Days 14-17

We all knew that my life was going to get crazy busy and my daily posts were going to stop. So I apologize that I packed 4 days into one post.


Day 14: Learn to write my name in Chinese. I would like to say that I have mastered my name in Chinese and I am signing my credit card receipts with it... But I am not. It is still cool to know how to write it.

Kate 凯特

Day 15: Take a dare from my students: eat Tajin seasoning straight out of the bottle.
So if you know kids, you know they go through these weird phases. One of these trends or phases always has to do with food. One of the most popular foods (if you can even call it that) are:

Flamin' Hot Cheetos. Kids beg, plead, and trade for these things!!

But strangely enough the "Cheeto obsession" has died down. The more recent one is eating Tajin seasoning:

My students eat it by the handful. I mean kids do weird stuff. So after confiscating my fair share of bottles. I decided to have a sit down with my students about how disruptive it is to be secretly eating seasoning during class. All they got out of the conversation was, "But Miss Kate, you gotta try it!". Oh brother.....
So at recess I broke down and was given a handful of it. All I could think was, what am I doing?!

I will spare you the agony of eating Tajin seasoning ALONE. But it is awful, if you eat it alone.

I have yet to put it on fruit (which apparently is amazing), but since I have about 5 bottles that I confiscated from my students, I am sure, I will try it at some point.

Day 16: Make up a secret handshake with my students.

If my students knew I was telling you.....uff I would be in trouble ;)

But in all seriousness, we are trying to build a great community environment in our classroom and so I decided to let my kids create a secret handshake that only our class knows.

We voted on what movements to do and if we had any sound affects (I put the kibosh on sound affects REAL fast!). We worked together, which to me was the most important part of the activity.
But, by the end we were all laughing, even my most resilient student was excited to do the handshake with me.
I say success!

Day 17: Take a mindfulness course.

Mindfulness is a form of meditation. It is a way to maintain calm awareness of the body and mind.

Mindfulness is often associated with Buddhism because it is one of the 7 factors of enlightenment. But pushing aside religion, I was introduced to mindfulness at school. I was told it would be really good for my students to practice, especially since we have an extremely full day. But before I could introduce it to my students, I would have to try it out first.
I did two forms of meditation, one focused on my body and releasing the tension and the second was focused on my breathing.
WOW!
If I wasn't a believer before, I was definitely after. It was amazing. I felt much more calm and relaxed....
Next time my kids are running amuck in the classroom, I am just going to lay down and begin mindfulness:
Meditation, the state of being.
Oh I can imagine my student's faces now!