazing penthouse apartment in Arlington, Virginia. It hasn't hit me yet that I actually live here. I'm a little overwhelmed but so excited to get more familiar with the area. Hopefully I will be a pro at navigating the city (especially the metro) by the time anyone comes out to visit!

On Friday, we all had lunch at Union Station and then went to the Library of Congress. It was a really cool place to visit, especially since I had never been there. I wanted to break into the actual library and find the President's Book of Secrets (like on National Treasure) but decided it was probably best if I observed from the glass box above like everyone else.

Saturday we went to Mount Vernon. I hadn't been there in about seven years so it was fun to go back. Mrs. Martha Washington was doing a little meet and greet in one of the outside houses. She guessed from our pants and furs that we all must be trappers in this so-called "Utah".

I promise all of my posts won't be this long, I just had to start somewhere! Oh yeah, and a big thanks to Carrie for helping me get this started and for making the big thing at the top!