I wish all of life could be like a first grade classroom.

Whelp... I've been reading 1984 for the past few hours (because I procrastinated homework major... I just sounded like Zenon... pancaked!), and now I'm taking a break from homework. Woohoo for Friday night? Makayla's gone, so this is what I do with myself. We had a friend tell us it's like we're married. Makayla said, "No... we ARE married." Haha

I wanted to write about my adorable first graders. I'm in an early practicum class, which currently has me working in a first grade classroom 2 hours a day, 3 days a week. It's funny how I've only been in this classroom for a few weeks now, but I feel like they are MY first graders (hence me calling them my adorable first graders). They are CARAZY. But I love them! Here's just a few touching stories I have from them.
1. The teacher asked me to turn the outside of the door to the classroom into a tree so that the students' "thankful leaves" could be falling from it. This entailed me taping branches made out of crumpled up brown construction paper onto the wall, above the door. Everyone in that classroom seems to think I'm a giant or something, but I was certainly not tall enough to do this. Even with a chair. Everyone in that classroom also needs to realize that scotch tape is not an adequate resource for a job such as this was. I think I was standing on that chair (in my heels) for an hour. I'd finally get a few branches to stay on that darn wall, and then they would come down on me. Literally... on me (good thing those things were made of paper!). I'd start trying to get the fallen branch back up, and then all of them would fall down again. I was getting so frustrated. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of hiding my frustration when I moved the chair out of the way so the class could go to recess. But when one little girl came out, she wrapped her arms around my legs and gave me a big ole hug. Yes. I love my first graders.
2. As I was making that tree, the whole class had come out of the room to go to recess, so I moved the chair back and got back to work. Another little girl stayed behind to talk to me about what I was doing, and then realized she couldn't get her coat zipped up and needed to go back in the classroom for help. Without giving me a second to think about it, she pulled the door open. It obviously hit the chair I was standing on. I have never felt so close to death! My arms some how turned into windmills and for about 30 seconds I had to fight to get my balance back. I think I may have let out a little scream too. Dear little first grade Preslie just stared at me with amazement for this whole 30 seconds until I finally gained my balance. Then she let out a little chuckle and turned around to go in the classroom to get her coat zipped up. Yep. So many fun things happen.
3.The class was making scarecrows to write a short story about and then to hang on the wall in the classroom. There was one little boy hadn't finished yet, so it was my job to "supervise" him and help him finish. So, I sat next to him while he colored his scarecrow and told me about it. I realized pretty quickly that this little boy likes to get a reaction out of me. (I realized this my first day in the classroom when they had to draw pictures of things that they could count in the woods. He drew these strange circles with lines down the middle. When I asked me what he counted three of in the woods, he said, "Buttcracks" with a smirk on his face. Pleasant. I don't want to go to those woods!)  Anyways, as soon as sat down he grabbed the red marker and started putting red dots all over the scarecrow. He looked at me, and said, "He's a bloody scarecrow!" Oh. Pleasant again. And then he grabbed the yellow marker and colored his scarecrow's eyes. "He's a zombie scarecrow!" I just raised my eyebrows and said, "Oh... it's a scary scarecrow!" I couldn't think of anything more clever than that. Lame. And then he started telling me about his scarecrow... "It's a scary zombie. He stays in the cornfield and scares people and he's like 'Ahhggghhhh!'" He said this as he acted it out, with his arms straight out in front of him. "And he tries to scare me, but I'm not scared. I have my rifle. And I just go [as he uses his hand as a rifle] Pow! Pow! Pow!" Then he puts his hands down and matter-of-factly says, "Terminated." I couldn't even do anything but laugh at the fact that a first grader was saying this to me. Yes, touching.
I really do just love being in that classroom. It's so amazing to me to be able to see how these students can improve so much so quickly on different things. I love seeing the kids who just a couple weeks ago would ask me to read every word of anything to them, now being able to sound out the words and figure a lot out on their own. Now I know why I've always wanted to be a teacher. It's so rewarding to see the kids improve like that! And I'm not even a teacher yet!