Flat Stanley in Syria

I think I have mentioned before that I have been doing the Flat Stanley project with my students. I am taking Flat Stanley on my trip to Syria this summer so that I can share my experiences with the students when I get back. I made a little book called "Flat Stanley's Syria Journal" so that Stanley can write to the kids. I thought I'd publish his journal on my blog so that I can share my experiences traveling with you all as well.

July 1, 2009

Hi guys! It's me, Flat Stanley. I've been waiting to go on this trip to Syria with Ms. M for so long and I can't believe it's finally here! Right now we are at the airport in Dubai. Do you know where that is? It's in a country called the United Arab Emirates (or U.A.E. for short). Ms. M and I left New York yesterday morning and had a 13 hour flight! It was so long! We ate two meals, watched three movies, and tried to sleep as much as possible. The next flight to Damascus, Syria is only 3 hours. I can't wait to get there.

Oh, one important thing about our trip: we are traveling to countries where they speak Arabic instead of English. Ms. M has already studied some Arabic but I haven't. I learned my first Arabic word today. It is "marhaba" and it means "hello." In Arabic it looks like this: مرحنا. Cool, right? I can't wait to learn more!

Love,
FS

The End of the Year is Finally Upon Us!

I've been saying all of June that it doesn't feel like school is ending soon. I think it's due to the rainy and cool weather that we've been having in NYC. Normally it is sweltering and all I can think is: IT'S SUMMER!! WE SHOULD NOT BE IN SCHOOL! (And yes, in my head it is a scream.) But this year I haven't had that feeling at all. That is until this week. This week I am just done. I spent this week finishing up odds and ends with the students and cleaning up my room. As of yesterday there is nothing left to do: room's clean, all final assignments are finished. I'm ready to turn in my keys and say goodbye to my classroom and students until September.

The best news of the week was that teachers don't have to come back to school until AFTER Labor Day! This is especially good news for me because I am returning from my big trip to Syria on August 30th. I knew it would kinda suck to get back just two days before reporting back to school but I really wanted to maximize my time traveling. Now I have an ENTIRE week off before we go back to school. I leave June 30th!

Really?

New organization sheets came out yesterday and as usual we got them the very last 5 minutes of the school day. It wasn't stressful at all for me because I didn't even try to switch out of ESL this year to get my own class, but there were a lot of stressed teachers Monday, let me tell you. All in all we lost two teachers (they had been told in advance) and most if not all of our school aides.

The big upset came when the principal told us that she was not satisfied with our extended time schedule. (This year we had switched from after school four days a week to before school five days a week.) Her reasoning was that she "caught" (and yes, she actually used air quotes) teachers eating breakfast, coming in late, and "cutting things for student art projects." Even though she spoke to these teachers, they continued to do it, she claimed. So therefore the schedule had to be switched back to afternoons. I can not tell you how furious this made me (and many other teachers too). To claim that we are not working and that is the reason she is changing the schedule is just ridiculous! And how dare she put the whole staff down like that! We have a hard working staff at my school and if there are one or two or however many teachers doing the wrong thing the solution is not to change the extended time schedule which is working beautifully! (Teachers have not complained about it at ALL this year.)

First of all, I'm sure that is not the real reason she wants to switch the schedule. Second, if the problem IS teachers not working, will the work any harder AFTER school? And third (and perhaps most important), she will not even be at the school next year. She's "retiring." So is this all her last ditch effort to torture us as much as possible before leaving the building for good? Sounds like it.o

P.S. Do you think she won anymore people over to attend her retirement party with this showing??

I don't think so

The other day I was talking with a teacher at my school who is helping to organize the retirement party for my principal in September. It's going to be a big to do with drinks, dinner and dancing (like a wedding I was told). And, it's going to cost $110 to attend. I was asking this teacher if she thought a lot of teachers from our school would attend. She said they were passing out the flyers to see how many might attend. I mentioned that I definitely wouldn't. "$110 is a lot of money," I said. (Especially for a party honoring someone you don't like all that much.)

"What??" She replied. "Even if you save up ALL summer??"

"I don't want to save up all summer. I'm going traveling* I have other things to save up for."

She was truly shocked that I wouldn't want to go. Seriously, by September she will be so far from my mind. Why would I want to bring her back? June 26th we say addios for good.


*I'm going to Syria for the summer! I just booked my ticket. I'm going to be studying Arabic and doing some traveling in Jordan and Lebanon. I've been waiting for this trip for a LONG time!

It's Starting to Happen . . .

A little over two months ago, I wrote about a new student from the DR who came to me speaking no English. She had a rough start, but quickly started feeling more comfortable in class. She has been trying so hard to follow along, copy from her neighbors, and come to me to give her more instruction when she doesn't understand.

Just two weeks ago we had parent-teacher conferences and her dad, who speaks perfect English told me that he was concerned her English wasn't progressing as quickly as he'd hoped (or as quickly as her older brother). He said he had to think about it, but her classroom teacher had suggested she may benefit from being held over a year. (Newcomers can't be held over in the first two years without the parent's request). I tried to assure him that her eagerness to learn along with the great support she is getting at home will go a long way towards helping her progress in her English and other subjects. I told him how hard she has been working and even gave anecdotes about "Willy" and his younger brother who had a similar situation and in two years have sprinted forward to the top of their classes. He seemed slightly reassured.

And all the sudden last week, it started happening. The first thing that I noticed was when she raised her hand to participate in class she said more than her usual irrelevant "boy" or "girl." Then I started noticing she was really able to understand me without translation from the other kids and could ask for help in sentences. When we learned new vocabulary related to "transportation" she mastered the words just as quickly, if not quicker, than the other students. Today, she came up to me to tell me something that another kid in the class needed help with (and that kid *speaks* English). Literally two weeks ago she could not have done any of these things. I was just telling her dad that children learning English often go through a "silent period" where they are not saying much, but taking it all in, and before you know it they are speaking up a storm. I literally saw her turn that corner this week. This is why I love teaching ESL, for these kids. They make it all worthwhile.

Snow Day!

I am still in shock that we actually have a snow day. Everyone knows that NYC does not get snow days. Even when I woke up and saw lots of snow on the ground I knew that we would still have school. (We even had a 7:30 am faculty meeting and our principal hadn't emailed to say that it was canceled.) Of course, I couldn't even check the news to make sure because my roommate just moved out and took the TV with her. I quickly thought the fastest way to find out out if there was a snow day or not would be to check Facebook as all my teacher friends' statuses would either be cheering or grumbling. One teacher from my school had written that she couldn't believe the mayor would have thousands of students traveling to school on buses while urging city residents to take mass transportation to school. So that meant there WAS school. I texted her to ask if at least there was a two hour delay and got in the shower. Just as I was getting out, my phone rang and it was her. "We don't have school! Don't you watch the news??" Still not believing her I said "No! I don't have a TV!"

That was a little over two hours ago and I am thoroughly enjoying my snow day so far. I drank my coffee, surfed the internet a bit, watched an episode of Friday Night Lights on Hulu and am now making a cooked breakfast. It's hard to believe school would have just started by now. As for the rest of my day I am planning a nap, more FNL, and some homemade soup for lunch that I made last night! Ahh, I want this happy day to never end! (And it is still snowing!)

Field Trips, Good and Bad

Last week I took my second and third graders on a wonderful trip to the Met to see the Egyptian art (we had just gotten our Flat Stanley back from Egypt a few weeks prior and were all pumped to learn more about mummies, tombs, and hieroglyphics). Julie came along to help chaperone and she was a wonderful help. The kids were super impressed at the beauty and scale of the museum and they loved seeing the mummies, coffins, and especially the reflecting pool around the Temple of Dendur. Many of them have told me they want to go back and are even pressuring their parents to take them back over Mid-Winter Break next week with the free family passes the museum gave us. Highly successful trip, if I do say so myself.

Today all of the third grade classes took a trip to Toys'R'Us and McDonalds (in Times Square). Yes, that is right. They went to look at toys and eat Happy Meals. I talked to my students who attended the trip and they said that the teachers told them nothing about Times Square except to point out the NYE ball. (All of these kids said they had already been to Times Square with their families anyway, so it's not even like the trip was exposing them to a part of the city they wouldn't normally get to see.) I was so outraged at this pointless trip. There are so many wonderful (and FREE) places to take students in this city that are also educational! How trips like this get approved by our administration is beyond me.