Changes...

As much as I am happy for the Holidays... right now I am also ACTUALLY excited to go to school. My students have been amazing. In the past few days, my kids have been in love with learning-- and that means that they have been respectful, kind, and on task. They don't want to let me down, and more than anything they want to feel like they are being challenged. This is a phenominal change, and I am loving it. I love that I feel like a TEACHER the last few days, rather than a security guard. I think this need for learning and challenge is rare in a BD classroom-- as much as kids might WANT to be smart, BD kids have a hard time not being overwhelmed when they are introduced to new things (ex: learning) and then they exhibit the behaviors that got them classified. My kids have been able to overcome this in the past few days, and all I can say is that I hope it continues this way after we return from this break.

A Parallel Land

As I am visiting Cameroon, Africa, I can't help but see the striking similarities between the large cities here and Newark, NJ. Infact, after just arriving in Douala, Cameroon I had a hard time distinguishing that I was anywhere other than Newark. Albiet I was generally delerious from he overwhelming amount of travel I did, but it just seems very similar.

Douala looks much like Newark. The only difference that is noticable is that the roads here are not paved, and the dirt is red, rather than brown. The people, the buildings, the music, the rap artists, the smells... they are all very similar to Newark. They speak English here-- "special english" that is-- but even that is not far from the thick Jersey accents and the deep talking that we hear in Little Bricks.

There is much more that I want to share about this parallel land-- but it is not easy to get things done on the computers here (a difference I must add between Newark and Africa), so I will write more when I return to the States.