Out of any combination of kids in the world to have been my first second grade class ever, I don't think I could possibly imagine a more wonderful group of kids. There are no words to explain how amazing every last one of them has been this year. I love them to pieces, we laugh together every day, we talk about the serious things of life together each day, it is absolutely and in every way like a little family. (And with that I mean to say, don't think there weren't days that we drove each other nuts, like in every good family, but even in those nutty moments, we have still felt pretty good together.) Every year I wonder how I'll really be able to say good-bye and how I could ever feel so good with another class. Of course, I do and it all works out, but man, if I could keep these guys another year I would. (And it doesn't help that they are asking me daily to teach them again next year and that their parents are wanting me to move up with them as well - it's tempting, but I think in the end better for my career if I spend at least two years in a row teaching the same thing - in eight years it's been something different every year.)
So what got this post going in my mind, what got me on the verge of tears again this morning, was reading what the students have written about/to each other. For the end of the year I'm having each child write what they like best about every other child in the class. It's not me actually, it's them, they came up with this ideas themselves sometime in the fall and I wrote myself a post-it and stuck it in my plan book so I'd remember it for the end of the year. In our curriculum (as I've mentioned before) we learn about these profiles and attitudes - good ways for people to be (respectful, tolerant, commited, risk-takers, etc.), so the children themselves decided at the end of the year after we've studied all of them, they should have a chance to let their classmates know which ones they think they are good at. (I mean that alone, how cool are these second grade students of mine??) So now I'm just re-reading them and here goes on some of them.....(you'll see they're not quite sure how to use the words grammatically correctly yet, but trust me, they know what the words mean and are using them in the right places). :)
"Sorry of other times when we were fighting. You are respect to me."
"I think you are very communicator. I like your petshops very much."
"Thank you for being caring to me. I loved being friends!"
"You were very funny. I like funny people! I like being your friend."
"I like soccer too, just like you! You are pretty commitment!"
"I will never forget how fast you can swim, you were faster than all the boys!"
"I will never forget your dancing skills and your beautiful handwriting!"
"You are very balanced because in sports you are good sportsmanship."
"You are good to each children."
"I like you because you believe in people."
(Is it pretty amazing that 7 and 8 year olds can express appreciation to each other about things like this??)
Well, here was the kicker that almost brought me to tears...they were also allowed to write a note to themselves so they can look back on it someday and see what they thought about themselves this year, and how can you not melt when you read something like this...
"Dear Me,
I was a thinker. I was caring and I was an inquirer too.
It all happened in 2B."
Ok, maybe I'm overly emotional this time of year and it doesn't say so much at all, but I read that and I see that my students recognize and appreciate their accomplishments for the year and they think that 2B was a pretty great place to be. She wants herself to remind herself of that years from now when she reads this. I doesn't get much better than that.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Different kinds of pirts
Weekly pirts (Latvians saunas) have become part of our lives now that we are living in Sigulda. My skin has never felt so great! There is no normal-sounding way to translate it, but what makes it so great, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, is once you get good and sweaty you get "beaten" with a small "broom", the standard is one made of birch branches. It sounds weird, but it really stimulates your blood flow, helps clean out all your toxins, acts like aromatherapy and is even like a little massage. It really is wonderful.
A while ago we bought a great book all about pirts, so now we have been experimenting with many different kinds of "brooms". Typically you use brooms that have been dried out, but this time of year it's especially great to use fresh ones. So two weeks ago we did a pirts with cherry blossom branches that were in bloom. This weekend we did one with lilacs. Each type of branch is of course meant to help your body in different ways (both with through the scents you breathe in and the healing qualities of the leaves). So here you can see IG and I getting the brooms ready with lilacs from our garden. They smelled divine.
A bit of a rainwater flinging fight followed... :)
And Mims the Wondercat of course does not join us in pirts (though she likes creeping around in the sauna when it's dark during the week), but she does a good job of keeping clean anyway. :)
A while ago we bought a great book all about pirts, so now we have been experimenting with many different kinds of "brooms". Typically you use brooms that have been dried out, but this time of year it's especially great to use fresh ones. So two weeks ago we did a pirts with cherry blossom branches that were in bloom. This weekend we did one with lilacs. Each type of branch is of course meant to help your body in different ways (both with through the scents you breathe in and the healing qualities of the leaves). So here you can see IG and I getting the brooms ready with lilacs from our garden. They smelled divine.
A bit of a rainwater flinging fight followed... :)
And Mims the Wondercat of course does not join us in pirts (though she likes creeping around in the sauna when it's dark during the week), but she does a good job of keeping clean anyway. :)
Saturday, May 23, 2009
A very cool day!
Living in Latvia it's pretty regular and normal to meet people who are "famous" on the scale of living in such a small country. We always enjoy reading the tabloids while we're waiting in line at the grocery store because it's almost guaranteed there will be an article about at least one person that we know personally and we can have a good chuckle about it - usually it's one of Latvia's top musicians or sometimes someone I know from working in an international school. But yesterday I had an opportunity that is cool pretty much on the world scale.
Our final unit of the year at school called "I Feel Good" is an inquiry into choices we make each day which have an impact on our own well-being - diet and nutrition, exercise, balancing work and rest, etc. So yesterday we set out to interview a professional athete about the choices he makes each day to be able to feel his best and perform at his best. We took a field trip to the BMX track in Valmiera and interviewed the gold medalist from last year's Olympic games in Beijing.
Let me put it in perspective for you with some facts my class and I learned before the trip. Latvia has been participating in the Olympics since 1924 (Latvia was only six years old as a country at this time, a child). Since that time Latvia has come home with two gold medals, both since it's second independence after the fall of the Soviet Union. Of course that is a huge deal when you are talking about a country of just two million people. And in the first year that BMX became an official Olympic sport, it was a Latvian who took the gold. That's impressive not only on our small scale, but he is the best at what he does in the world. It's entirely possible that I was more excited than the kids on this day.
So the very coolest thing is how nice and down to earth both Maris the medalist and his coach Ivo were toward us. One of my students even showed appreciation about this because she said, "Mrs. Diana, I was a little worried and I thought he might be like the other Latvian men with such short hair [a buzz cut] and he would be not so nice, but he was soooooo nice to us and shared so many great things with us!"
We learned that he also gets so nervous before a race and he told the children how he deals with his nerves by visualizing the last time he did really well in a race and tries to get ready to repeat that. We learned that he has broken both collar bones and several ribs and then got a tattoo of the Chinese symbol for health on his arm, and (knock on wood!) hasn't had any big injuries since then. (I'm sharing all the fun facts we learned, can you tell I'm excited??) And we learned that when his father first brought him to the BMX track at the age of five he cried and cried because he was so scared and it took five visits before he was brave enough to get on a bike. This was the best thing for my class to hear, because after that they all overcame a bit of fear, took a risk and tried their hand on a BMX bike!
I can't post the lovely picture of all of us together with Maris, nor can a post the one where we are sitting around the picnic tables interviewing him and my students look so studious diligently taking notes. But I can post the pictures I made my students take of their goofy teacher who was so excited.... :)
Me sitting on the really real bike that he rode in the Olympics!
Then the kids said, "Mrs. Diana, you have to pretend like you just won the gold medal!"
And finally, here I am holding the really real gold medal! More interesting facts about the medal - the medal is not solid gold, the front is gold plated and the back of the medal is always designed by the hosting country, so this particular medal has a Chinese stone on the back. So there.....and my kids said I get the gold medal in teaching! :)
Our final unit of the year at school called "I Feel Good" is an inquiry into choices we make each day which have an impact on our own well-being - diet and nutrition, exercise, balancing work and rest, etc. So yesterday we set out to interview a professional athete about the choices he makes each day to be able to feel his best and perform at his best. We took a field trip to the BMX track in Valmiera and interviewed the gold medalist from last year's Olympic games in Beijing.
Let me put it in perspective for you with some facts my class and I learned before the trip. Latvia has been participating in the Olympics since 1924 (Latvia was only six years old as a country at this time, a child). Since that time Latvia has come home with two gold medals, both since it's second independence after the fall of the Soviet Union. Of course that is a huge deal when you are talking about a country of just two million people. And in the first year that BMX became an official Olympic sport, it was a Latvian who took the gold. That's impressive not only on our small scale, but he is the best at what he does in the world. It's entirely possible that I was more excited than the kids on this day.
So the very coolest thing is how nice and down to earth both Maris the medalist and his coach Ivo were toward us. One of my students even showed appreciation about this because she said, "Mrs. Diana, I was a little worried and I thought he might be like the other Latvian men with such short hair [a buzz cut] and he would be not so nice, but he was soooooo nice to us and shared so many great things with us!"
We learned that he also gets so nervous before a race and he told the children how he deals with his nerves by visualizing the last time he did really well in a race and tries to get ready to repeat that. We learned that he has broken both collar bones and several ribs and then got a tattoo of the Chinese symbol for health on his arm, and (knock on wood!) hasn't had any big injuries since then. (I'm sharing all the fun facts we learned, can you tell I'm excited??) And we learned that when his father first brought him to the BMX track at the age of five he cried and cried because he was so scared and it took five visits before he was brave enough to get on a bike. This was the best thing for my class to hear, because after that they all overcame a bit of fear, took a risk and tried their hand on a BMX bike!
I can't post the lovely picture of all of us together with Maris, nor can a post the one where we are sitting around the picnic tables interviewing him and my students look so studious diligently taking notes. But I can post the pictures I made my students take of their goofy teacher who was so excited.... :)
Me sitting on the really real bike that he rode in the Olympics!
Then the kids said, "Mrs. Diana, you have to pretend like you just won the gold medal!"
And finally, here I am holding the really real gold medal! More interesting facts about the medal - the medal is not solid gold, the front is gold plated and the back of the medal is always designed by the hosting country, so this particular medal has a Chinese stone on the back. So there.....and my kids said I get the gold medal in teaching! :)
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Weekend photo update
We are putting up a pajumte (seriously, I can't for the life of me think of what it's called in English). This summer. Think carport but with a floor. Basically we need a place to hang out beside the bonfire in case of rain (or if it's too sunny, as KB says, but if it's sunny, I don't care, I will not be under a roof). So this weekend all six posts went in. Amazing! The goal of course is to be done by Jani (summer solstice at the end of June) - at least with the roof, if not the floor.
And I used a lawnmower for the first time in my life this weekend. The "lawn" was over a hectare large, with molehills every two steps and uphill both ways (literally). I did not hurt myself. :)
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