Bring Your Mother to Work Day

 ***I found some great pictures on my work computer from when Debbie came to work with us so I am taking a break from my Beijing posts to share them.***

We convinced Mom a few different times to come to work with us and help us teach.
It was REALLY fun to have her in class. The kids loved it, but I think Joe and I enjoyed it the most.

There was something really special about sharing our students and our daily teaching life with her. Teaching in front of her and watching her teach. It was definitely one of the highlights of their trip for me.

For the kindergartners I had found a cute craft to go along with the Eric Carle book, The Grouchy Ladybug. I thought it would be the perfect activity for Debbie to do with the kids.

A few days before Debbie was planning on coming to work with us I had all of the kids make a grouchy face and I took their pictures.
We would later use those grouchy pictures to make personalized grouchy ladybugs.

When Debbie came to school with us it was really cute to see all of the kids respond to her so well. She read them the story and talked to them about what makes them grouchy.
It was fun to be the "student" and watch her teach. After we were finished in the gym we moved over to one of the kinder classrooms and began to assemble our grouchy ladybugs. All of us had to decide what made us grouchy.
Some of my favorites are;

Steve: I am grouchy when......the Samsung baseball team loose.
Claire: I am grouchy when.....Torie my dog will not play with me.
Clara: I am grouchy when......my grandmother doesn't know what I am saying.

There were a few "when the TV is broken" and "so and so won't play with me"

Joe wrote; I am grouchy when the Oregon Ducks don't win.
Debbie wrote: I am grouchy when I must leave my kids and go back to the United States.

At the time of this little project we were having a heat wave and in true Randall luck, our air conditioning broke. We had 4 fans running 24/7 and it was still 90 degrees with 80% humidity in our little apartment. It was miserable.
I wrote: I am grouchy when it is too hot in my home and I can's sleep.

(Our apartment is provided by our school. I had brought over our vice principal to show her that the air conditioning was truly broken (she was convinced that I simply didn't understand how to turn the unit on properly). When I brought her over it was 87 degrees in our apartment and the AC was running full blast. She was standing in the middle of our apartment, with beads of sweat dripping down her temples, and she said to me; "See, the air conditioning is working. This is right." 
The next day I spoke to our principal, there may or may not have been tears, but we got a new AC unit installed the next weekend. )

Anyway, the grouchy ladybugs turned out SO cute!
I found about a million cute pictures and couldn't decide which I wanted to put up, so I made a slide show so that I could have them all!
Click play and enjoy.

Debbie also sat in on one of Joe's kinder classes and took these cute pictures. I love watching Joe with the youngest students. They adore him and he is SO cute sitting in the little chairs with them.

We put Debbie to work in a writing class Joe and I were teaching together. I love the pictures of her working with the little boy. They both look like they are really concentrating.

The younger kids LOVED the special attention from Mr. Joe's mom.

She must have had a good time because she come back again to teach the older kids the next day. Joe and I some how got ourselves wrangled into teaching a CNN/Speech/Debate class. We find articles/videos, share them with the kids, then we talk about it and share our opinions. Sometimes it is really fun and the kids (ages 12-14) participate and are all getting along and have manageable hormone levels. But most of the time they are annoying, pubescent middle schoolers that require way too much patience. (secretly I really do enjoy these little monsters but I will never admit it to them)

I love how serious Debbie looks on one picture, then in the next I am sitting on a desk and Joe looks zoned out on the computer.

We loved "bring your mom to work day". I can't wait until we all live closer and she can come to work with us more often.