A Trip to the Park

Today was one of the greatest days of the year for my children, we took them to the park. After finishing two weeks of successful testing, we were able to convince my principal to allow us to take our children to the park that is two blocks away. My co-teacher is fantastic with our kids, and he provides a much needed male role model for our boys. He played football with them non-stop for two hours today, and they loved every minute of it. I am VERY lucky to co-teach with such a great person.

Overall, testing went pretty well. Every day after we finished testing I would read The Cay to my kids. Today we wrapped up the book and had a really great discussion. The book is dedicated "To Dr. King’s dream, which can only come true if the very young know and understand." My kids then read Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech and we talked about how it applied to them. It was really exciting to see them really become engrossed in the reading. They were really engaged, and seemed to feel it was a privilege that I would give them the text to the actual speech, rather than just telling them about it. Everyone was eager to read, and they all had input for our discussion. We hadn't had a lot of discussions about race up to this point in the year, and I was very impressed with the way they used accountable talk, and felt safe discussing very serious issues as a class. I'm really excited to teach Number the Stars and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry to see what they have to say about the issues these books deal with.