September 24, 2008

• corner days

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  So I just cut up half an onion, threw in leftover beans and
  noodles, some hot sauce and some whishtishire sauce (how do you spell that?)
  and made myself a durn good supper. Cooking for myself is interesting. Whatever
  you can do with beans.

   

  Emily left. I miss her. I am the lone American on the premises.
  Emily gave me the rest of her crunchy healthy peanut butter. Does life get
  better? Only if I had celery. I really want celery. Celery was made for peanut
  butter. And visa versa. And there is no celery here.

   

  So at college (FALUB—pronounced Fall-oo-bee) we have this
  education festival or something like that. Again…some things are harder to
  translate than others. So we have to come up with something to present as a
  class—like a booth. The lady behind me wanted to do a musical on the necessity
  of play. Now, the necessity of play is a good theme. A musical?!? Get outta
  here. So I suggested the 8 intelligences. You know—do a little activity with
  each of the ways you learn. Then list ways teachers can use each intelligence
  inside the classroom (this is something greatly lacking in Brasilian
  classrooms). Most of them hadn’t heard of the 8 intelligences. Those that did,
  didn’t understand me very well—I couldn’t remember most of them, and the ones I
  did, I couldn’t translate. So I found it online, in Portuguese, and brought it
  to class. They made me stand in front of the class and tell my idea and read
  it. I am stumbling over the words, hand the paper to my teacher and ask her to
  read it for me. She promptly refuses…and says “But it is so cute when you do
  it.” So in the end, they all clapped for me and cheered me on and I was
  happy…and they probably won’t use my idea…but, it was a good experience. Oh,
  and I got my student ID. BRASILIAN student ID.

  Ohhh-ahhhh.

   

  My 4^th grader, Daniel O. and I (he is forever
  labeled DANIEL O. because we also have a Daniel L. in the class) get along much
  better when I realize that he is much like Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbs.” But
  still…it is much more fun to READ about, than to deal with in class every day.
  That, and his being bi-polar. So is this a sad day or a happy day?

  And then
  there is Yolanda the nose picker. She is a regular. And she really gets into
  it—no embarrassment at all—just sheer extasy of reaching the last booger…

  And today was a sad day because I had to make Fransisco sit
  in the corner. I only have one class with kindergarten a week…and normally the
  idea of getting a merit and my funny tricks with the rules make him sit
  relatively still (meaning staying in one part of the room), but not today.
  Today it was the corner.

  • 5:41 pm
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