A Gem in the Dirt

Can I just be blunt? I really don't like teaching the fifth grade. I really don't. I've tried to like it... Okay, so maybe I should be more positive...I don't like teaching the fifth grade as well as I do first, second, third, and fourth (although Kindergarten is comparable). I've been teaching fifth grade for two full weeks. Tomorrow will start my third, and quite frankly, I'm dreading it. I've never dreaded teaching before, and I really don't like the feeling. I usually wake up in the morning and can't wait to get to school. But for the past couple of weeks, I've been hitting the snooze a couple of times just to put off the inevitable. I don't know what it is that is so difficult for me to like it. Maybe it's the fact that half of them are taller than I am (no giggles please), or the fact that they have know-it-all attitudes, or the fact that they are SO TALKATIVE ALL THE TIME, or the fact that they are allowed to eat snacks during class time and BBQ chips happen to smell... Whatever it is, let's just say it's definitely been a challenge. However, every once in a while you find a gem in the dirt, and that's what I found last week. I taught poetry last week, and on Wednesday we learned about alliteration poems. For those of you who are new to the genre, alliteration is one of the sixteen elements of poetry that occurs when words have the same initial sound in the same line or stanza. We read through some sample poems that contained alliteration, and my students picked out the words/lines/stanzas that applied. At the end, I let them try their hand at writing an alliteration poem. I let them share their poems, then I took them up as an informal assessment so I could see how well they understood the concept (which they got very well, yay!). They could choose their own topics, and many of them wrote about pets or sports or school...you know, the general fifth grade topics. But one girl wrote about something different. It made my soul soar when she shared it with the class, and I just had to keep a copy. Let me share it with you:

Fantasy

by Madison Brewton

Fantasy is fantastic

You can dream about droughts

You can tally up trolls

You can fly with phoenixes

You can prance with a peacock

Or play the ukelele with a unicorn

You can ride on rainbows or

Shoot shoes

There are so many things to do

'Cause fantasy is fantastic.

I think Madison and I, had I been 12 years younger or she 12 years older, would have been very close friends. Even now, as crazy as this sounds, I think we are kindred spirits. Because a love and an understanding of fantasy transcends time, and is not all that common these days.

It's discoveries like this that makes it all worthwhile. I would rather dislike teaching fifth grade but teach it anyway to discover this girl, this kindred spirit, than not teach it at all. I would do it all over again, even if just for that.

Oh yeah, notice how she got the concept of alliteration? Cha-CHING!