MCC Friday Reflections

It's early morning.  The last day of school for 2012 is upon us as Winter Break will begin at 3:00 pm today.  The classroom is empty with the exception of the Christmas music playing in the background.  The students' desks are neatly waiting for their owners to arrive.  On each desk lay a Friday Reflection assignment, a candy cane, and two spearmint starlight mints.   I've spent 18 years working with children ranging from ages 5-12.  Beginning in 1994 in my hometown of Oak Park working with Hephzibah Children's Association until 2001 when I had my first 4th grade class here at Lincoln.  Over those many years I have witnessed the delight in hundreds of childrens' eyes at the mention of Christmastime and the Holiday Season.   Times have changed dramatically since my first experience working with kids.  Five Presidents have been elected, the millennium was ushered in under the cloak of Y2K, the Twin Towers fell and brought wi...

Our classroom calendar "sticks" to the whiteboard and has velcro on each day of the month in order to put up the actual date.  Each month's dates have a different kind of "shape" to represent it...during the month of December the dates are written on snowflake shapes.  Of course, this is because one would expect snow during the month of December living in a suburb of Chicago. Not the case this year.  It is December 14th and it has yet to snow.  I haven't seen one flake.  Yet the reminders of winter are all around us.  We even had a reading test last week where one of the stories was titled, "Snowflakes".  Many of the ties I wear around this time of year have snow somewhere on them.   As we were outside during a recess I had a short discussion with one student about the weather.  The conversation led to a small discussion about global warming.  We talked about pollution and the ozone layer and how it might affect the weather. ...

The kids are writing right now.  They are taking their Unit 3 writing test.  As I look up I see a sea of pencils moving back and forth, people adjusting themselves in their chairs.  Some kids are deep in thought only to quickly jot down those thoughts.  I see kids "mouthing" the words they are writing, then turning their pencils over to erase something that doesn't seem right.  Every so often one of them gets up to sharpen a pencil.  Occasionally they will stretch, take a bite of their snack, or a drink of their water bottle.  At times, they will get e fresh piece of paper as they have much to say with this prompt.   The room is quiet.  The tapping of my computer keys as I write this reflection is one of the only sounds that float across the room.  The sliding of a chair every so often accompanies it.  The familiar sound of pencils scritch-scratching along the paper provides a soothing hum for the room.  Hea...