Purple Day

The best kids in the world

I’m sure that those of you with kids and grandkids think that your kids are the best kids in the world. I’m sure they are wonderful, but my kids are the best kids in the world.

Wait, Ms. Smith, you have children?

No! But like many teachers, my students become my kids. Not biological children, and I know my relationship with them is far different from that of a parent, but they are my kids in a different way. And even when they are no longer my students, I still think of them as my kids. I have quite a few grown kids now of those I taught in Reading years ago. I still pray for them, by name, every day.

My most recent group of kids brought back my faith in teaching. I had almost given up after a true year from hell in the urban district where I teach. Or manage behavior, is more accurate.

My students this summer, mostly of Indian ancestry (like from India), from the Philly suburbs, were absolutely delightful. Excited about learning, driven to do well, respectful and playful too. They were just plain fun. All were smart, some were brilliant. I have never taught kids who could even just sit in their seats and be quiet. These kids were a revelation. I love teaching, when actually teaching is possible.

Here are a few of my favorite moments, but just a few as there were so many:

Purple Day: I declared to the kids that Wednesday is Purple Day! I have an all purple outfit that is one of my teacher clothes uniforms: dark purple skirt and light purple blouse. So one Wednesday, I wore my purple, used a purple dry erase marker, and asked the kids what day it was. Eventually they got it. I also told them the first joke my parents ever told me:

“Who was purple and conquered the world?”

“Alexander the Grape.”

One of our vocabulary words was “Hellenistic,” so it was quite topical.

The next Wednesday, most of the kids showed up wearing purple! The sweet Muslim girl worse a purple headscarf! They argued with each other about if their purple was purple enough. One girl made the claim that because she was wearing pink pants and a blue shirt, those blended together to become purple. I bought it. This is the kind of fun these kids are!

On one of the last days, they got into an argument because they all wanted me to come teach at their high schools. Leaving a school where it was the daily aim of many of my students to get me to quit (they talked about it openly) and coming to a place where kids try to recruit me to their schools was quite… shocking.

I did a ton of teaching vocabulary. These kids speak English as a first language but their parents may not have, and they did not grow up with the kind of vocabulary that you need for the SAT. So we did tons and tons of words. They had never done sentence practice in school! I didn’t have them write sentences - I created a game where I’d go around the room, give the kid a word on the vocab list, and they had to make up a sentence on the spot. This gave me the opportunity to correct their usage. It gave them an opportunity to have fun as I encouraged them to make their sentences as funny as possible.

One class decided to use their sentences to crack on the class clown. They made some very memorable sentences about his foibles, etc. All were amused and the kids learned the words.

I love teaching how to use the English language. One of my friends refers to himself as a “word guy,” which he most definitely is. I am a Word Girl.

Woman of the Words, you might say. Not the world so much, but definitely the words.

One day for a warm up question in our two hour classes, I put on the board, “How would you impeded a stampede?” Two vocab words.

I had recently told them the story of when my friend woke up to find a bison in her front yard on election day. For some reason I can’t find the link but I’ll look for it.

The kids had great answers, but the first class neglected to ask a critical question: a stampede of what? I suggested that it might be a stampede of centipedes, which caused an ongoing ick factor and much entertainment.

I never wanted the class to end, though the kids did. They worked incredibly hard (arduous, laborious were vocabulary words we used to describe it.) I went from trying to teach kids who complained about learning ten vocabulary words to teaching kids who learned a thousand in six weeks. They did eight hours of homework for every day of class (classes every other day.) And they did it. They have the endurance and the grit and mental muscle to do it. They were raised that way by hardworking parents who came to this country for a better life. The idea that they would not work hard is unthinkable.

I miss them already. On the last day, Friday, the head of the school bought me a beautiful orchid and a sheet of sweet notes the kids had written to me. It warmed my heart so much. I almost cried.

I want to teach good kids. I want to have Purple Day again.

For some reason I can’t get the picture of the orchid the school gave me to download, but these are flower show orchids that are similar. It was the sweetest thing ever.