Thanksgiving Celebrations

While it's not exactly the "Thanksgiving" weather that I am used to, we have been busy celebrating Thanksgiving here in Colombia.

Tuesday night the school hosted the entire staff for a staff Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone brought a dish from an assigned category (potatoes, hot veggies, dessert, etc) to share while the school provided turkey and wine. Our school cafeteria was decorated with gourds, corn kernels (which we may or may not have started immaturely throwing around the cafeteria...the Colombian teachers started it...), cornucopias and more for the special event. It was gorgeous! What a fun night to celebrate with friends and give thanks for all our blessings!

Today we had our all school (yes that's night...the entire school K-12) assembly in the gym. Starting with the seniors parading in wearing their letter jackets while each holding the hand of a student from kinder-4 (4 year-old kindergarteners....the school also has a kinder-5 class), the assembly was a great celebration of the students. The choir sang "We Are The World" by Michael Jackson, our director spoke about all that we have to be thankful for, primary kids presented a skit about the first Thanksgiving, the school band played, the middle school and high school student councils presented and best of all....the pre-primary students (kinder-4, kinder-5 and first grade) sang "Attitude, Gratitude" which went something like this: "Attitude, gratitude, what are you thankful for?" Then random kids would step up to the microphone and say things they were thankful for. You couldn't understand a word of it because they are new to speaking in English and they don't talk loud enough...but it was A-DOR-ABLE anyway. :)

I finished out the day with my students by working on an in class project that I sent them home to complete. They have to graph coordinates and then connect the points with lines, and finally write a story that explains why the slope might be negative, positive, or zero. I read them an example story that followed a season of the Minnesota Twins, telling about how the line went down if they lost, went up if they won, etc. Haha...they tell me daily that my Twins obsession is out of control...I'm over it.

As one of my groups was leaving today they said, "Ms. R - now we have homework over break, this is terrible. We have homework and you don't have any!"

My response: "Yes, children. And that's cause I'm the teacher. I went to school for 17 years to not have homework over the next four days. In the end: Life's tough. Get a helmet."