The first two happened while the 6th grade was journaling. One of the boys put up his hand, and when I went over to see what he wanted, he asked me which "there/their" to use. Up until that point, I wasn't convinced that any of them realized that different forms of that word exist/matter, let alone thought about which to use when. But he had "the" written on the page, and his pen poised for the next letter.
To understand the next moment, you must also know that it takes massive amounts of effort, patience, repeated commands, and physical escorts to make the 6th graders settle down for 10 minutes of journaling. One of the bounciest girls, after finally settling down, announced, when we were done journaling, "What if we want to write more? I'm not finished!" And she had written more than most of her classmates!
Finally, during the last block of the day, the "Math Enrichment" class for Ana, a few students, and me, I sat down with one of the brightest kids in the 6th grade. A math teacher from St. Louis University High School had been working with him on Algebra, and today I got to help him. He figured out how to add a negative and a positive number! It may seem small, but he figured it out on his own! And he was doing 9th grade math!
Those are the moments teachers live for. That and the really dumb things kids say!
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