Oh, these two topics don't go together at all, but I have no pics for either and thought I'd lump them together into a short blurb.
1. WEATHER--we had some pretty ucky storms blow through here earlier this week. Thankfully, our immediate area (school and home) didn't take the brunt of it--we didn't even sustain any wind damage (which is pretty common in the flat plains of TX). It came through at around 1:30 p.m., and our school put us in a weather lockdown mode. The teacher across the hall has a window so her class comes to mine in these situations (most of our classrooms are windowless--I know, yuck). So she and I had 42 fourth graders smooshed together closest to the inside wall of my room. They were so great---stayed quiet and did what we told them to do. The other teacher and I disagreed about whether to inform the students that this was in fact real and not a drill--disagreed pleasantly, I should say. I just deferred to her at first, but soon it became evident it wasn't a drill because drills don't last more than a few minutes. We just calmly told them we had severe weather warnings and that we were keeping them safe. A nice perk to having your child in the school where you work is that I was able to go get Kendra from her class so she could be with me. I did that because Kendra is extremely scared of storms. I knew it would be better for her to be with me, so I grabbed her. I love modern technology---I had WeatherBug radar up on my phone so I could tell what was going on, and was able to reassure the kids we were going to be fine. Other places in our area were not as fortunate. The latest news states that we had 15 tornado touch-downs that day. One of them was on the ground for 30 minutes! The norm is 5 minutes. Lots of destruction, but gratefully not a single life was lost.
2. "MATURATION" lesson: In fifth grade, students are treated to a maturation lesson about puberty. They look forward to it with great anticipation (sarcasm). Let me say it is VERY "tip of the iceberg"--mostly about body changes that will happen to them. NOT the full-out sex ed stuff at all. Kendra lives with a single mom, and so she's been pretty educated about female anatomy and what happens at puberty for a while now. So I told her that she'd probably know everything in the lesson (and I was right). But here is the funny thing that happened....I'm outside with two of my teammates during dismissal the day of the lesson. Kendra comes out and stands by us, which is not outside the norm, but I was wondering why she was wearing her little jean jacket because it was quite warm outside. She just stands there for a time, not interrupting the adult conversation, but then there was a lull. So she says, "Mom, I was told to give this to you right away." She reaches into the inside pocket of her jean jacket and pulls out a little plastic pouch. It was upside down, so at first I had no idea what it was...until I took it in my hand and felt it. Yep. It was a packet with a little feminine protection product inside. I bent over laughing so hard, because not only did she hand it to me like it was a winning lottery ticket, but she did it standing right next to my partner teacher, who is a GUY! Oh my gosh, we all died! And luckily, Kendra saw the humor in it too, and was not embarrassed! Hard to believe my girl is getting old enough for this stuff...sheesh. Where does the time go?????
