Slice of Life 2022: 30 of 31- Thinking about brick and straw houses

 t's March, and March means the Slice of Life Story Challenge. All are welcome to join the challenge of noticing and writing about the moments of daily life that are stories.

One of my favorites second-grade teachers stopped into my office this afternoon. 

"I never see you anymore," she said, and I agreed. 

We covered a lot of personal life for the first few minutes, and I have to say that her baby girl is one of the cutest babies I've ever seen. She offered some kindergarten teaching tips because she started her career as a rock-star kindergarten teacher before moving from grade to grade, and I have met my match in a kindergarten class. Then we started talking about her current writing classroom. She and her team are doing a quick foray into fairy tale writing before moving on to their opinion writing unit, which is focused on writing about reading. 

"You want to be provocative," I said. " I could even come in and we could be theatrical."

We had some good laughs, envisioning the students' reactions if I came in and debated Jabari's bravery in Jabari Jumps. Yes, he gets a lot of credit for jumping off that diving board, but he was scared to to it, and instead of being true to himself, he caved to all of the pressure around him. Is that true bravery? I could argue that... Mercy Watson's mother is one of my favorite characters to question in front of adoring second-graders because was she really that responsible of a parent? I could argue that, and I could provide (and have provided) plenty of text evidence. 

Our favorite one that we landed on ended up being the first of the three little pigs, especially since they are deep into fairy tales. (Yes, I know that's a third-grade thing, but our district has kept it in second grade. That's another post...) One of her students is on a point system, and his goal is to get ten points a day. By his afternoon music class, he'd already earned his ten points, so he didn't participate. When asked why, he was very clear that he had already earned his points for the day, so there was no need. Tough to argue that line of thinking for a kid who doesn't like music and doesn't have intrinsic motivation yet. 

"I think he could relate to the first little pig," Hayley said. "I think he might really get into this."

As we talked about that first little pig, we thought about his brilliance. He didn't need to work hard at building his house because someone else was taking care of that for him and would welcome him in if he got into trouble. Why work harder than he had to? Why do more than was required? That first little pig had a happy outcome even though he had built his house of straw! 

As we thought about it more and laughed about it harder, we recognized that we both have plenty of people in our lives who metaphorically build straw houses and come hang out in our metaphorical brick ones. A lot more to think about when it comes to those three little pigs!