Another Day in the Life

You might or might not know that I'm spending my summer interning as a teacher in the city at a summer school. The experience has been, well, interesting. It's not always positive, but moments like these just inspire me to no end, this idea that maybe I'm making an impact on these kids' lives in return for their much larger contribution to mine.

So today the we learned about oil spills and my class simulated one of their own.

Over the past week, the kids have been learning about resources and have developed the concept that things are made from other things using other things. Today, I had made some simulated oil for our activity and had set it aside for the afternoon, when I noticed that it was missing midway through the morning.

Oh my goodness, I thought prematurely to myself, I don't want to get on to another kid. As much as they might not believe me, I really don't enjoy it.

I looked around and noticed Mr. Aviant hurrying to the door with the oil in hand.

"Aviant!" I shouted as I went to fetch him, "Where are you going with that?"

"I'm going to the place where they make bottles!" he answered nonchalantly as he continued out the door.

His answer stopped me dead in my tracks. You see, I had yet to tell them that this was oil (though vegetable oil wouldn't make very good plastic, but they don't know that yet), but Aviant had seen it, and applying what he had learned last week about plastic, bottles, and oil (and reading the book I've had lying on the shelf since the summer started), he decided he was going to go make bottles out of his newly found oil.

It's so wonderful being inspired by kids.