The kids are (possibly) alright

The first week of the new semester has come to an end and I am one week dumber, having given freely of my intellect to the greedy minds of these sponge-like children. Here is the class update:

Kindy: We are catching up in the math book, in which I inherited from my predecessor a two chapter backlog. The young'uns continue to impress me with their ability to grasp new concepts. Fractions and probabilities were cake but now we're stepping back somewhat and reviewing tens place and the like, large scale counting. In science we are talking about seasons and exploring the notion of our currently diminishing daylight.

First: There used to be two different classes of advanced first graders which I taught. The classes were cleverly divided so that, while both were full of bright kids, one of them had all the crazies and one had all the calm. Now it has been shuffled up and both classes are replete with crazy. Calm suffers. We are reading about a police dog that does backflips.

Third: My third grade class is wonderful. They are polite, well spoken, and fun. I had to teach them the terms "qualitative" and "quantitative" today during our grammar class to really get at the meat of a discussion on adjective use.

Fourth: This one's a doozy. These kids have all, to some degree, studied English in an overseas immersion type of program. One guy in this class speaks better than lots of people I went to college with. Now that they're back they're full of piss and vinegar and up to the challenge of delaying my lesson plans by prompting rich and lengthy digressions. I'm gonna pull some Richard Feynman stuff on them. I've threatened them with Kafka lessons. They are clever and quick enough that the ordinary learning schedule is simply not enough, so I'm bringing outside material. Yesterday we did a little song analysis on the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home". Then for grammar class I made them rewrite it in the past tense. Mua, ha, ha!

Last night at dinner, one of the bosses mentioned interest in starting a theatre arts type of class or program. I am going to do all I can to get this off the ground.