Things We're Thankful for...

I would have to say, I'm going to keep this story brief, because of how sad, but true this is for a little 8 year old girl.  She is one of my hardest kids in my class the past few years. (That's the beauty of special ed...we get the same children for many consecutive years) Last year,  she kept talking about how her mom and little sister were homeless and sleeping out of a car. She was able to explain in a lot of detail how they only eat every once in a while and how they can not take any more showers until they find a house. After reporting this to the district social worker, things seem to have gotten straightened out...or so I thought. This summer she and her little sister were taken from her parents and are now living with her grandma.
So with this background, you can understand the sweetness of this response. This thanksgiving we were talking about how it is the time of year that we give thanks for things we are grateful for. We made a list of a bunch of things that we as a class we can be thankful for. On this list we had things like....our family, our friends, our freedom. But when this little girl raised her hand and said, "I'm thankful for my bunkbed" I thought of how many kids would not have thought twice about being thankful for their bed.  It was so sweet and really touched my heart....especially this time of year. We all have so much to be thankful for.

A Text???

So I must admit that this next story comes from the 1st grade teacher across the hall and not from my little munchkins. But we had a laugh for quite sometime after school yesterday and just wanted to share it. She was doing a lesson in math on using a calculator. The kids were learning how to use different buttons and the different math signs. All of the sudden a little 6 year old gasp came from across the room and a little voice shouted, "Mrs. Ball, Mrs. Ball someone just text me!" She walked over to see how this could have been confused with numbers on the calculator and realized they they had just gotten a 'error' message and had done something wrong. What a different generation these kids are coming from. Wow!