Today is one of those days where you can't help but love a student and their work.

Last Friday I had my Storytelling Class with my Grade 3 and 4 students. This is the most difficult class that I teach by myself because the students are leaps and bounds from each other. As a teacher I always try to push my students little by little to improve; they've all read to me and I've given them some strategies to help them improve their reading and now I'm trying to leave them on their own to read. I'm not using the Ferber method though, I'll walk around and point to a word and ask them to read it to me. Some of the Grade 4 students can do this like it's their job so I've started asking them comprehension questions to challenge them further. 

That's a little back story for the activity I gave them last class. The activity was a worksheet where they would draw six pictures (but just three for my adorable IEPs) to retell parts of the story. I gave them all different books so they couldn't copy each other. The class is an hour so I read them a quick story, explained the task, (Using an example always helps. I forgot about that little tidbit.) distributed books, then let them get to work. I focused on my two IEPs for the most part: one's book was too perfect for this activity because it was a little boy's schedule, and the other got a non-fiction book about the desert with words way above his level. I'd rant about it but I've got a bigger one on the way. After some students finished drawing their pictures I would ask the weaker ones what they drew and penciled it onto their work 80% verbatim (to compensate for grammar mistakes etc.). Afterwards I was exhausted so I organized each student’s worksheet with the respective book and packed it up for the weekend. 

Today I came in, coffee in hand, ready to make my assessments from Friday. I went through two or three with no surprises at all, their levels are on par and the boys' drawings are standard crayon-in-fist while the girls took their sweet time doing a bang up job on rabbits and flowers. Then I came to the one that blew me out of the water. She is arguably my best student in the class and continues to demonstrate this. She was one of the students I didn't drill with questions because she's smart and has a great work ethic. I had the book she read, Birthday Present, open while looking over her panels. The first page shows a girl sitting at the table with her mother; the text explains the girl is thinking about her birthday. First pane: the girl with a thought bubble with a perfectly cylindrical birthday cake, candles included. WHAT!!? I was so excited, but really disappointed because I can't take any credit for this marvelous work. I kept reading the story and her panels were on par until a soapy ball of crap hit the book.

I apologize I don't have the book in front of me because I threw it across my office after finishing it. So this girl in the book, Lilly, is mentioning what she wants for her birthday to her mother. She wants something soft, big, exciting, and one other thing, I can't remember. So the mother starts thinking about this. The story shifts to the girl reading a book in her room. Next day, it’s Lilly's birthday which she celebrates with her mom and dad. For some retarded reason this girl now has angel wings, which the text doesn't explain at all. Then it’s time to open her BIG present so what did Lilly's mother decide to get her? NOTHING!! Lilly’s present was her mother!  I'm sorry but how much of a cheap, narcissistic jerk of a mother are you? 

"I know what my child wants: the person she sees every day!" 

Obviously this sweet little girl in my class has never had a birthday where she didn't receive something tangible as a gift, especially not her mother!! My student assumed the wings, which came out of nowhere, were her gift. But she still understood Lilly was happy, which was very perplexing to me. This would be like receiving a DVD one year and then the exact same DVD two years later from the same person, even though you didn't lose the DVD. For the record though, mothers should never be compared to DVDs.   

So, Melissa Kinneman, author and illustrator of Birthday Present and some excellent books in my library, I don't know what you mixed into your typewriter cocktail for this upsetting anti-materialist story but don't let it happen again!