Everyone likes to be read to: a book review from my niece

Every summer my parents take my niece and nephew for a week or so, giving my brother and his wife a much needed reprieve from the summer doldrums and giving my mom and dad a chance to spend some uninterrupted time with their grandkids. Well, uninterrupted until I come and visit and crash the party!

After a day and a half of making cookies, reading books, playing piano, getting whooped on guitar hero, and video chatting with Dr. Awesome, I had to be on my way home so Grandma could take the kids on a road trip to Six Flags. I gave my mom an audio book of Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume to help make their drive go by with less episodes of iCarly playing on Grandpa's portable DVD player.

In the car rode my mom, her friend, and three kids ages 7, 10, and 12. No one had ever read Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing before (how is that even possible?) and it turned out that the book was a huge hit! They listened to the whole book in the car and everyone enjoyed it. The thing is, people love being read to, especially when its a good story. It doesn't matter if the book is grade level or if you're a grown up listening to a kids book or a teenager listening to a young readers' book. People like to be read to, and they need to be read to.

Two days after their big amusement park trip I talked to my niece on the phone, expecting to hear about water rides and long lines. Instead, she told me all about the book and how everyone loved it. I thought I would share what I could remember of our conversation.

Auntie Awesome guess what?
What?
We listened to all three CDs! That's the whole story!
Wow cool, did you like it?
Yes we all did everyone laughed. Even my brother liked it. And well it was kind of weird because the whole thing was said by a girl so even the boy voices sounded like a girl.
Well that's because it's a girl reading a book, so she has to read all of the voices. 
Yeah I thought it was so funny...
What was one part you liked?
Well I liked all of it, but Auntie Awesome, did you know there were gross parts? Like when Fudge poops the turtle?

There you have it. It's funny but it's gross when Fudge poops a turtle.

Graduation

I just got back from a quick trip to visit family and see my nephew's 6th grade graduation.  *Sniff. I can't believe he's going off to junior high in a couple of months. He's an awesome young man and I'm so proud of my brother and my sister-in-law for being such awesome parents. I know some day Mr. Awesome and I will have a lot of questions re: how to raise a son as cool as my cool nephew.

This year I've heard lots of opinions about graduation. My friend who teaches preschool has a family celebration, but refuses to make cardboard hats for her Pre-K kids who are more likely to spill juice on their hats than sit back and have a moment of self reflection such as "hey, my fine motor skills, number sense, and phonemic awareness totally improved this year! I'm SO ready for kindergarten now!" Not that a preschooler shouldn't be proud, but it's not the same as say, an 18 year old graduating from high school who can look back and say, "man, I did it and I made good life choices along the way." Or, say, Mr. Awesome who has been in school since he was five and on Sunday will be walking across a stage in a funny gown.

So where does 6th grade graduation fall in the mix? What about 8th grade? Kindergarten? Personally, I think it really depends on the teacher and the school and the community. I thought that my nephew's graduation was fabulous. Although, as some have pointed out, I am extremely biased when it comes to my nieces and nephew, so perhaps I am not entirely fair. But the ceremony I saw was a great reflection of the school's community and values, honored the students' hard work without acting like it was the end of their academic career, and reflected on how these kids were moving on from being the little guys in elementary school to growing young adults facing all the things young adults face in those places known as junior high and high school.

If I get a job teaching sixth grade, or kindergarten, or fifth grade in a district that is a k-5 elementary school district, I'll have to decide for myself or be forced into helping with graduation. I'll probably be the kind to go all out with paper hats and goofy favors. I think the kids work hard and deserve a celebration. Plus who doesn't like cake and pictures and neat slide shows with corny music? 

Of course, you could look at it in the eyes of my niece (nephew's little sis). It's totally NOT FAIR that sixth graders get to graduate but first graders still have to go to school. 

Yeah, what a jip.

How I learned to eat tomatoes

I had the privilege of spending this past weekend with a lot of family. My nephew, who is in sixth grade and gives all other sixth graders a bad name because he is way more awesome and better than any other sixth grader out there, is a very picky eater. So is my first grade niece (she's also more awesome than your first grade kids, sorry, they just can't compare with her, so don't try). As far as my baby niece goes, the 1 year old, well she'll eat anything but she's so stinking cute I almost put her in my purse to take home with me. She is forgiven for not being a picky eater. She still has time to learn from her wise cousins.

I told my nephew that being a picky eater is actually a life skill. Knowing how to eat food you really don't care for is something that will come in handy some day. He clearly thought I was being sarcastic. When I told my niece the same thing, she said "stop teasing!" Well, I probably shouldn't have tried to give out life advice after telling her the brain sucker on her head was starving.

Last academic year, 2008-2009, I was in grad school, earning my elementary school teaching credential and my master's in education. I chose one of those 5 quarter, one academic year programs because I was crazy and I wanted name recognition to go with my degree.  Also because I'm cheap and I didn't want to pay more tuition than I had to. The year ended up being dubbed "Hell Year". You know how football players do a week of training and they call it hell week? Well teachers who go through intense programs like I did get to call it Hell Year. Then for most of us our reward is a lot of debt and no real job.

We have got to find a way to get smarter people to go into teaching. Clearly this system is not producing the brightest of us all, eh?

But I digress. My point is that before Hell Year, I was a very picky eater. It's in our genes. I didn't like tomatoes or mushrooms or this color of sauce or this kind of meat or anything that touched the wrong thing or anything cooked not the way I cook it. I would not eat green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam-I-Am!

But when you've done 8 hours of student teaching, 4 hours of class, and 2-3 hours of homework/lesson planning almost daily for 7 months and someone hands you a sandwich that has... gunk... on it... you say "sure" and eat it.

And then when you've been doing nothing but being observed and told you're doing everything wrong and someone hands you a cookie that has.... weird walnuts...on it.... you say "sure" through your tears and you eat it. And because it also has chocolate in it you like it.

And then when someone hands you pizza with EVERYTHING on it when you haven't eaten in 12 hours because you're trying to turn in your thesis, you eat it.

Then about a month after you graduate, you realize that you've been eating tomatoes all year.

And the scary thing?

You like them.