Charlotte

Last night I had the privilege of getting to see Barack Obama in person. It was 100% worth the 4 hour hunger-crazed wait. As a teacher, I know that I'm not allowed to share any political beliefs with my students or even tell them who I'm voting for. I don't totally get why this matters when the people I'm "influencing" are six, but whatever. I follow the rules. But I also feel like seeing the President of the United States is a big deal, no matter what your politics, and worth sharing with my students. And it raised some hilarious questions and comments. For example, Anna said that she knows that if the president dies, then the woman takes over. I gleaned that she was referring to Sarah Palin as a VP candidate. And then Presley said, "A woman has been president before." "No, there has not been a woman president yet," I said. "Yes, there has!" "Not of the United States, no." "Yes, there was one!" I don't understand why they don't believe that I might know more than them.

Later in the day we had free choice time and I was sitting grading papers when a large shiny black plastic-looking spider, like no spider I had ever seen, came waltzing by my desk. I made some sort of loud reactive sound, and all of the kids rushed over to see what it was. I encouraged them to help me kill it, but really just stayed in my seat as they all started to stomp near it. One girl finally got it and I felt a wave of relief. Then I got two kleenexes and attempted to pick its dead body off the floor but flinched and hesitated because it was so disgusting. So Anna grabbed the kleenex out of my hand and calmly picked up the body and threw it in the trash. Sometimes I'm so terrible at being an adult.

After the spider-killing, I remembered that we are actually reading Charlotte's Web right now, and in the next chapter we meet Charlotte (who is a spider if you had no childhood). I hope I didn't traumatize my students too much, and I'm guessing that will be the last spider we kill this year.