If there's one thing I work to express to you guys, but probably can't ever do justice to, is just how much we laugh all day long in my classroom. When people say to me, "Oh, you teach 2nd grade? They're so cute at that age!!" I always cringe a little bit. Not because it's untrue--they are darn stinkin cute, but mainly because they are soooooo much more than cute. In fact, probably the main blessing of grade-level centers (in my humble opinion) is that 2nd graders are the big kids, so cute isn't really how they are primarily thought of around here--- leaders, responsible, intelligent, thinkers, and then somewhere down the line comes cute. My response when getting the 'cute' comment is to state that my favorite thing about 2nd graders is that they are so incredibly funny, but they don't even know it yet. They aren't trying to be "class clowns," they just say such amazing, ironic and sometimes misplaced comments that I can't help but have a huge belly-laugh at least once every single day. I, personally, think that humor is the great uniter. You can have different life views, different political views, different personalities altogether, but in just about all cases---funny is funny, especially when it comes from a second-grader's mouth.
One summer many years ago I was back in the classroom soon after school had let out for the summer. I like to come in and clean, purge, pack up, etc after the kids have gone, so that's why I was here. I kept finding little scraps of paper all around in my little nooks of the room--and they were things that the kids had said that had cracked me up. I decided at that time to begin a log to document all of the funny. I will forever regret that I did not start it at the beginning of my career and I will also regret that I have only captured snippets in the years since I've begun, but snippets are better than nothing. My friends tell me I should publish it---maybe someday.
I'll leave you with a note I just found from Friday when someone made me laugh. Somehow we'd been talking about tears----tears of joy. I can only assume someone asked me if I've cried tears of joy (many times I can't remember what came before the punchline because with second-graders they often come out of regular-old conversations, so please forgive my lack of set-up to the humor....) and this is what my darling second grader said to me: "Hang on, I'll get you an onion!"
Really? They'll get me an onion so I have tears??? How can I not laugh---those thinking skills?? That's talent right there------talent I'm starting to realize I'll only have for a very brief time, and so now I will sign off because despite the fact that there are no onions anywhere near me, I seem to be tearing up.
No comments:
Post a Comment