The End of the School Year..

It's hard to believe how quickly the end of the year is approaching - it feels like we're moving at warp speed! But even so it can't come quickly enough...everyone is exhausted, students, teachers, administration, and we're all ready for a break. One of my colleagues observed that people think summer break is a remnant of the industrial age school model, but that really by the time summer comes we're ALL ready for a break and we really need it. I have to agree; by now even my cutest kids are getting annoying!

But even "annoying" they are still amazing - today we made brownies in class (tomorrow we are holding a bake sale to raise money for Burma disaster relief) and they were so excited and mesmerized by the process. Every step of the recipe was greeted by clamors of "I want to see" and "Ewwww!!" (when we mixed the oil and sugar). But cutest of all was the egg cracking - the recipe called for 4 eggs, so 4 students got to crack eggs, and those students were both terrified and really excited (I guess 8 year-olds don't crack a lot of eggs, or any really). The first student to get up was one who often has trouble concentrating in class (she's a year younger than the other students) and is also often excluded (or maybe controlled? She is so eager to please them they don't treat her as an equal.) by the other kids. But when she took that egg and cracked it on the table faster than anyone expected, she drew a loud "Ohhhhhhh!" and a spontaneous round of applause! The smile on her face was priceless!

The brownie making today was prompted by my kids' request for the brownie recipe a few days ago when they asked what I was making for the bake sale tomorrow. When I said brownies, one girl wanted the recipe and as soon as I started writing it down the others wanted a copy too. BUT I absent-mindedly forgot that the American measuring system is different from what a lot of places use and wrote everything down in cups and teaspoons. WY came in yesterday and said she'd made the recipe. "How was it?!" I asked. She shrugged and smiled noncommittally. "Teacher what is a cup? Like the paper cups we use in the lunch room (which are probably about 1/3 to 1/2 of a cup)? My Mom thought there was too much sugar (the recipe called for 1 cup) so we used half the amount of a paper cup."

Which means they probably used about a quarter cup of sugar which must have been a total disaster! The bulk of the recipe is sugar! Oh well - live and learn.