Pick Up Sticks

My last day of teaching was on Wednesday. Yes, I had a difficult time giving it up but I knew I had to—after all, right now my time is already sucked out of me with teaching for three hours and studying for the rest of the day, and next semester I'm taking up two more classes. I'm sad in one way but relieved in another. It's my last semester before I graduate and I'd like to have more time bonding with my brother and my friends, but I'll miss that little school on the street corner. I'll miss my huge fifth grade class of eager and excited learners, and I'll miss my eighth grade class of five kids—four boys and a girl—that keep me busy despite their size. I've gotten plenty of experience and learned important lessons, but now I'll have to leave the work to the more qualified while I study on how to do it myself.

Anyways, on the last day of class I decided to just play games with them. With my eighth graders we did a cool game I learned two years ago, where the teacher writes a sentence and hands it off to the student. The student has to draw a picture of the sentence, while keeping both his picture and the sentence a secret; once he's finish he passes off the picture to the next student who writes a sentence of the picture, and on and on until each student has a chance. The goal is for the last sentence to be similar to the first sentence. Somehow the game didn't hit it off with them, partially because their English was poor and I had to be the middle man, and partially because of the dull moments between drawing and writing. When I asked if they wanted to play again, my question was answered with a resounding “No Miss.” So I told each student to pull out every pen they had (lucky one student had a pack of markers) and I taught them pick up sticks. They loved it!

I came back at break and the room was packed with students from all classes watching a group of six students playing the game. The girls stank at it curiously but the boys were pretty good. Amazing what you can do with a pack of pens.