These kids are taking School of Rock to the next level by crushing Ozzy’s "Crazy Train" on the xylophones ?? pic.twitter.com/wYyRQdoEaf — Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) April 3, 2024 (See notes at bottom of post) Even by recent (low) standards, this has not been a cheerful week, so… National Teacher of the …
TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: Happy Nice StoriesPost + Comments (187)
As a second grade teacher, she created a curriculum using a diverse array of famous Americans that blends literacy and social studies. Today she works with 21 children whose first language is not English. She said her students speak five different languages, with their families hailing from five countries on four continents. Among them are children just beginning to learn English and older children close to mastery of English.
Watching a child acquire another language is “an amazing, magical transformation,” Testerman said. “There’s a level of excitement in a learner when they realize they are able to understand the language they are hearing around them.”…
The first full sentence she teaches students with no English is, “May I please use the bathroom.” It may sound trivial, but it’s vitally important for her students, along with basic phrases like, “I need some water, please,” or, “I need a pencil, please,” she said.
“Just to see how they light up at being able to give themselves a voice is just incredible,” she said.
Testerman also develops close ties with the families of her students. She goes out of her way to help them navigate American culture and integrate into the community. That includes things like teaching them about the local library system or the post office. She also takes steps to help her longtime neighbors in this Appalachian town of about 4,500 people to accept the newcomers.
“Simple gestures such as sitting with my students’ families at high school graduation or a school play goes a long way in helping them find acceptance in our rural area, since I have belonged to this community for decades and others trust my lead,” Testerman wrote in her finalist application…
Testerman said she primarily uses a translation app to communicate with her students’ parents. It works well, although it’s not perfect. After she was announced as a finalist, she got “a really sweet note from a mama about all the things I had done for her child,” she said, but with one language gaffe. The opening line? “Congratulations for nothing!”
The Cats: Tsching, Batzar and Blanc-Blanc, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, 1859 – 1923. Charcoal. https://t.co/XQfCvElzna pic.twitter.com/bcANFNYrcK
— Cats in Art (@CatsinArt1) March 6, 2024
When ships pass through Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean, the nearest land mass is 2,700 km (1677 miles) away.
This means that at certain times of the day (planes excluded), the nearest humans are on the International Space Station ~416 km (256 miles) up pic.twitter.com/XDGQ1LN7Ng
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 5, 2024
On the Crazy Train vibraphonists:
So this is the Louisville Leopard Percussionists, my son is in the group. They were on the July 25, 2018 episode of Ozzy and Jack’s World Tour performing this piece for him in person.
— 502run (@502run) April 3, 2024
YouTube link https://t.co/VQ6TAn8oUN
— 502run (@502run) April 3, 2024