Somehow after having not too much to do last weekend, I ended up with lots to do this one. But it's still been kind of a lazy Sunday (which makes me think of this little gem), mostly because I haven't left the apartment. Funny, because I had three places I was going to go today, and then I just decided not to. I guess my excuse is that my car is getting checked out at the garage, but I did have an alternate way to get to all of those places (church, another church, and a surprise party). When I checked weather.com this morning and saw it was 20 degrees but felt like 7, I decided not to walk to church. I listened to a Rob Bell sermon about Ecclesiastes which was good, read the Bible, and played the guitar for a little while. It was nice and relaxing. Then I got to work on my report cards and lesson plans...not as nice. Ugh. I just finished the report cards. I'm glad I only have to do them twice a year in kindergarten!
Yesterday while I was at school working on getting stuff together for the week, I got some inspiration for a unit. Last week we did a Martin Luther King unit, and at the beginning of February we'll start on Black History Month stuff, so I've got a week where I don't have anything specific I have to do. Now, I have plenty of stuff to keep me and my class busy without adding a theme to the week. But I like having a theme. So the class really liked learning about Martin Luther King. Friday I read them Martin's Big Words, which is a really good book. All the rest of my MLK books are pretty bleh. So I got pretty into the book as I tend to do and almost started to cry, which of course one of the students noticed, and then one of the girls started to cry too. Anyway, we had a really good discussion about peace and diversity. Which inspired me to do a unit this week about...peace and diversity. Maybe I'm being a little bit subversive squeezing this in between MLK day and Black History Month, both of which are pretty big deals at the school. In general I've always kind of rolled my eyes at schools that do big focuses on diversity, like when Camp Hill started their "Lion Pride" thing. But I feel like there's a really big need for it at Urban Promise, especially when the kids are young. And we don't do anything diversity. So I'm going to be different and do this (hopefully) fun and meaningful unit about diversity. We'll see how it goes. Then it will be Black History Month. Which I have nothing against in theory. I think it's important for the kids to see that people who look like them have accomplished really important things. But I also think it's important to teach that we're all created and loved by God no matter what color our skin is. So if that's subversive, then I guess I'm being subversive.
I can't believe it's bedtime already. Another weekend has flown by. I am supposed to teach five whole days this week, which hasn't happened for a while. But maybe it'll snow on Wednesday! I check weather.com at least three times a day. Is that bad?
Yesterday while I was at school working on getting stuff together for the week, I got some inspiration for a unit. Last week we did a Martin Luther King unit, and at the beginning of February we'll start on Black History Month stuff, so I've got a week where I don't have anything specific I have to do. Now, I have plenty of stuff to keep me and my class busy without adding a theme to the week. But I like having a theme. So the class really liked learning about Martin Luther King. Friday I read them Martin's Big Words, which is a really good book. All the rest of my MLK books are pretty bleh. So I got pretty into the book as I tend to do and almost started to cry, which of course one of the students noticed, and then one of the girls started to cry too. Anyway, we had a really good discussion about peace and diversity. Which inspired me to do a unit this week about...peace and diversity. Maybe I'm being a little bit subversive squeezing this in between MLK day and Black History Month, both of which are pretty big deals at the school. In general I've always kind of rolled my eyes at schools that do big focuses on diversity, like when Camp Hill started their "Lion Pride" thing. But I feel like there's a really big need for it at Urban Promise, especially when the kids are young. And we don't do anything diversity. So I'm going to be different and do this (hopefully) fun and meaningful unit about diversity. We'll see how it goes. Then it will be Black History Month. Which I have nothing against in theory. I think it's important for the kids to see that people who look like them have accomplished really important things. But I also think it's important to teach that we're all created and loved by God no matter what color our skin is. So if that's subversive, then I guess I'm being subversive.
I can't believe it's bedtime already. Another weekend has flown by. I am supposed to teach five whole days this week, which hasn't happened for a while. But maybe it'll snow on Wednesday! I check weather.com at least three times a day. Is that bad?
Comments