Thursday, March 1, 2012

Slice of Life - Ben


Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Stacey and Ruth from Two Writing Teachers. For the month of March we are challenging ourself to write a Slice A Day. Here we go! 

I love when you see glimmers of your teaching inside of your students. There are days that you can see the light bulbs turn on, when they “get” it. Then there are the days were I wonder if anyone is listening. If what I’m doing matters. And on those days, I need to keep things like this to remember that yes, it does matter.

My thirty-eighth birthday was Monday. My students found out and the news spread like wildfire. Many rainbows were drawn, cards were created after the question,

Mrs. S, what’s your favorite color?

Was asked repeatedly. The kids asked me to leave the room for random reasons only to return and they had cleaned it or jumped out to say surprise, etc. So sweet how each year even big fifth graders continue to want to celebrate your day.

See below for the text

At the end of the day I looked on my desk and saw this card. While just as sweet as the others, I loved noticing that he had been inspired just like Jack from Sharon Creech’s two wonderful books, Love That Dog and Hate That Cat. Jack often writes poems inspired by some of his favorite poets. In the first book he decides it’s “ok” as long as he includes the line, Inspired by­­­­                                . To see Ben write, Inspired by Jack, somehow just touched me.







It says:

Keep Teaching Please.
From: Ben
To: Mrs. S

Love That Teacher
by: Ben
(Inspired by Jack)
I love that teacher
like a student loves to read
I said I love that teacher
Like a student loves to read!




Happy Birthday, Mrs. S with covers
from Love That Dog & Hate That Cat



I went up to him to thank him and he said, “I used Jack’s poem as my mentor text.”

Rock on, Ben. You make me so proud to be your teacher.