Day of the Dark Horse

Edit:Actually posted 6/4/07 but pre-dated so it is hidden as people were being fuckwits
Re-edit: Now with picture

Today is only halfway through, actually mostly, but hey, and it's definitely been a day of surprise... in my kids, sorry nothing really that interesting to you guys but I gotta record this for myself.
Today I noticed one of my Kindy kids for the first time, not literally, but you know that kid who sits there, keeps to themselves, does their work,doesn't annoy anyone,does what they're told, that was her, good old Briar.
I think she's actually been a little bit scared of me, well anyway today I took the kids up to the playground in the middle of the morning, (I had no control all morning) and for the first time Briar came up to me for attention, she wanted me to play with her. I guess I had semi-unconsciously written her off. But then I realised, this kid is great, she is a good student, and now she's interacting with me. After this newfound recognition that she was in fact human, back in the class,
I had a look at her work and she's one of the brighter kids, I was stoked, I have found another good kid, my class is slowly but surely dividing itself in my mind. What was really awesome was then after Kindy, I found a little parcel that she'd given me this morning, I'd completely forgotten about it. (It's not like I get lots of presents or anything, I've only had one other, which was a piece of homemade walnut caramel cake from Roger, it was awesome).
It was wrapped in a little piece of green paper, so I unwrapped it and there's a little self made envelope, with a little sticker of the NZ flag on it, I was stoked, so I open it up and inside is a piece of paper that she's written on herself in perfect spelling(I'm assuming the parent wrote it out first) but also, we're only up to J in the alphabet and all her letters are drawn right and there's only one eraser mark.



Brad tea
cher (a smiling face with the label Brad)
Howareyou?
Briarlike icecr
eam Thankyou
verymuch
I Love you
Brad

Wow, this beats the cake, this is great, I'm going to treasure this
I'm gonna try and find a scanner or otherwise upload it, but still as I said before this is more for me than for you.
Also I'm not sure if there's a photo of Briar on Picasa, I know I have one at home but I don't think I uploaded it, I'll put it up and update the post when I get home.
You probably don't understand the amount of torment these kids put me through, this made my week to see one kid who can write and has wanted to write me a letter, to get some kind of recognition for your hard work from 5yo Non-English speakers is a big ask I know but she did it.

Also, the 'I love you' my kids have learnt last night, cos they didn't know it yesterday but today, in the elevator up to the playground, three of my girls told me "I love you Brad teacher"

Now for dark horse number two, Lucienne in my KG1A class (first year of school, 3/4th year of English) she's new to the class, most of the class has stayed together from last year, but she came up from the class down with 4 others (2 of whom don't belong) so she's taken a while to adjust. But today I gave the class a dictation test (as I do every day, they study a whole lot of sentences overnight and I read them a few of them and they write them down) and this is by far the hardest test I've given them, and she makes one mistake, she missed an 'a' in one of the sentences. This dictation was hard, I doubt anyone of you could get it all right.

And that is all.
Cheers