My days just amaze me at times. Yesterday, one of the schools I work from time to time had a student talent show during the day. A relatively small number of parents showed up, and it was generally a reminder to me of Howard Gardner's "multiple intelligences;" even if the students involved weren't always the best in the classroom, they still had talents. Some of them sang, and I have to say beautifully for a bunch of mostly fourth-and-fifth-graders, some of them danced, including a young lady who tap-danced, and three young men dancing to Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal," doing the kind of flying acrobatics that required gym pads. Freakin' amazing. One young man even had more guts than I think I'd have had at his age, and got up in front of his classmates singing a popular Gospel song. Don't ask me the name of the song, I probably wouldn't remember it right now even if I ever had. That's a leap to me, when the rest of the kids in the show, it seemed, were singing Miley Cyrus songs. Like I said, it was reminder to me that I have to keep that kind of talent in mind when dealing with some of the ones who can be unruly, disrespectful, or generally hard-to-handle. And one of my students yesterday, little Lana, bless her heart, asked if I could come over to her house for dinner. I had to politely decline, of course, I hope she wasn't too upset. But that's a first in itself; the student wanting you as the sub to come meet the parents. Yikes. Dunno if that's a good sign, or a bad one.

Cut to today, and I was working a gym class full of sixth-graders. You'd think at some point it would have reinforced yesterday, right? Yes and no. Some played hard and hearty, boys and girls, and some just flat-out didn't wanna do it. Some whined like a million stripped gears; "can we play basketball/dodgeball/anything-but-this?!" "I hurt my (insert body part here;) I need to sit down." There were times when the complacency reached Norse-epic proportions. On second thought, maybe it does reinforce what I felt yesterday. It's a da*n shame for the sake of some of the students that the world doesn't seem to be a diverse enough place to suit some of their needs, but there it is, and every adult knows it. It's about surviving, and you wonder how some of them will, or if they're just gonna get steamrolled. I wanna do more. I want some of them to want it more. I know that's not wrong, I know it's in their best interest, but it's not an easy gig. Ah, well, on to tomorrow, and hoping for more. I read a quote and can't remember the whole thing now, to the effect of "the students are unruly, and seem to want nothing; I fear for the future of mankind...." I think it was Socrates, maybe Plato. Nice to know I'm in good company, at least.
And this is actually one of my photos, one which has been immensely Photo-shopped, but turned out kinda cool, really.