Provisions for People

WHO WANTS TO THROW A PIE IN MY FACE???

Hello MSB Parents,

My class has the opportunity to help out an amazing cause, lead by one of our very own parents, Barry Cooper. Barry is calling this project "Provisions for People". This project is to assist the hundreds of homeless citizens of our very own town. The goal is to create a bag of provisions that can be easily handed to a person in need of help.

It starts with a 2 gallon size bag. Each 2 gallon bag contains the following items:
A warm pair of socks, a toboggan(hat), 1 washcloth, toothbrush/toothpaste, deodorant, bar of soap, shampoo, 1 comb, Chapstick, flashlight/batteries, hot hands, antibacterial wipes, bottle of water, applesauce/spoon, beef jerky, granola bar, cheese/crackers, peanut butter/crackers, tuna salad/crackers, pack of gum and some hard candy. Our goal is to have 50 of these ready by the 26th for us to put in the officer's cars that night. Each bag is roughly $12 for the items. They could also be tailored to include note cards with encouragement/scripture, gift cards to McDonalds etc. The bags can be made gender specific with the hygiene items as well.

Our class goal is FIFTY bags. I have 23 students, so if each child can create 2 bags then we will have 46...I will cover the extra four myself to reach the goal. During the can food drive, we did not reach the goal to celebrate with Pies in my face, so we can try that AGAIN! If we get 50 bags by Tuesday Jan. 26th, then every student that brings 2 bags can throw a pie in my face! I will announce this to the class tomorrow; I know they will be excited! This is a great opportunity to teach them about helping others in our community!

If any students in other classes would like to help and bring 2 bags, I am sure their teachers wouldn't mind if they got to throw a PIE in my face as well! smile emoticon

Tiny Humans...

Tomorrow we will begin yet another round of testing at our school.  As a matter of fact, every school in Jackson Madison County will start another round of testing.  At this point, I honestly am not sure if this is a real or practice test because they all come so frequently that it is difficult to keep up.  In the shadows of all these tests, I found myself pondering the end goal of such a system.  Why would you water-down a child to a point on a graph? Why would you strip away their name, personality, and everything that makes them amazing and replace it with a data point?

          I have twenty-two children in my classroom.  I have 10 first-graders, 6 second-graders, and 6 third-graders.  I refuse to look at them as points on a graph or a score on a test.  I could tell you amazing things about each one of them.  I could describe to you how they laugh on the playground and how they focus during our meditation time.  I could tell you which ones prefer Zumba and which ones prefer Yoga.  I could tell you which little ones might cry if their feelings are hurt and how I would make them smile again.  I could tell you which ones show outstanding leadership skills at recess and which ones dabble in the dramatic arts.  There is so much that I could tell you about each one of them, but I would never describe them as a Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 individual.  This is how the state of Tennessee would have me describe them to you.  I refuse to think of them that way.

          I became a teacher to help cultivate the minds of the little humans of the world.  I did not become a teacher to assign a label, data point, or line graph to each individual child.  In my classroom, I teach them to be good people.  I teach them to love, to learn, to be peaceful, to create, to solve, to give, and to grow.  If this is not what a teacher is supposed to do, then perhaps I should find another profession.  Tomorrow when my little 3^rd graders enter the computer lab to take another standardized test, I will smile at them and say, “Don’t worry, just do your best!”  This will be the only discussion that we have about the test, because they are more than a test score to me…..to me… they are amazing little humans.