Friday, December 19, 2008

It Actually Worked!

Gavin got out of his car MAD this morning! I was like, "Dude! What's wrong?"

He yells, "Mom is being mean!"

I say to him, "Man, you better figure out what is making her so mad. I'll bet she's going out to spend a lot of money on presents this weekend. If she's mad at you she might forget to get you anything!"

His expression changed from anger to worry real fast.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Huevos

Sometimes the Bilingual kids say the darndest things:

Angel, who is a 2nd grade boy, said to me, "Fernando touched my eggs."

Friday, December 05, 2008

Save The Tears

Contrell is in 1st grade and yesterday he got his clothes pin moved to yellow! Now, this only means that he got in trouble once for the whole day. He was bawling after school.

MR. BOWERS: What's wrong Contrell?
CONTRELL: I got on yellow! (more bawling)
MR. BOWERS: That's not that bad!
CONTRELL: But I'm gonna get a whoopin! (even louder bawling)
MR. BOWERS: Well, then you better save your tears for the whoopin! If your mom whoops you and you don't have any tears left for her, she may whoop you again!

He came to me today and told me that he didn't get a whoopin afterall!

MR. BOWERS: See! And now you went and wasted all those tears!

Because She's Cute!

Some of the little 1st grabers are still having troudle rememdering which way the lowercase b's and d's face. They will write worbs like, hanb, fibble, winbow and binosaur.

I thought of a way to get them facing the right birection.

In the alphabet, "b" and "d" are both looking at the letter "c" because the "c" is so cute, see? a bcd efg...

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Cissy

When Cissy was in 2nd grade, we had a "rain-out" at our school where they cancelled school in the morning because of the flooding. Many of the teachers were already at school and so were many of the students. Teachers just worked in their rooms until the stormed cleared out and some of the teachers had to stay beyond that until their students cleared out!

Cissy was one of those students. Her parents could not be reached for whatever reason. She stayed all day and finally at three O'clock we discovered that her grandparent was home, but could not drive. Her teacher (Ms. Bammel) and I decided to walk her home.

Now she is a Senior. I got a letter from her today:

Mr. Bowers,

This year has been utterly hectic and stressful, with all the college apps and grades and everything else life decides to throw high school seniors. I'm applying to Yale, Columbia, Duke, Dartmouth, Rice, NYU, Stanford, Princeton, UPenn, WashU, St. Louis, UC Berkeley, and probably Cornell and Emory. Oh, and UT. Hmm...i don't remember if i told you, but I'm totally number two, saludatorian at my High School. I had my interview for Rice this weekend; I think my alumni interviewer was quite impressed with my resume, but I suppose we shall see. I can't wait until this semester is over; I can't wait to be free from college apps. I definitely want to take you and Ms. Bammel out for lunch or dinner, some day after January 1st (portal of freedom from apps). Our schedule sucks - usually we get a week off for Thanksgiving break, but now we only got 3 days...bummer. Anyway, got to go write some more essays, apps, homework, studying... the norm. Hope to talk to you soon!

~CiCi

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Sub

Today Carrington (1st grade) said, "When I was in Ms. Gillis' room, Ms. Rose was our subway teacher."