[Note: I am choosing not to say anything about the defeat this week of the DREAM Act and repeal of DADT in the Senate. There are already enough eloquent words about these. I also don't have anything on the execution in Virginia last night, apart from Lord, have mercy on us. This week, my spectacular students are just too spectacular and even large-scale disappointments are no match.]

I really, really love the kids I teach. Some of them are predictably adolescent and, as is normal, I have a hell of a time getting them to take anything seriously. But they are so great - all of them. Yesterday was our first day of English-only classes and they went so well! I had a whole lesson brewing in my head - a walking tour of the community where we could learn useful vocab while building on asking and answering questions (what we've most recently studied). That all got blown to bits when I found an English copy of Green Eggs and Ham.

Oh my, but that book is perfect for what we've been learning - questions, "I like"/"you like," new vocab - all with a healthy dose of repetition. It also allowed me to set up the future and conditional tenses ("Would you, could you in a boat?" etc.). I had 7th grade first and they were such troopers. There were a couple of momentary crestfallen looks when things didn't compute immediately, which set us up to learn the phrases "this is REALLY, REALLY DIFFICULT" and "just breathe!"

At the end of the 7th grade class, after I had officially closed off the lesson and was almost out the door, I turned around and assured them (in Spanish) that they could come and clarify things with me during recess. A minute later, one of the squirreliest of the 7th graders was in the office grabbing a chair and he was downright ecstatic about the class. It was really difficult, but a lot of fun(!), he said. He also said that they were all really surprised at the end when I switched back to Spanish. "It sounded so strange after hearing you speak English for an hour - we were all shocked!" That level of excitement from Evaristo was one heck of a vote of confidence.

Then later, during recess, another really sweet moment. There's a guava tree in the in schoolyard that reminds me profoundly of The Giving Tree. It has no bard left because the kids climb all over it all day, every day. But it produces hundreds of guayabas each year. At this point in the season, most of the easy-to-reach fruits have been picked and what remains are either close-but-not-ripe or WAY out where only the smallest middle schoolers ought to climb. (Though that does stop some of the medium ones - especially when what they need is for someone to weigh down a limb so that the fruits are reachable from the ground.)

For me it's sort of heart-attack-inducing to watch them - the kind of thing that would give MPS lawyers a liability stroke. But climb they do. And yesterday, after a good 15 minutes of searching, maneuvering, and reaching, one of the kids grabbed himself one. Now, I already sort of have a soft spot in my heart for Milton because he reminds me a TON of a guy from the theater at South and he also is always ready to volunteer in class and willing to make mistakes and learn from them. I'd been watching for several minutes, occasionally encouraging, more often commenting that I was going to die just from watching. So after all of this, he comes up and gives me the guayaba, complete with the wormy part picked out. I tried to deflect, then I suggested sharing it, but he would have none of it. This was my guayaba and that was it. It was quite tasty, and not only because it was perfectly ripe.