"I want to learn all of it!"

Wow, I have really let myself down when it comes to reflecting on my service. I've let writing this blog morph into an obligation to others in my mind, when it really is a service to myself. I know I'm going to want to look back and flip through these virtual pages to relive this year, and if I keep this up, there won't be many pages to flip!

In my defense, last week I had the whole week off for Thanksgiving. Or rather, we had Wednesday-Friday off and I took two personal days to show Patty around San Antone. It was an amazing break and was the perfect combination of binge-watching Breaking Bad (we finished the series) and actually doing things (we walked 5 miles along the riverwalk on Thanksgiving). It was exactly what I needed. 

School is continuing on. Today I met the teacher I will be paired with for the rest of the year. I am really excited for our class; I think the teacher will be what the students need. She is a permanent substitute who has a lot of elementary experience and has her teaching license. My students had a positive reaction to her, and that's half the battle! 

One of my students is an excellent worker and behaves magnificently, but won't stop talking about how he "hates" reading. He only read stories about sports, and even then he only likes books written about the NBA (I couldn't help laughing when he said this matter-of-factly as if he wasn't limiting himself to under 0.001% of the books in the world). So I made him a deal. I told him that I wanted him to read a whole chapter book cover-to-cover (he tends to read two pages and decide he doesn't like it) before Christmas break. The catch--it couldn't be about sports. I asked what he felt like he should earn for such a feat and he said a bag of Skittles. I think that can be swung. :) I have been incessantly recommending books that I know any sixth-grade boy would enjoy, and today when I asked him which book he was going to choose, he said Hatchet, which was one that I was most vocally pushing. And he remembered the title from over a week ago! He is soooo going to at least like reading when this year is up.

One of my other students asked today in afterschool if I could teach him to write in cursive. He didn't have any homework or classwork to do, so I obliged. He was so eager, it was adorable!! He loved the loopy letters, but he especially liked the capital "D". We didn't get to practice the whole alphabet because I kept having to conference with students who were misbehaving, but I told him that tomorrow we could at least teach him how to write his name in cursive. He objected instantly. "I want to learn all of it, Miss! All the letters." So you know exactly where I'll be tomorrow after school. :)

Also, I decorated our apartment (sort of) for Christmas! I put up some lights in the windows for our neighbors to enjoy and today I creepily overheard a compliment. Our windows are open because it's mid-70's here right now (jelly?) and a man was walking his dog and said to our neighbor who was out smoking on the porch, "Hey man, I like your lights upstairs!" to which our neighbor replied, "Oh, that's not our apartment." It's a little sad how warm and fuzzy this made me feel as I sat in our living room. But warm and fuzzy I felt indeed. 

Goodnight!

P.S. I am super excited to see my parents and my little brother this weekend for Dave's graduation! Hooray!!!

P.P.S. Last week we did an afterschool lesson on appreciating each other and saying nice things to one another where we all wrote things about each other that we liked. The result was wonderfully, awkwardly adolescent. Here is my paper after all the students wrote on it. It makes me happy.