Third grade

I feel like I am entering the good times at school when my class and I know each other and the class has kind of a personality and we have fun routines and traditions that bond us.

For example, we all say, "Quick sticks" to each other when we need to hurry.  (I heard it on an Australian TV show and I liked it.  They like it too.)

A young man who is a leader of Boys and Girls club works in classrooms sometimes.  He was in my room and I had students at my desk, but I couldn't resist snapping this picture of him reading to these boys.  He would explain things they didn't understand in Spanish and they were enthralled. Later he had them take turns reading and it was magical.  These are not sit still and listen to a story kind of boys.

After recess we moved desks and they cleaned out their desks and it was an enormous mess with scraps of paper and random pencils and erasers everywhere.  I said for every 10 pieces of something they picked up off the floor, I would give them a skittle.

You never saw a floor get cleaned so fast.

I'm reading The World According to Humphrey to them.  They love it and I love reading to them.

One of my students points to the healing wound on my neck (from my port) every day and asks me if it still hurts.  I tell her, "It is getting better every day."

Another girl randomly came up to me and said, "I want to give you a hug."  That happens a few times a week and I always welcome a hug.

It feels like it's going pretty well, but not perfectly.

Third graders will criticize me if I don't write neatly on the board until I erase it and try again.

I promise my worst writing is better than 95% of theirs.