Thank you Martin Luther King, Jr.

For those of you that may not know, today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In my book he is infamous, not famous and I can only hope that my children will appreciate his efforts as much as I do. My mom remembers him as a great leader, powerful speaker, and tragic story. I realize that as the generations pass by those leaders that caused an impact for better or worse slowly begin to become obsolete. I think of Adolf Hitler and the hatred that has always been associated with him when you utter his name. Now I mention him in my classroom and my students say in unison, "who is that," and then that is followed up with,"oh, that is the guy that killed a lot of people." To me he is more than just the "guy who killed a lot people", he too is infamous. What is happening to our historical knowledge? Aren't we supposed to be learning about the past in order to learn for the future?

Subjects, Predicates, and Verbs.. OH MY!

Final exams are next week and frankly I think our students may be a little too young to handle the stress. I began to question why in the world I fall into the trap of giving finals and I think it is good to see all that they have learned grandly displayed on a scantron. Yet, I do not like seeing the kids stress out over what is going to be on there and the mnemonic devices (songs they made up) are driving me insane. Mostly, finals are driving me to the point of exhaustion and craziness. Yesterday, I felt like I wasn't even present at the school. I sort of floated around like a mindless zombie waiting for another break to come.

Today I decided to hold a review day, in which the students came up to the SmartBoard and tried to identify various parts of speech. As we were discussing why an adverb could modify another adverb - exciting discussion I know - all of the kids began to sound like the teacher on Charlie Brown.

"Mrs. B why does 'wah,wah,wah'?" is what I kept hearing.

It appalled me that they didn't know a verb from a stinking subject, even worse the fact that they couldn't identify a conjunction at all angered me. I began to sink into my chair and recall all of the games we had played and review days we had accomplished. I came to the happy, naive notion that they were just kidding with me. They really knew this stuff all along. Then by the end of the review, as we were discussing any confusions, it all seemed to click for them. Ugh! The frustration leading up to this moment somehow disappeared and I was relieved to say the least. It frightens me that our children cannot seem to retain information. Their active brains are too plugged into the television and computer that it causes them to be mentally sedentary. How to fix it?! How to change it?!