Catechism: Catholics Are Funny

The week thus far has been a very teacher-y week. Allow me to catechize you:

What do you mean by this?
I mean that I've had to do a lot of teacher related things, rather than educator things.

Aren't they are the same thing?
No. As an educator, I'm responsible for teaching them science, and making sure they're learning the material. As a teacher, I have to break up fights, put people in time out, and hound people about doing homework.

Why haven't you been doing teacher-y things thus far?
Well, I've been trying to avoid them. I've come to realize I don't want to be a teacher (particularly an elementary school teacher). I love talking science, and showing kids why I love science, but I hate having to discipline and yell. I'm a kind-hearted, gentle giant. Plus, some of these kids are brats, and I've been trying to not get worked up over these little pills.

What have you had to do today, Mr. Sakimoto?
Well, as always, N---- and E---- got in a fight. I've come to realize that as smart and brilliant as E---- is, he's a bully. And I told him so. He did not like this. I think his opinion of me is starting to turn, because I made him sit on the side and write for half the class for bullying N----. He did not like this either. I don't think I'm his favorite person in the world. Good. I have no tolerance for the cruel-hearted.

What else have you had to face, Mr. Science?
Well, aside from the usual yelling and scolding, we had a practice fire drill. Not a fire drill, but a practice for the practice fire evacuation exercise. Yup. I had the youngest group, which includes young A--, form whom I had to confiscate a number of things to make sure he listened. I also made him my special friend, which mandated that he stand next to me during the fire drill, and sit in a special chair during class, pretending he's a statue (meaning he can't talk and can't move).
I also had to crack down on this one kid D----, who refuses to write in his journal, as everyone is supposed to. When he does write, he copies what someone else write. But he copies it wrong. I asked him to write something about the difference between animal cells and plant cells. He wrote that animal cells have cell walls while plants don't, which is downright wrong. After arguing with him for 10 minutes, he ran out of the class to cry. It felt good.

As an educator, I did fingerprinting with the kids. Using graphite from a pencil, we transferred their thumb prints to a piece of tape and identified the salient features, like the major patterns: whorl, arch, and loop. Thankfully, it was rather clean, and the mess was isolated to their smudgy papers.

So here's something that blew my mind. I suppose I had never really looked at my fingerprints, had never really studied them. But here's what surprised me: my thumbs have two different patterns on them. My right thumb is a whorl, and my left is a loop. I naturally assumed that my thumb prints were more or less identical, but apparently that is not the case. I'm interested to see if anyone else has heterogeneous thumb prints.

I'm somewhat happy to be finishing up biology, since it's rather unfamiliar territory. Next week we'll be heading back to physics to talk about circuits, harmonics, and optics, three topics I'm rather fond of.

Here's today's shirt pocket:

The inventory: Four pencils, two pairs of scissors, A--'s spoon and hair tie contraption he was playing with, a fork, a handout about the three types of fingerprint patterns, and my ID. This is also my only silk shirt. I've discovered I'm not a fan of silk. I'm a simple, poly-cotton blend person. No frills. It was also missing a button and I used a safety pin to close my shirt. The kids made fun of me.

And it was recently pointed out to me that I should post a happier picture from my childhood. We'll step it up in increments:

I used to be deathly afraid of fire crackers. As you can see from the picture, I had to be decked out and covered head to toe. I used an oven mitt to hold the morning glory sparkler, because I was afraid to get burned. The situation wasn't helped by my dad, intending to cure me of my fright, threw a bunch of those ground blooming flower ones at me. Not funny. Made it worse. Now I'm fine with fireworks. This is from New Year's. Me and my sis. Good times.

And so, as I once again find myself with half formed lesson plans that will have to be finalized in the morning, I bid you all adieu.

Baby Bunsen Burners Contest

I hereby announce my First Contest to my loyal readership (all three of you). I recently found out that two of my darling students (the brother-brother terrors of N--- and A--) are somewhat famous. Their family was featured on an episode of The Supernanny a few years ago, a show where some British woman comes and tells parents how to deal with their rotten devil-spawn children. I really want to see this episode. I believe it's Season 3 Episode 7 (The Smith Family). I really want to know how bad this family is and if they've improved any over the last few years.

The contest is: the first person to find a video of the episode and make it available to me (a working link to a streaming video is fine), will win the prize.

"What's the prize?" one might ask. Well, aside from my undying gratitude and a whole slew of congratulatory statements directed in your general direction, I'm prepared to offer something more tangible. I haven't decided what it is, but it will be awesome. It could be something as cold and impersonal as cash-money, or something as heart-warming and adorable (read: free) as a personalized video of all my kids saying hello to you. Details can be discussed upon delivery of the video.

I suppose there's no time limit to this contest, but the sooner the better. And please, no Rick-rolling*, we're all too old for that type of thing. If you do, Ten Points from Hufflepuff! I don't care which House you're in, Hufflepuff had it coming, with their kind heartedness and general glee.

So, with that, let the games begin. I'm serious people. Scour the internet! Find me that video! Bring me Peter Pan! Sorry, wandered off topic a bit there.

*or as my good friend, Max, calls it: Rick-a-rolling.

Monday, Monday, So Good To Me..

Ah, Mondays. I suppose after reading thousands of Garfield comics in my younger days, I've been conditioned to loathe mondays (love lasagna and kick Odie off the table). But there's something about Mondays that creeps under my skin and crawls around like nobody's business (like those darn scarab beetles). But such is the life of this working stiff. Another week, another $300 (that sounds pretty sad, but hey, it's a summer job. Much better than minimum wage).

Today we covered Bones. Though this was an experiment I had covered previously with Angela She's Demos class a few months back, I've learned not to expect much from little kids. But surely rolling paper tubes is a simple enough task for them. Right?

Ah, to be so young and so naive. The experiment is to show why bones are hollow. Paper is rolled into loose hollow tubes as well as tight "solid" tubes to model the two potential bone designs. Then, stuff's piled on top to see which bone design is stronger. Now the hardest part of the experiment is the rolling of the tubes. I had a busy morning, and didn't have enough time to prep paper strips for them to just roll. So I stupidly figured I would have them tear their own strips. I gave each of them a sheet of copier paper and told them to rip it into four long strips. I even showed them how to do it and walked them step by step, showing them every crease and every rip. Even then, I had the perennial hopeless cases come up to me (read: N----) and whine that it was too hard. Some of these kids need to put down their DS's and learn how to do simple, everyday tasks.

Overall the experiment went well, I suppose. Today's lesson could be summarized in to a short Mr. Sakimoto Mantra: "HOLLOW BONES ARE STRONGER", which is always a good thing. I had a little issue with a group of boys in the C group, who upon making their solid bone rolls, began to pretend smoking with them. I was furious, for obvious reasons. At least they were smoking them like cigarettes, rather than joints, which is somewhat redeeming, I suppose.

I had the best lunch today, thanks to a little bit of creativity and having to dash to get ready for work. Last night we ate Korean from Gina's and I had leftovers. I didn't have time to get rice and all that jazz ready, so I made a sandwich.

Which turned out to be one of the best sandwiches I've eaten in a while. Here's the rundown: hamburger bun, with koo che jung paste (or however you spell it), my leftover BBQ chicken, romaine lettuce, and assorted ban chan (well, my brother's ban chan. Hey, he's always eating my food, I'm just easing his guilt) including daikon, beansprouts, seaweed, cabbage, and taegu. It's like bi bim bop in sandwich form. So good, I had to take a picture.

Perhaps not the worst Monday I've had. I was honestly not surprised to find that the two outcast trouble makers in the A group (M----- and A--) have become the closest of friends through their mutual exclusion. I cannot say the same for the two outcasts of D group (N---- and E----) who have developed such a disastrous antagonistic relationship, that I now need to physically separate them. I hope I never have to tell another story about their problems, but something tells me by the end of this job, half the tags on these posts are going to be about them.

And as usual:

Here's today's shirt-pocket. The inventory stands at three dry erase pens (because I forget to cap them and they dry out), a mechanical pencil with no graphite but a big eraser, a mechanical pencil with graphite but no eraser, my cellphone (because I'm constantly checking the time in hopes that it's time for recess), strips of paper (because it's physically impossible for anyone younger than 2nd grade to cut or rip paper nicely. I'd like to spend a class with some of these kids just developing fine motor skills. I think I could devote a whole class to folding paper evenly in half), and my name tag, as always. The kids told me they liked my shirt. You can't see it well, but there's a big dragon in some clouds along the torso. I bought it when I was 10 and it seemed like the coolest thing in the world at the time. And I was a huge child. I came to this realization after cleaning and going through family albums on Sunday. Pictures are forthcoming.

Only four more days until the weekend. Scratch that, 3 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 45 seconds. 3 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 39 seconds. 3 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 30 seconds....