This is (from left) Josh, Ben, Nate and Dave at Thanksgiving last year. 
Friday, October 24, 2008
Tagged
So, I was tagged by my sister, Rachel. Here is the fourth photo from the fourth folder on my computer.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Microorganisms and Band-aids
For the last month I have been working as a second grade tutor at an elementary school and I have been really enjoying it. I have a degree in Therapeutic Recreation and (as of Thursday morning when I passed the exam that I just spent the last four weeks studying for) I am nationally certified to practice as a CTRS - a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist - according to the National Council for Therapeutic Recreation Certification. My job has absolutely nothing to do with my degree, however I still enjoy it immensely. So, until further notice I will press on with tutoring second graders. One of the benefits of this job is that I get to work with second graders and they are hilarious. Here are two of my favorite stories from this last week:
Everyday at school I supervise lunch recess, which since it is not in a structured classroom setting is where most of my funny stories come from. Kids run around like crazy and tattle on each other and I make sure they don't kill each other. I have to wear an enormous orange hunting vest so that I'm readily recognizable and easy to locate - as if being one of two adults on the playground doesn't clear that up.
While I was supervising recess the other day a cute little first-grade boy comes up and gets my attention. "Do you know that..." he says, and I start wondering who he is going to tattle on. Usually sentences that start with "Do you know that..." end with "so-and-so is climbing up the slide?" But he continues with, "there are microorganisms over in a mush spot on the soccer field?" Quite surprised, I said that I did not know that and asked him what they were doing. "Oh," he replied "they're just swimming around, and eating dirt." He seemed a little concerned by their presence so I told him that it was probably okay that they were there.
Wondering how a first grader even knew about microorganisms, I was just about to ask him if he'd learned that in class today when he dove off on a discussion about oceanic food chains. It involved a lot of, "and then a bigger fish comes and eats that fish..." type explanations. After which, he promptly ran away, leaving me chuckling to myself and wishing I still had the enthusiasm for learning that first graders do.
My other favorite story this week is about playground injuries. They seem to be a daily occurrence, but they're usually quite minor. In fact most of them don't even draw blood, but it seems to be the cool thing in the second grade to have a bag of ice or a band-aidto put on your battle wound. Actually band-aids seem to be a universal cure-all in the playground world. Just yesterday one of the kids came up to me and informed me that someone was hurt. I quickly followed him to the scene of the incident where I found a little girl bawling her eyes out. Naturally, I thought that something serious must have happened for it to be the source of so many tears, so I asked her what had happened and if she was hurt. She was crying so hard that she could barely speak to me, but eventually the story came out. She had hit her shin on the playground equipment, she showed me the spot so I could assess the damage. It was a little red and she had scraped of the first layer of skin, but there was no blood. Not so much as a scratch.
Now I may have a cold heart, but seeing as how this couldn't even be classified as an injury, I wasn't sure what to do with the sobbing child. I told her she would probably have a bruise, but that she would be fine. I even suggested that she get up and walk around on it and go play. This however, was only met with increased wailing, at which point I left her in the sympathetic hands of her fellow second graders.
Everyday at school I supervise lunch recess, which since it is not in a structured classroom setting is where most of my funny stories come from. Kids run around like crazy and tattle on each other and I make sure they don't kill each other. I have to wear an enormous orange hunting vest so that I'm readily recognizable and easy to locate - as if being one of two adults on the playground doesn't clear that up.
While I was supervising recess the other day a cute little first-grade boy comes up and gets my attention. "Do you know that..." he says, and I start wondering who he is going to tattle on. Usually sentences that start with "Do you know that..." end with "so-and-so is climbing up the slide?" But he continues with, "there are microorganisms over in a mush spot on the soccer field?" Quite surprised, I said that I did not know that and asked him what they were doing. "Oh," he replied "they're just swimming around, and eating dirt." He seemed a little concerned by their presence so I told him that it was probably okay that they were there.
Wondering how a first grader even knew about microorganisms, I was just about to ask him if he'd learned that in class today when he dove off on a discussion about oceanic food chains. It involved a lot of, "and then a bigger fish comes and eats that fish..." type explanations. After which, he promptly ran away, leaving me chuckling to myself and wishing I still had the enthusiasm for learning that first graders do.
My other favorite story this week is about playground injuries. They seem to be a daily occurrence, but they're usually quite minor. In fact most of them don't even draw blood, but it seems to be the cool thing in the second grade to have a bag of ice or a band-aidto put on your battle wound. Actually band-aids seem to be a universal cure-all in the playground world. Just yesterday one of the kids came up to me and informed me that someone was hurt. I quickly followed him to the scene of the incident where I found a little girl bawling her eyes out. Naturally, I thought that something serious must have happened for it to be the source of so many tears, so I asked her what had happened and if she was hurt. She was crying so hard that she could barely speak to me, but eventually the story came out. She had hit her shin on the playground equipment, she showed me the spot so I could assess the damage. It was a little red and she had scraped of the first layer of skin, but there was no blood. Not so much as a scratch.
Now I may have a cold heart, but seeing as how this couldn't even be classified as an injury, I wasn't sure what to do with the sobbing child. I told her she would probably have a bruise, but that she would be fine. I even suggested that she get up and walk around on it and go play. This however, was only met with increased wailing, at which point I left her in the sympathetic hands of her fellow second graders.
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