1997 (or so): I was working at a rough elementary school in North Oakland. The students at this school were tough and they didn't have much. But every school always has the obligatory December holiday assembly.
This assembly was filled with the usual barrage of squeaking clarinets and kids bouncing off the walls on a candy cane high. As the production began, I snuck in the back and leaned up against the wall next to Fred. Relegated to his usual place at the back wall, this 5th grader had seen some things I never will. Enter Santa Claus, played by a woman that is one of those people that widens her eyes when she talks to kids and uses a slooow, sickening-sweet, inauthentic voice. She stood on the stage in front of all 500 children and said, "Well hello boys and girls! Santa couldn't be here today. Do you know WHY Santa couldn't be here today?" Through the chorus of little voices shouting answers from around the room, 11-year-old Fred leans over to me and mumbles under his breath, "I know why Santa isn't here."
"Why's that, Fred?"
"He had to stop off at the store for a 40."
I was stationed at this school while working for Sports4Kids. My job was to provide structured activities for the kids at recess and lead PE classes during the day. The playground was an expanse of nothing but blacktop. It had three basketball courts with missing rims and crumbling backboards. One day I was heading out for recess, across the battlefield, to get equipment out, teach kids games, and PLAY with them. Yoshi, a sweet boy who always liked to help, was following me and chatting away. He showed me this rock that he was holding in his hand. It was a beautiful malachite stone with its shiny green and black streaks. "Here. You can have it," he said to me.
"Oh no, Yoshi, I can't take your rock. It's too beautiful. It's yours." (In my mind I was thinking about how this kid was one of the "have-nots" and I didn't want to take his prized possession.) He looked up at me, pinched his face up in bewilderment, and said, "But I'm GIVING it to you."
He taught me a lesson that day about friendship and accepting gifts. As I type this I'm looking at Yoshi's rock.
2005: During my first year of teaching,the district and state were breathing down our necks and crawling up our a@%#! to make sure we found a way to raise our test scores. We analyzed so much data, we had it coming out of every oraface. Needless to say, we had a challenging demographic of students. I noticed that teaching English and Language Arts (ELA) was one of the hardest things of all. Most of my students didn't speak English as a first language. In fact, even those that spoke English didn't speak "Academic English". Vocabulary development is a tricky one too, which is where this next student comes in. Now I didn't have this student in my class, but I heard the story an hour after it happened from her teacher and it goes like this:
TEACHER: "Dismayed. Does anyone know the meaning of the word 'dismayed'?"
One hand goes up.
STUDENT: "Yeah, it's like, when my mama and I dismayed a cake."
2007: Just before the holiday break this year, I was saying goodbye to one of my fifth grade students who doesn't know all of her multipilcation facts yet. She was telling me about the cousin she planned to see over the break who happened to be in third grade. "She already knows ALL the multiplication tables!" the student boasted on behalf of her cousin.
"Well, doesn't that inspire YOU to learn them too?" I asked.
As she paused for a moment, I could see she was really thinking about the question. Then she replied, "Um, not really. I'm more of an iPod person."
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