My kids are awesome

Just a heads up: this post has nothing constructive or useful or math related.  Just some gushing over how great my kids are because it's been on my mind all week.  Feel free to go read something else if that's not your thing.

So I think my kids this year are awesome.  Like really awesome.  A lot.  They are so funny and talented and interesting people.  They are helpful and they respect me.  They don't really like school or doing work and they drive me crazy fairly often but I still think they're awesome (most of them at least).  My classes are very small too so I already feel like I know each of them quite well.

I especially love it when my kids are smarter than I am and these kids are way smarter than me.  I teach at a vocational school so my kids are doing such cool stuff.  They think that I'm a big dork when I gush over how cool the stuff is that they're doing.  Actually I'm pretty sure they might think I'm just a big dork in general.  On Thursday a girl told me that I'm so weird because I take crafty to whole new level.  I totally take this as a compliment. :)

On Tuesday a kid asked to go to the bathroom and came back with a little shelf.  Said he made it in class and I could have it "because he really didn't need it."  It's in the picture on the right on the middle shelf.  Well I was thrilledddd.  I clearly love organization and I was so excited to have something that a student had made.  I'm new to the school so for all I know kids make things for teachers all the time, but it's still awesome to me.

The kids saw how excited I got and then my carpentry kids said that it was no big deal and they could really build me anything I want. Seriously that is like a dream come true.  I watch a lot of HGTV.  So much so that I've convinced myself that I could take on any home project myself.  In all honestly though, I probably can't.  So instead I just dream up ideas of stuff I'd like to make and now my kids are offering to make any of it happen.  I really can't even put into words how crazy awesome this is to me.  Of course I'm not going to take advantage of the fact and have them build me tons of stuff, but just that they could and would is enough.  (Maybe if I get some ideas here or there though they can help me out)

So this shelf turned into a class conversation of ways they could all contribute to amping up our classroom and making things I can use, they are still also laughing at how excited I got.  I can't even wait until next week to see everything happen that they're working on.

A couple of the projects involve furniture that they are building, things of mine they are fixing, and holiday decorations that they are making out of various materials (wood, sheet metal, pvc pipe, things that light up, etc).  They also helped me come up with a change in furniture layout that I'm so psyched about.  They're seriously so smart and creative.

I think it's so fun that they are all coming up with ideas for stuff to do and ways they can contribute. I'm totally letting them run with it.  I told them that I trust them and whatever decisions they decide to go with.  It just means a lot to me that they are spending their class time working on things for me.

So yeah, my kids are awesome.  That's all.