Today was a typical Tuesday. This morning, I had breakfast compliments of the PTO in celebration of the Scholastic Book Fair coming to our school. It was delicious! While I was there, the parent of one of the student's I wrote about last week asked to speak with me about the referral I filled out. Though I was nervous that she'd be upset, she was merely asking for clarification. I was thankful that I understood the school's process enough to answer her questions and leave her satisfied with my answers.
In coordination with the book fair, my school hosted a Multicultural Dinner tonight. When I left school, I wasn't sure whether or not I was going to attend. None of the teachers in my team were attending, but about half the class told me that they would be there. I wasn't feeling so hot after lunch today and decided I'd wait to make my decision until after work. I got to work and my director asked if I wanted to be in the 3's classroom since the 2's gave me such a hard time yesterday. I gladly accepted her offer and had a great afternoon. I am so much better at communicating with kids that are three and four! It was very clear to me in my two hours of work tonight that my experience level with older kids is SO much higher than with the babies. I love to cuddle but behavior management is so tricky for me with them! I also found a "Best of Laurie Berkner" CD in their classroom. I had such fond memories of my time at the daycare this summer! It was a blast just dancing and singing. I also played "Doggie, Doggie Where's Your Bone?" "Hey, Neighbor" and "Roll Call, Check the Beat" with them. The time flew by!
After a great day at work, I had the energy to go to the Multicultural Dinner and I am SO glad that I did. I walked in to scope things out and was disappointed to only see one of the students from my class. Being that there was a bus transporting people from the neighborhood that isn't surrounding the school, I anticipated being able to see more students. There were only four total from our entire house of 51 kids. Bummer! Regardless, I made a plate filled with lentils and rice, spicy chick peas, Turkish meatballs, Hmong egg rolls, homemade fried chicken, vegetarian squash risotto, Tator Tot Casserole, and French bread. It was incredible! I sat by the teacher who teaches 4K in the room next to ours. It was nice to meet her children! There was a Peruvian dance performance followed by salsa dancing lessons. They asked for volunteers to go up and learn how to dance, and I was all over it! I had a lot of salsa dancing practice on a trip to El Salvador/Guatemala two years ago and I loved getting to do it again. I danced with a man who was a definite pro and then invited a 5th grader from our school to dance with me. After some coaxing, he was willing to be my partner. So much fun! There was also four women doing Henna tattoos for free. I had never gotten it done before so I hopped in line and got one done on each of my hands. It's been quite the challenge to keep the "paste" part on. I don't do "gingerly" very well at all. Hopefully it stays on long enough for the color to get dark! They're beautiful.
While I was sad not to see more staff members at the dinner, I was happy that there were so many families that participated. I noticed there were two racial groups mostly missing from the event and I'd be interested to talk to other leaders in our school to find out why that might be.
In other news, Bret Bielema is leaving Wisconsin for Arkansas! Definitely didn't see that one coming. I'm interested to see what happens!
-BJT
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