Spoon Day

So this post must be prefaced with a few disclaimers.  The first being that my kids mourne the loss of M.J. as they call him (Michael Jackson) on a daily basis and think that the only president this country has ever had is Barack Obama and that he will be the last one that we ever have - pray that their beliefs are not prophetic or all that our forefathers have fought for and tried to establish throughout the war is going to be in vain!

The other important belief that some of my children hold is that I am not white.  I'm not really sure what color they think I am though I've been told that I am the vanilla icing on top of their chocolate cupcake but maybe the white/black idea and all that it really is in our world hasn't quite cast its shadow on their's.

So this is how MLK Day went in first grade for us:

We read a book about his life and talked about all of the changes he made for the world and how he made them.  They wrote him "Thank you" notes many of which were very heartfelt and beyond their years.  One student wrote: "Dear Dr. Martin, Your dreams have come true in our country.  Thank you for making our world a better place."  Really touched my heart, one of those teaching moments where you forget about how much money you don't make and realize that some moments in life really are priceless.  And then we watched the movie clips on his life this afternoon and I realized that maybe I need to challenge my students a bit more in their learning. 

The following is the narration of this 15 minutes:
Me pointing out big words like prejudice, peace, protest.  Important moments in his life: when he couldn't play with his white friend anymore, going to college, defending Rosa Parks, etc.

During the childhood scene, I ask, "What does Martin Luther King look like?" to which I get the response, "He got big teeth."  I decided not to press this answer and made sure they were paying attention to the movie so that I could turn my back and laugh... no mention of skin color which is the obvious for my older apparently jaded teacher self.

During the adolescent clip when they were highlighting the importance of church, family, and Sunday supper in Martin's life (I'm not making the last comma up), the same child who answered the above question raises her hand to ask a serious question and asks, "How come he could only get one piece of chicken?"  True story, that was all she noticed.

In our class we give our friends the nickname of "Spoon."  Good spoons spread peace (we added love today after learning about Dr. King fighting hate with love) and bad spoons stir up trouble.  So we discussed how we could be like MLK and how he inspires us to be good spoons.  I asked a student from next door who was in my room for think time (aka: my teacher can't take me anymore time) if she would want to be like MLK.  She quickly responded, "No!"  So I asked again and told her to think about the conversation that we had just had about all of the changes that MLK made through peace and love.  She again responded "No!" emphatically followed by a very strong statement "I don't want to die like that!"  Fair enough, I decided that I couldn't top that and it was 2:35 time to pack up and go home, hopefully they were allowed more than one piece of chicken for supper tonight! 

Happy Spoon Day!  Spread peace and love, don't stir up trouble!