Teachable Moment

Teachers spend so much time trying to teach their students that we hardly ever sit back and consider how much our students are teaching us.

This week I had a moment with one of my first graders that almost brought tears to my eyes.  I teach fifth grade, but I tutor a group of K-3rd graders three days per week.  We will call this first grader Nell.

I was helping Nell with her reading homework.  First Grade is a lot about sight words and sounding things out.  Nell was reading a paragraph about germs and viruses.  Those are hard words for a first grader, but she was doing really well!  She came to the sentence "Really bad viruses can kill people."  She read the first part of the sentence just fine, but she got to the word "kill" and stopped.  She looked up at me with her huge brown eyes and said, "I've never seen that word before."

Can you imagine a world where you've never seen the word "kill"? I'm not usually overly-emotional, but she was just so innocent and pure.  It made the moment all the more poignant because Nell happens to be from Afghanistan.  She's a little middle eastern girl who doesn't know the word kill.  It was a beautiful picture.

We started talking a little bit about Afghanistan after she was done reading, and Nell told me, "I've heard that there were some wars there.  I don't know why anyone would want to fight in my country - it's so beautiful there!"  I bet it is, Nell.  I wish more people saw the beauty instead of the pain.

Book Signing!

This weekend was my first Barnes and Noble book signing.  I was really excited about it, but I don't think the awesomeness of  the accomplishment really hit me until a teenage girl came up to my table and said, "Hi...I just wanted to meet you.  It's my dream to write my own book some day."  I literally almost replied with, "No way!  That's my dream too!"  Then I realized that I was on the other side of the table...I was the author she was talking to.  Whoa...  That was a crazy moment.

When people weren't buying my books, I chatted up the security guard.  He was standing by the nooks, and I started the conversation by saying, "Really? Barnes and Noble?  That's gotta be a pretty laid back security gig..."  He smiled back at me and said sarcastically, "Nah, they pretty much just call me in because of the frequent attacks we've been having on authors signing books."  I knew then that we were going to get along just fine.

A few teachers from my school came out to support me at the book signing.  I felt very loved.  One of them wanted to get a picture of me with "my bodyguard," so she told the security guard to stand with me for the picture.  She said, "Hey Zack! Come over here!"  He looked confused but walked over to me.  Then she said, "Zack, move your head to the left a little bit.  The sun is in your eyes."  I felt kind of bad that I'd been talking to this guy for an hour and didn't even know his name.  I looked at his vest, but there was no name badge.  Finally, I turned to him and said, "Wait, your name is Zack?  How did she know that?"  He looked relieved that I asked and responded with, "Uhh...no.  I'm Wendell.  I'm not sure why she keeps calling me Zack."  We both turned to my friend to see why, and she looked confused too.  "Huh...I just thought your name was Zack.  Oh well, I guess it isn't."  I was laughing so hard at my dorky teacher friend for randomly naming the security guard.

Wedell and I had a great time hanging out at Barnes and Noble for the evening.  When he went on break, he even offered to get me something from Wendy's if I wanted it.  How nice!  I sold some books, got to see my book on the hallowed shelves of Barnes and Noble, and made a few friends in the process.  It was a really good night.

If you haven't gotten your copy yet, you can get The Elsie Files at local bookstores, on amazon, or electronically for your Kindle or Nook!  Thanks for your support - it is greatly appreciated.

Queen Nora

***NOTE*** This post is a month late...not sure why it didn't post before, but I figure I'll just put it up now.  Better late than never, right?  Okay, here we go:

Last weekend was great.  I haven't had a chance to post about it, but it included friends, limos, In-N-Out Burger, and a copious amount of pugs.

My friend Ashley flew into town on Saturday, and she invited me to hang out with her all day.  My friend Elle and I crashed her party - hanging out at the pool, walking the strip, and getting dressed up to go for a ride in the limo that she hired for the night!  It was a blast.  We even had the limo driver stop at In-N-Out burger, which is the best fast food restaurant in the West.  I think he almost didn't go...  it's not exactly a limo kind of place.  But oh well - we got to tell him what to do!  I can say from experience that burgers taste more delicious from inside a limo.

On Sunday, Rex and I went to the Southern Nevada Pug Rescue's "St. Pugtrick's Day" event.  We brought our foster pug, Nora. She's really cute and snuggly, even if she can be a little drooly sometimes.  Anyway, the SNPR was having a "Queen in Green" costume contest, and I entered Nora.  I dressed her up in one of my green tank tops (which looked like a dress on her), and I put a green feathery and beaded headband on her.  It looked very Vegas - she was my puggy showgirl.  To make a long story short, Nora won second prize in the Queen of Green contest!  This homeless little thing is now a prize-winning pug!  It was both very exciting and kind of sad at the same time.  When I went to receive our prize (an Applebees gift card for me and a new chew toy for Nora), I made the announcement that Nora is currently up for adoption.  I hope she finds her new forever home soon!

All in all, it was a great weekend.  I figured I should post about it so that when I'm old and decrepit I can remember how much fun I had in my carefree youth.  :-)

Kids These Days...

This student story deserves its own post, so I'm giving it one.  The name of the student has been changed.  :-)

During a geography/science lesson recently, I was teaching my students about fault lines and tectonic activity.  I was using a map and mentioned that a fault line goes straight through New Zealand, when suddenly a student from the back of the room shouted "NOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Startled, I obviously stopped and said, "What's the issue, Jay?"  He responded with, "I am so SICK of people talking about New Zealand!  When are they going to realize that it doesn't exist?!"

Ummmm....what do I do with that?

I attempted to reason with him:  "Jay, I'm really quite sure that it does exist.  For starters, it's right here on the map.  Secondly, I've been there.  So...yeah, I'm pretty sure it's real."  He still didn't believe me:  "People just need to realize that it's a FICTIONAL place.  It's NOT REAL!  I have been alive for ten years - almost eleven - I think I would know which countries are real and which ones aren't!"

I didn't think I was going to get anywhere with him right then.  Plus, everyone in the class was looking at him as if he were nuts.  I decided to go with the response, "Okay, so for everyone here who does believe in New Zealand, here's where the fault line is..." and I went on with my lesson.

I feel like most people have trouble convincing kids that imaginary things aren't real, not that real things aren't imaginary.  That was a new one for me.  Teacher friends - any advice here?  I'm so tempted to assign him to New Zealand on the country projects we have coming up next week, but I think that might just be a little too mean.  Ha ha.

Fire! Wait.....Fire?

True love is demonstrated by running back into a burning building because your husband forgot his iced tea.

Okay, perhaps the building wasn't actually on fire, but I didn't know that for sure at the time!  For all I knew, I could have been risking life and limb for iced tea!

Here's how it went down:

Rex and I were about to sit down to a nice homemade dinner.  Rex wanted to watch a TV show while we ate, but I said I would prefer to sit and talk.  Rex won.  We were just sitting down at the coffee table, Rex turned on the TV, and...

MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(That's the sound of a fire alarm going off.  Did that hurt your eyes?  Well, it hurt our ears ten times more).

Rex almost dropped his bowl of pasta, he was so startled.  He ran to our smoke alarm to reset it, but it wasn't our alarm that was going off.  This was a huge relief to me, because I was thinking, "Dang! I haven't set off the smoke alarm in over a year!  I thought I was getting this cooking thing down!  How did I screw up pasta?!"  Ha ha. It turned out that it was the building-wide smoke alarm that was going off.  All of the apartments were screaming.  There's an intercom alarm that goes off in each apartment building-wide, and that's what was causing the ruckus.

Rex grabbed his dinner, grabbed the dog, and we headed outside.  In retrospect, why did no one grab the cat??  Sorry Els.  We quickly analyzed the situation and determined that there was no smoke, so we were probably okay.  The alarm was LOUD, though.  Rex sat down to begin eating, and I said, "Ha, see? You thought you won the TV debate, but actually I won after all.  Now we're just going to sit and talk."  Rex forgot his iced tea, though, so I had to go back in and get it.  My ears are still a little numb, and my head kills.  Oh well.  I didn't mind, because it also gave me a chance to grab my jelly beans (we still didn't grab the cat...).

I'm glad I grabbed the jelly beans, because we ended up sitting out there for about a half an hour.  The apartment managers couldn't figure out what to do, and of course the maintenance man was gone, and the part he would need to fix the problem was probably in Australia, etc. etc.  It was a perfect storm for nothing to get done.  Then the apartment manager said, "Well, I have to go pick up my daughter from preschool, so... hopefully you guys get this fixed!  Another maintenance guy should be on his way soon!"   One of the guys from an apartment a few doors down from mine was seriously mad at her for leaving, but I felt like saying, "Dude.  Her daughter is three.  You're at least thirty.  Which one of the two can better fend for themselves?"

After she left, the fire department showed up.  They walked around the building and couldn't find anything wrong, but they also couldn't figure out how to turn the alarm off.  Six firemen were trying to solve this, and they couldn't shut it off.  Gah!  While they were standing around discussing the situation, I seriously considered asking if I could check out the inside of their truck.  It looked so cool. I finally decided that it would only be socially acceptable if I had a child with me: "Hey, my little cousin Benny here really wants to be a fireman when he grows up.  Do you think he could look in your truck?"  And then I would roll my eyes affectionately like "Kids these days..." and the fireman would let me into his inner sanctum of fire fighting.  Unfortunately, I had no Benny to be my front man.  I figured saying that Elvis wanted to be a fire dog one day was a bit of a stretch.  So I just sat on my stoop and watched the firemen try various things to make our apartments shut up.

Finally, after about a half hour, one of the firemen jumped a fence into one of the clubhouse areas and shut off the alarm (for now).  Yaaaaaaaaaay!  And then...sadly...they drove away without letting me look inside their truck.

At least I got something out of this situation: an addition to my bucket list.  I'm going to see the inside of a fire truck one day.  Now I just gotta find a kid named Benny...