it is currently 11:10 p.m., and sleep does not seem to be in my near future. for some reason, after work tonight, I was hit with the desire not to sit in my apartment and rot in front of the television like I usually do on weeknights, but instead to go for a walk/jog and come to the computer lab. so alicia keyes and I went for a nice brisk jaunt along the sincheon, and now here I am pounding away at the keyboard, three emails knocked out and still ripe with energy for a blog entry.

work today was just about as perfect as work gets. I had plenty of energy and I don't think there was one class where I was looking at the clock. time went by really quickly, and I felt like I was one step ahead of the kids the whole day, anticipating the misbehavior and therefore able to quell the bulk of it before it happened by channeling their energy into other things. I'd say all but one of my classes were more productive than usual. I invented a game on the spot to teach one class about prepositions. I wasn't sure if they'd bite, but they loved it. it was the simplest thing in the world. I placed a yellow chair between two blue chairs and called them up one by one. I would say "sit between the blue chairs," "sit in the blue chair behind the yellow chair," "stand next to the yellow chair," etc.
I teach two writing classes (composition, but for second graders), which have been the bane (bain?) of my existance due to the fact that the book is way ahead of where most of the kids' skills are. there's one little boy, ray, who almost never writes in his book when he's supposed to, and who used to have huge attention problems. he's one of those kids who will zone out and sit in his chair and makes strange noises. we used to wonder if he was a little slow, but recently he's been getting better. the last two days of writing class, he's been running up to me every five minutes with a sheet of paper full of complete sentences. They have nothing to do with the lesson, and each one begins with "give me," but there's no way I'm going to discourage ray from writing complete sentences, no matter what they are. I just correct his spelling. and it seems to me he's a bit of a poet. here's one of his creations:

give me coffee!
give me coffee!
give me pizza!
give me pizza!
give me pizza!
give me money.
give me money!
give me books!
give me books.
give me books.
give me people.
give me people!
give me people!
give me coffee!
give me anything!

it has rhythm, and it clearly builds towards an ending. pretty good for a second grader writing in a language that isn't their native tongue. there's something I love about teaching kids who seem ADD, something in me that clicks with their learning style. it doesn't bother me that I have to tell them to sit down every three minutes or that they're constantly running up to the board and trying to draw a picture to make me understand something, and I don't mind getting off topic and having to work our way back to the lesson...I enjoy finding a way to bring their attention back, and maybe work in the off-topic discussion and relate it to the lesson.

so yes, school today was fun. oh, and one of our sixth graders' mother forced him to come to school even though he was circumcised today. why he was circumcised at 12 years old is anyone's guess, but he was pretty hilarious today. walking was visibly painful, and he had to sit in the teacher's chair because it's padded, but he wasn't embarassed and had a good sense of humor about the whole thing. trust me, it was hilarious.

I've got more to say, thoughts about literary snobbery (my own, not other people's) and my tendancy to lampoon strangers in my blog, but I want to see if I can make it home before svu, so that's it for now.

keep on rockin.