asian pop stars

i'm watching the results show for "so you think you can dance" and the wondergirls are performing "nobody", which is still pretty darn catchy.

the only reason this merits a blog post was that on monday, i was walking by one of my 2nd graders and he was singing "i don't want nobody, nobody but you..." he's my super high functioning filipino austistic student and it was super cute and funny. then today, he's sitting in his square on the rug and punching the air declaring, "i'm manny" (pacquiao) in case you weren't sure who he was talking about. how much do i love that there's a filipino athlete for him to look up to? i just had his conference with his mom today and she was telling me how the night before, he was asking his dad who was better, manny pacquiao or john cena.

totally unrelated - the same student's mom was telling me that when he was little, he couldn't handle being out and around people, so they enrolled him in a social skills therapy class to help him. so now, they have the opposite problem. he talks to everybody. i guess his mom has a ton of relatives and so they were at the mall recently, and the kid walked up to some random vietnamese lady who he thought looked filipino and took her hand and greeted her (in some traditional filipino way, according to his mom). she had to apologize to the lady who was confused about why a random child grabbed her hand. his explanation, "i thought she was family."

going back to asian pop stars, specifically korean pop stars, i found out that one of my 4th grade students from last year was just signed to some 5 year recording contract with a korean record label. they're grooming her and sending her to tumbling classes, vocal classes, etc. and, in the contract, there's a surgery clause, as in if they want you to get some kind of plastic surgery, you have to do it. umm...she's 10 right now. so while it's awesome that she's so talented, i'm horrified at the thought that when she's deemed old enough, some person will tell her that she's not pretty enough and will then proceed to dictate that she must have plastic surgery. that is so disturbing.

t-minus 7 school days and counting until i am officially on vacation. vacation cannot come soon enough.

carwash calamity and bad words and jokes

i think i need to sleep more than 5 hours a night. i got gas yesterday and then drove into the carwash near my apartment. the directions said to turn the side view mirrors inward and to put the car antenna down. i turned my side view mirrors in, and then wasn't really thinking about my antenna being up, even though my radio was on. total brain fart. i drove home and parked in my garage and while i was getting teacher junk out of my car, i noticed my antenna was bent in a 90 degree angle. crap. and in trying to bend it back, the metal snapped! arg. it was hanging by the cord inside. luckily i had just gone to the 99 cent depot in culver city and had packaging tape in the car (i should probably get some electrical tape until i get it fixed) and taped it up and tried to give it some stability so it wouldn't go flying off while i drive around. it looks so GHETTO.

after lunch today, a couple of the kids had issues they needed to tell me. AR told me that AM hit the playground ball that was in his hands while they were waiting in line and he was really upset by it. and AM said that while they were in line, AR said a bad word to her. i heard the story about the ball, and then made AM apologize to AR. then i asked AR if he said a bad word. he said no, AM said he did...back and forth a couple of times. i asked AR again, if he said a bad word, and he said, "i didn't say a bad word; i said f--k." my response: "..." "so AR, that is a bad word, a very bad word. it is a word we never use at school because it is inappropriate and rude. it is not the kind, polite, and respectful language we are supposed to use with one another. i'll call your mom after school to discuss this." omg.

yesterday, one of the sweetest boys in my class told me "knock knock" jokes at recess and lunch and said he had more jokes. i told him to save it for after school because i just don't have time to hear all the things they want to share during teaching time. so after school, he started telling me the joke very innocently, and it turned out to be a totally racist joke involving the "n" word as a sound effect. how do you start telling a 6/7 year old why that joke is so not ok to ever repeat because it's racist? i didn't have a chance to really get into my spiel because his dad came. i explained to dad and dad was totally sorry and explained that RG hangs out in south LA with his abuela on the weekends and gets exposed to the african-american/latino racial tension that hasn't fully moved up to k-town. or at least, it's not as intense...yet. sweet kid. broke my heart that his world is a little more tainted with exposure to those kinds of jokes. i'm pretty sure he felt terrible. sigh.

my dad e-mails!

a few weeks ago, i sent my dad an e-mail just for kicks because i set up an email account for him and he was starting to learn how to use a computer at a class with other chinese folks. just today, he sent this back to me:

"The computer class is very good. I am still learning."

i am impressed with the pops.

first day of school

posts have been few and far between. with the start of a new school year, it seemed like a good time to try to blog more regularly.

this morning, i woke up early and felt panicky - almost like i was a first year teacher again. i switched from fourth grade to second grade and so it sort of does feel like starting all over again. i had a brief moment this morning where i kind of wanted to throw up - from nerves, not from being sick while in tokyo.

so, i met my new class today - 18 second graders and 1 more coming tomorrow for a grand total of 19...so far. it can pretty much change day to day for the next few weeks. the kids short and cute. they talk a lot and have to go to the bathroom...A LOT. and while they are cute, i'm oddly afraid of them. i have no idea what to expect from them and what they're supposed to be able to do. for example, i gave them a math pre-test today, and the first question had 8 discs and the kids just had to bubble in the number 8 to show how many discs were pictured. uh...what? i guess i'm tripping out because i'm used to teaching linear algebra, long division, integers, and multi-digit subtraction/addition/multiplication. so questions like "how many ducks are pictured?" (7, in case you're wondering) are throwing me off. i kept going, "why don't they know 11-6?! is it because we only have 10 fingers so the 11 throws them off?" i bet the kid with 11 fingers is thinking, "this is so easy!" just kidding, none of the kids have 11 fingers, i don't think.

i'm going to work up to just treating second graders just like i treated fourth graders. hopefully, they won't start crying. that would be bad.

1 day down, 179 days to go...

pseudo re-tweet

via taylor swift's twitter...i really, REALLY like this quote.

"I kind of like it when the guy has the upper hand. I have so many upper hands in my life... If you're a strong female, it can get old. You get to the point where you don't want to wear the pants. I just want to wear a really nice dress." - Katy Perry

forgettable 4th grade?

last week, minjue and i were in the car talking about going to the museum of tolerance on MLK monday. somehow, we got on the topic of her time in germany when her dad was a visiting professor. she mentioned that they'd learned about the holocaust in school, which led me to ask her what grade she was in during those six months. she said she was in 2nd grade, her younger brother wasn't yet old enough for school, and her older brother was in 4th grade. she also said that they didn't like school so their parents let them stay at home for the time they were there. minjue said that she didn't miss much in terms of education and i agreed because 2nd grade is basically 1st grade redone with more words and slightly bigger numbers.

as for her older brother, this is what she had to say:

mj: what do you learn in 4th grade? nothing!
me: uh...you know i teach 4th grade, right?
mj: ack!!! (she continued to freak out...)
me: ahahahaha

i don't know what 4th grade is like in virginia, but californian 4th graders have to learn a lot. (i must justify my job somehow...) they learn algebra in the form of linear equations (y=mx+b). they learn all about california history (with a social justice agenda where we de-emphasize the "cool" factor of missions and focus on the atrocities done to the native peoples). they learn to write expository research reports, persuasive letters, literary analysis, and narratives. they learn to analyze literature (themes, symbolism, foreshadowing, etc) and SAT vocabulary. ok, they don't actually learn SAT vocabulary, but i use it to expose them to more vocabulary. darn it, my kids learn a lot...i think... to be fair, i think kids today are expected to learn more much sooner than when i was in school.