You Learn Something New Every Day

Come on in and join the Slice of Life Challenge!  You can write or you can read.  Either way, head over to Two Writing Teachers, a blog hosted by Ruth Ayres and Stacey Shubitz.



My dad had a lot of favorite sayings.  One of them, that I remember hearing often as I was growing up, was:

"You learn something new every day!"

As a kid, it often resulted in an eye roll from my siblings and I.  However, as an adult, I often think about how right my dad really was!  I do learn something new every day.

What did I learn today?  Plenty.

I learned:

• The same children that evoked a happy Slice because of a wonderful writer's workshop experience can chew up and spit out a student teacher in a matter of two hours.  No joke.

• The same children that wrote amazing endings yesterday to their stories barely put pencil to paper today.

• When accompanying a group of fourth graders on a trip to the zoo, it is sometimes hard to distinguish between the children and the animals.

• Fourth graders are as needy as kindergarteners.

•  Giraffes like to eat carrots.

• A giraffe's tongue can grow to as much as 18" long.

• An hour seems extra long when standing in 30 degree weather with a group of fourth graders.

• I remember why I choose to teach the early childhood age group.

See? I learned a lot today.  I'm sure my dad would be proud.

As you can also tell, I had an interesting day!  I spent the morning in my kindergarten classroom like normal and the afternoon at the local zoo with my son and his forth grade class.  Our duties this afternoon included watching our designated animals, prairie dogs, for one hour while recording our observations.  His class is lucky enough to be able to spend the entire week at the zoo.  They are having a lot of fun and learning a lot. And...in spite of the last item on my list above, I enjoyed spending time with them today.