Stories from Pre-K3 and one from 5th Grade

My teacher friends always tell me, " You should keep a quote board or a quote paper. Everyday at the end of the day write down your favorite quotes from your students, because as much as you want to remember them you won't." My students don't speak in English most of the time, and when they do they are telling me about things we are learning in class. For example they might say Mrs. Walker look blue. I will respond oh you're right you see a blue ball. I don't have the privilege of understanding their conversations between one another, or even hearing stories about their weekend. Don't get me wrong some of them still try to talk to me in Khmer. They don't quite understand that I speak a totally different language. I love that they try to tell me things; I just nod my head and smile. I find this communication barrier both a blessing and a burden. It is a blessing because I'm sure there are discussions and fights between my students about who is playing fair or who was playing with the green car first, that because I have no idea that they are saying I can totally ignore. They don't come up to me and tattle tell on their friends because I don't understand. It is a burden one because when I'm asking them to follow directions they don't always listen, and two I do not get to know them as well. Even though there is this communication barrier I still have stories from my days that make me smile and bring me joy. Some of them come from my TA translating my students comments, and some of them are from what I observe of their actions. So here are a few stories. I hope they make you smile!

Story Number 1: We love to sing songs and do actions with our songs. I sing a word and do a action and they repeat it. Well they also started repeating my actions during Read Aloud time. One day when I was reading a book and to turn the pages I was licking my fingers. I started noticing a couple of my students doing the same after I had just done it.

Story Number 2: We are learning about a letter of the alphabet a week. Two weeks ago we were on letter E. We were singing along to a music video about animals specifically elephants because elephant starts with the letter E. The song goes like this, " Elephants, I like Elephants, I like how they swing through the jungle on trees." A little girl voice then comes on and says, " No, thats not an elephant thats a monkey." Its a great video you should you tube the elephant song if you want to watch it. Anyway, it goes through all these animals and and the singer always gets the animals wrong and he ends with a donkey. " Donkey's I like Donkey's I like how the stomp through the jungle with their long trunks." The video has a donkey in the jungle and draws a long elephant trunk onto the donkey. All the kids laugh and giggle at this part. The little girls voice comes on and says, " No, No that's an elephant. " We watched this video a couple of days that week. We also were making our own alphabet of animals. I had one of the ladies that helps out in my classroom draw a picture of an animal starting with each letter and the students got to decorate it. One of my students had the snake and the turtle and they both ended up with paper elephant trunks glued onto their noses. I love it! I hung them up out on our bulletin board in the hall way and I laugh at them every time I walk by. I least I know he is paying attention.

Story Number 3: My teaching assistant told me she had a conversation with one of our students, a little boy. They were talking about school, and they were speaking in Khmer. Vathana asked her, "Ms. Sorphorn do you want to go to my school with me. I have a lot of teachers at my school." I wondered if he knows Ms. Sorphorn is one of his teachers. This same boy loves the color pink. He always wants to use pink crayons and pink markers. They other day he asked Ms. Sorphorn why we didn't buy pink bookshelves to put in our classroom.

I hope those made you laugh, and you got know my class a little bit.

Yesterday and today we had parent teacher conferences. I had about 7 parents come. It is always good to get to know the parents. Gideon had lots of parents show up. Gideon shared a story with me, I would like to share with you about one of his students' conference. Gideon had all of his students lead the conferences. He gave them a list of questions that they could potentially discuss at their conferences, but it was a requirement to choose three of them to discuss. One of his students had decided she was going to discuss her relationship with Jesus. Her parents are Buddhist and Gideon was surprised she wanted to discuss this question with her parents. Gideon has heard this student during devotion time at school describe Jesus as her personal Savior. When she got to the conference with her parents and she came to this question she described Jesus as not God, but as a friend. We do not know what is going on in her heart. It could be that she knows Jesus as her personal Savior, but can not tell her parents what she has decided in fear that it will ruin her relationship with her family, or if she is feeling peer pressure at school to accept Jesus. Gideon told me that after that conference his heart felt heavy. He wants soo much to help this girl know that God will be with her when she decides to tell her family about the Truth she has discovered, or to make sure she has a genuine relationship with God. Please pray for Gideon and for this certain student.

Thank you for all your prayers! We love you and all and are so blessed to have you supporting us!