Pure Innocence

This has been quite a "unique" week with my 6th Graders...we're on the home-stretch of Life Skills and boy, are they disappointed!

It only took a few weeks for them to warm up to me, but it's obvious that the bond is growing.  They're starting to say that they don't want to see me go--and I gently remind them that I'll see them again when they get to 8th Grade...and some even tell me they like me more than their classroom teacher--and I quickly tell them that if they had to put up with me ALL day, they wouldn't think that way!  Especially on those days where I'm constantly splitting up students because my stern "Hey, guys!!!" with the evil eye has ceased to work...

Last Friday, as I was leaving a classroom, one of the more withdrawn boys ran up to me and gave me a HUGE hug before I could get out the door...and then he ran back to his seat.  It was kinda random but soooo sweet at the same time :-)  And I have another student who is constantly trying to establish a power struggle with me come up and give me a big hug in the middle of class yesterday!  I never would have guessed this student had a soft side to them ;-)

Then this past Wednesday, I had a student with a very serious question...I asked what his question was and he wanted to know if I had grown any since the previous week.  Umm, this took me off guard because after a certain age, you stop growing!  Turns out, this week was the first time I had worn a heel around them and since I had on long pants, the students couldn't tell!  Oh, the innocence of thinking a 28-year-old had a sudden growth spurt.

And yesterday--we were doing a writing activity when a student motioned me over to her desk.  I went over, asked what it was and she said she had something for me...oh, really???  She opened her hand and revealed a small, black rock...and she said she made it for me.  Last time I checked, you can't "make" a rock so I asked how she made it.  She quickly directed me to smell the rock--and of course all these horrible things start going through my head.  But the rock smelled like Sprite!!!  Turns out she smeared her Sprite-scented chapstick all over the rock before she gave it to me, thus "making it" for me.  Definately a unique gift, but it was so sweet of her!

At my last class of the day, I had another student ask if I wanted to see something creepy.  One, I don't like creepy stuff and two, what would a 6th Grader consider creepy?!  I said sure and turns out she could do a trick with her eyes...she explained it as, "You know how some people can run really fast?  Well, I can make my eyes move really fast!"  And how is that creepy?!  She showed me her eye trick and honestly, it was freaky!  She had some way of making her eyeballs literally start shaking...I've never seen anything like it before...I just want to know what made her realize she had that kind of ability!

My 6th Graders will be done with Life Skills in late January and then I'll be with mostly 8th Graders during the rest of the school year.  Something tells me the older kids won't be giving me hugs, rocks and showing me their tricks...but they have their own way of bonding.  I have one 8th Grader who knows how "spikey" my hair is from day to day, some of them have "favorite" outfits that I wear and then the boys--they're boys.  I've learned that with their age group, you can't call baseballs, 'balls.'  They go CRAZY!  Especially when I started talking about HITTING the (base)balls...but at least they're comfortable enough around me to laugh hysterically and it reminds me, that they're still a bit innocent themselves!