#human critters

[buddiball]

Critters as humans :D

I like Allan the most. Who's yours?

[kynodontas]

one of my students is doing the "publish a book" project and wrote a story about a fish named jack who has a smaller-than-normal fin that the other fish make fun of. jack befriends another fish with short term memory loss named oscar. they become best friends, but oscar's mom doesn't want oscar to play with jack since she worries when he's not home, but jack gets his mom to talk with oscar's mom, and jack and oscar go from playing together every day to every monday, tuesday, wednesday, and friday lol. they live a happy life after that.

i thought it was a sweet story and secretly hoped oscar and jack became partners and lived their lives out as an old gay fish couple

and then i realized that i was shipping fish

in a story written by a 4th grader

sigh

[kynodontas]

what my students thought "wtf" meant

welcome to facebook

wednesday thursday friday

[kynodontas]

continuing on that path

(that "subverting oppression" path at my work)

It's interesting because 1) all my students are POC (actually everyone at my work are POC), 2) it's still Whiteness Central at times, 3) even with it being infuriatingly WC on a frequent basis, I've noticed the students are generally more accepting, though on more superficial things, leading me to wonder if it's the age factor or the POC factor (probably both).

Today, one of my students, V., asked if slavery still existed in the world. I tried to explain that it took on slightly different forms nowadays and did my best to sum up forced labor/trafficking/corporatism in a handful of sentences ugh; she was mostly worried about being forced into slavery if she visited South America (um...), which led me to talk to her of the privilege of being a US citizen. Another student, N., piped up to ask if there was a wall separating North America from South America. I told him there wasn't especially since there's something called CENTRAL AMERICA (but then again, he didn't know Las Vegas is in Nevada or that Nevada is next to California, so I suppose it's my fault for expecting so much so soon). "But!" he said. "I saw it in a movie!" Movies are made to ENTERTAIN, honey, not tell the truth. Big ass difference most people can't seem to grasp.

These questions/conversations are, obviously, not the norm. I mean, it's more along the lines of "Teacher*, is it true that butter is made from cow poop?" or my favorite thus far, "Teacher, are fingers insects?" (wat???) But I'm making with what I got.

Earlier this week, A. wanted to get started on his biography project. I asked him who he was thinking of doing it on, and he answered King Arthur. To his dismay, I told him King Arthur did not exist (sorry bro). To MY delight, he then immediately chose Bruce Lee. And then when we were looking up how Bruce Lee died, A. didn't know what a "cerebral edema" was, so when he looked it up, I paraphrased it as "your brain swelling," and he got this look on his face, and it made me remember how I was prone to believing I had a brain tumor at that age and how easy it was to get freaked out about illness and pain. oops. But I reassured him that him getting a cerebral edema any time soon was very very very slim.

There's also an on-going convo about what's considered "healthy." V. teased A. about how he only seems to eat "unhealthy" foods and is constantly hungry/asking about food. I threw down the MINDBLOWING concept that anything that doesn't outright kill you is technically healthy as your body is able to process said food into energy and that "health" is about moderation and balance, something that's different for EVERYONE. I think they're still reeling from that doozy since TWO of them brought it up again today and tried to cite their parent/older brother who's in sixth grade as proof that I'm wrong. 

*Technically, my co-workers and I are tutors, but we're addressed as teachers at work. 

[kynodontas]

Social events I am looking forward to

lol yeah, no more of that "i GUESS i could hang out with you sigh" bullshit this winter break.

dinner + wine bar on sunday with a friend i only meet up with once or twice every year ('cause she's so damn busy/health reasons and we cool like that)

gonna see @jupitrie next week! and will probably meet her obaa-san! and finally return the ramekins from the delicious kabocha flan her mom made

got invited to a birthday party/family get-together where there will be homemade mexican food and lots of alcohol ('cause i'll be bringing some aw yeah). haha, not even for the special occasion of my friend's birthday. she straight up was like "hey my family's cooking I THOUGHT OF YOU." 

going to las vegas with the parents (brother wants to save his PTO and opted out). idk it's this recent thing we do 'round this time of year? which will be more food and drinking. 

the holiday party i promised my students on wednesday (they want apple cider, hot cheetos, takis, jolly rancher gummies, candy canes, etc. they didn't want pizza, but one of them asked for orange chicken? lmao wat these kids. one student WHO IS A GRADE-A SWEETHEART asked for gummy bears because she didn't want anything for herself and asked if i could get her sister's favorite candy, so she could give it to her sister ugh my heart. and i FUCKING LOVE gummy bears too, so i'm-a make sure and get the GOOD kind too. mhmm just leave it to me.)

[kynodontas]

Hey! I made a kid cry at work today!

Milestone reached. 

But I was trying to help another kid read Clifford the Small Red Puppy, and she kept talking after I had told her multiple times to stop talking and distracting the other kids and work on her packet, so I finally told her to go stand outside. She did the whole deer-caught-in-the-headlights look and would not budge from her tiny yellow chair. I told her again to go outside, and she just shook her head, saying no no no no, and I could see her tearing up, but I'm heartless and pointed to the door and told her to go. outside. now. By that point, tears were rolling down her face, and the other teacher came in from making copies and could watch the other kids, so I took her outside myself and talked to her in the hallway about how I wasn't MAD but that I'd asked her continuously to stop talking and her not listening made it difficult for me to help everyone else. I told her I needed her to help me and made sure she understood everything before letting her weep a bit more to get it all out of her system. I helped wipe her tears, and we went back into class. I was expecting her to be a bit awkward/distant towards me ('cause that's what I'M like lol), but she immediately asked me for an eraser and was really receptive to me and did her work the entire time and asked for help when she needed it. Man, I love it when someone a third your age is practicing better interpersonal relations than you.

And earlier, the kid I was reading with didn't want to sit next to another girl because she was "Indian," and her cousin, who's also in the class, called her a "racist." ALREADY DEALING WITH THIS SHIT IN THE FIRST GRADE. FACK.

[kynodontas]

Trying to subvert oppressive narratives at work

Keywords: trying to! Two stories. On Tuesday, after dealing with one of the first graders not doing her work and doing her best to distract some of the fellow students and me FINALLY figuring out she needs someone to just sit by her and have her attention focus on one person to do her work, she put her pencil down and said she wanted to tell me a story. She'd been doing her work, so I let her tell it. She was waiting in line for the log ride at a local amusement park with her friend and her friend's mom. There was also a man with his kids nearby, who somehow got the impression that they were cutting in line and called the friend's mom--my student leaned over and whispered in my ear--a bitch. Immediately, I let her know not how horrible that word is, which obviously she already knew, in the ooh it's a bad word! sense, but how HURTFUL it is, and that it shouldn't be used in any circumstance (I didn't think it was time to get into reclaiming...). Yesterday, I subbed for the second grade teacher. Most of the kids were sitting around chatting for a bit as I collected their folders, and this one girl said that she had/wanted a girlfriend. Right after that, she said if she was a boy, she would have one of her friends be her girlfriend. I asked her why she couldn't have a girlfriend as a girl, and she paused and said, "That means you're really, really, really, really"--I swear, I thought for a second she was going to say "liberal" and honestly also thought she might ask me if I was gay or spout some anti-gay stuff--"really, really good friends with someone." I sighed in relief and agreed. Then she went on to say that she has lots of girlfriends and named several of them.

[kynodontas]

So I covered for my friend's class today (and got paid!!!), and what else is there to say besides "fifth graders." Needless to say, if my respect for teachers and instructors has ever diminished in the smallest bit, there probably won't be a chance of that repeating any time soon. My favorite part was reading three chapters of The Sign of the Beaver through "popcorn" (one person reads about a paragraph aloud before choosing the next person to read) where everyone was paying attention and silent and obviously enjoying themselves; I don't know why I was so surprised as I was with the kids making sure everyone got a chance to read every single time--I even got to read once lol--but it was just a heartwarming thing to see. Made me want to just teach the SHIT out of a reading class. 

Also, funny enough, I ran into a high school friend of mine (we were in Academic Decathlon together--aw yeah, nerds united), who also teaches there, and I messaged him through Facebook since we didn't have time to talk and I left after my shift, but apparently, he's studying for the LSATs, and I'm just like oh you poor fool, I am so sorry. But he'll be around once the school year starts, so nice to know I have another co-worker I'm already familiar with.