Piece of Cake

A couple things happened last week at school that really made me proud. (It’s the little things, that mean so much!)

1) I “caught” Ana Luisa, the teacher that I am working with, sharing an teaching strategy that I shared with her with another teacher and then later that day they together shared it with a struggling parent.   This is huge considering most of what I do in my class the teachers either think is unnecessary (yeah, we really don’t need those tests), too much work, or just plain silly (too many hand on activities and not enough copying apparently)! Ana Luisa is the exception and loves learning and I love learning with her!

Ana Luisa teaching a vocabulary lesson

2)  The man that takes care of the lawn at the school happened to come on a week day (typically only there on the weekends) and was working during recreation time at school.  One of my students accidentally kicked their soccer ball and hit him.  My student quickly rushed over and apologized.  The man responded by stabbing the ball with the machete he was working with.  I’ve been trying to teach the students to not respond to anger with anger and to not respond to teasing with teasing and so on…so this was a great real life adult example (not!). The boys returned to me with a deflated ball and deflated spirits that their new ball (that the camp teams brought) only lasted a few weeks.   We returned to class for a birthday celebration.  One of the students brought in cake.  Everyone was served a piece and there was plenty left over.  Ana Luisa suggest we share with the school staff.  Each student took turns serving cake to the directors, cleaning women and therapists.  There was one piece left and the man cutting the lawn walked by the window at that moment. The student that hit him in the head with the ball jokingly said, “We could give a piece to him!” pointing to the man.  To his surprise I handed him the piece of cake and pointed to the man out the window.  He accepted, and nicely walked the piece of cake out to the man that had busted his soccer ball just an hour earlier.  To say the least the man was a little taken aback.