The End of Third Grade

I found some more old student papers. These students are now in 8th grade, I think, which is strange for me to think about!

This one had a tendency to pout whenever he didn't want to do something:

I have 36 days in third grade. I am not happy because when I leave my teacher's class I will have to do harder work and we would have to wait longer to go eat for lunch. I will be good and listen to the teacher and I wont make a pout when I don't want to do that much work.I am sad because I am going to miss my teacher and the gecko. I am sad because I am going to miss all the people who came to this class. I am sad because we won't be able to be on the computer that much and I am sad because after summer I will be going to a fourth grade class.

I really like this one:

I have 36 more days in third grade. I am scared to go to fourth grade because it sounds scary and hard and teachers mite be mean. I do not want to get sunburned in the summer because if I do, I will cry and scream. Maybe fourth grade might not be bad at all.

This kid may have not been fully in tune with reality because his mom was in jail and his dad was usually too busy for him:

I have 36 more days in third grade and I am very excited because I will go bowling and simming. And I will trying out for the rebles basketball time, baseball team, and the swimming team too. My mom will be taking me to my baseball practice, and my dad will be taking me to my basketball practice. My dad will coach my basketball team and we will have to work hard and do the b est we can do. And it will be so much fun when we go to six flages, waterworld, and grate america.

This one was a little confused:

I have 36 days in Third grade. I am moving And I am going to move somewhere far and I am going to miss my classmates and I know yall is going to miss me. I think I am not moving.

Three years ago: Horace Mann (Mystery Solved)

Four years ago: More City Wildlife
Another Old Email

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Stuffed Animals

There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals. This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle. For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people. It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them. Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how

A Loss

(I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why) Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me. He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me. We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class.

A New Prison, Part Two

Second very long part of the prison visit report. After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk. First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other prison but I still

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