"I knew she would be good"

Today was my last day of student teaching at Beach Elementary School. For the last 5 weeks my math class has been working on mastering their multiplication table and I told them that if everyone passed all of their tests 2s through 12s that we would have a Krispy Kreme party. Well, they got really close, inevitably there was one girl who hardly passed any of her tests and was absent all the time but what was I going to do? I couldn't very well negate the hard work of all the other students so we had a "celebration of achievement" with Krispy Kremes and a few rounds of Quizmo (a game like Bingo where I say a problem like 6 x 7 and they mark 42 if it on their board.) They loved it.

Lunch came quickly and as I was packing up my car with all my files and things I remembered that I had promised Koleman and the boys in my reading class that I would play football with them sometime before I was done teaching at Beach. Well today was my last day and my last chance. Luckily I had a spare pair of running shoes in my car and a football (which I always keep in my trunk with a soccer ball because you never know when you are going to be presented with the opportunity to play an impromptu game of football or soccer) and I waited for Koleman at the door of the cafeteria. The boys were soooo excited that I was going to play with them they didn't believe it until we went up to the field.

The game went like this: 10 boys on one team, 9 on the other plus me, 8 girl cheerleaders yelling "Go Ms. Perkins!" and in the end 3 touchdowns scored by Ms. Perkins to lead her team to a 5 to 3 victory...You may think it is funny that I am all excited about scoring touchdowns on a bunch of 10 and 11 year olds but the game was actually a work out! Some of the boys are taller than me and they are all pretty fast! Needless to say by the end, I was off the charts in coolness factor for them. Comments were heard for the rest of the day in all three 5th grade classes like "Did you see that first touchdown? She just came out of no where, caught it and ran for the TD!"
"She is definitely the MVP of the game!" and "What about the last one when Alexie was guarding her and she caught it one handed in the endzone!!"

Ms. Harris, one of the other 5th grade teachers said that Koleman was giving her the play by play after lunch and she said to him, "Why are you so impressed with her? Would you be just as impressed if it where a 24 year old guy that played that well with you?" He stopped and thought, "No, I guess not"

"So," Ms. Harris said, "you are only impressed because she is a girl who can play football and you didn't think she would be good?"

Koleman responded, "No, Ms. Harris, I knew she would be good, just not THAT good!"

So if I don't go down in any history books in the kids minds as being the greatest student teacher they ever had for the academic material I taught them, at least they will always remember me as the girl student teacher who could play football! It was a great high note to end on...I am going to miss them but I am glad to be done as well...(o: