Meet My Crazy Class

We just has spring break here at Bingham so I’m back after a long, relaxing, and well-deserved break from the classroom. Break wasn’t very eventful…I mostly just slept. But I’m not going to complain because it was good to just “not work”. Anyways…now that break is past and I have just two weeks left here at Bingham I’m going to try to overwhelm you with picture updates (particularly of my class) and funny stories. So allow me to (finally) formally introduce you to my beautiful class:




Top row (L-R): Me, Kate, Midian, Brayden, Sophia, Elshaddai, Riina, Isaac, Travis, Ms. Sink
Bottom row (L-R): Ms. Lidya (teacher assistant), Iabes, Furra, Robel, Naomi, Melodie, Nathan, Hawi

[yes, Hawi always smiles like that. He cracks me up. Reminds me of my brother actually]

A few more stories:

I’m just getting over an awful cold. It seems every year (or twice a year) I manage to get some crazy case of laryngitis and I either lose my voice entirely or get cursed with this deep manly voice for a week or so. Supposedly, I need to drink more water and change my toothbrush more frequently in order to avoid these annual illnesses…but I’ve never been very good at following doctor’s orders. One cup of water a day is sufficient. Well…this time around I didn’t lose my voice entirely; rather, I had a deep, awful manly voice for a while. Well, my first day attempting to teach with this voice was rather memorable. Sophia remarked, “Ms. Normandeau, you sound funny…. you sound like Hannah Montana”. Needless to say, the kids called me Hannah Montana for the remainder of the week.


Isaac and Travis, as you can see from the class photo, are identical twins. It took me the longest time to get their names straight and I still get them mixed up frequently. I learned to tell them apart from their teeth (Travis lost all of his front teeth so he looks like an old man while Isaac has yet to lose his). Beyond their teeth, I can’t tell them apart for the life of me so I’ve been praying that God just slows down the growth of Travis’ teeth until after I leave. ;) Well, when they figured out that I knew them by their teeth they decided to confuse me. They wore identical clothes for one week and wouldn’t smile so that they could hide their teeth. The solution: I made little nametag stickers and made them wear them on their foreheads. It was quite fun. I’ve enjoyed getting to know those boys…they are just hysterical. While they have very similar academic strengths and weaknesses to coincide with their identical images, they have very different personalities. Travis is insecure and shy while Isaac is carelessly confident and outgoing. Isaac usually speaks in “robot” language whenever he can….which makes me laugh. Every time. 


Riina (aka the “smartestminigeniusandmostpolitestandcutest” little girl in the whole world). I have no funny stories with Riina…I just want to always remember how incredible she is so I’m jotting her name down in this blog. Just last year in kindergarten, Riina spoke absolutely no English. She is from Finland and she had to have a translator at all hours of the day in order to progress into first grade. Well, Riina is the only one in my class who is able to write more than 2 pages with ease. In fact, she writes an average of 5 pages for every assignment simply because she wants to. In addition, she writes with absolutely no grammar, spelling, punctuation, or capital errors. Her fluency in English is better than my non-ESL students and she writes like a fifth grader. I just am amazed that she picked up the language so well over just one summer. Love her.

A few more pictures:

Before break started, I shared my coffee roasting experience with my class and they concluded that my ability to roast coffee is severely inadequate. So they decided to show me how to do it…

My “inadequate” coffee roasting experience:




The right way to roast coffee:




…And these pictures simply crack me up:




We had a little “birthday party” for Bersaber that day (who was missing in the whole-group picture, by the way. –she’s the one in the black and white checkered dress) and we wanted to get a good birthday picture for the yearbook. But…back to the picture as a whole…Do all boys smile like that pre-puberty?



Believe it or not…they were actually excited to take that picture. ….not. Don’t they look awfully depressed? The middle school students drew fantasy pictures and insisted that my class try them on for size.

More to come,
-Nicole