Cultural Differences

After the change to my classes, I am really starting to love one of my classes -- PK4B. They are in the 2nd or 3rd grade and they all speak English pretty well. We've been reading the story "Fireman Bill and the Dragon" this week and I can only cover five pages a day in eighty minutes, so we spend a lot of our time talking about things peripheral to the story.

During one such peripheral conversation today, I asked my students if they had ever seen a fire before. Of course, they all said they had seen one on TV or on the gas range, but one girl, Jackie, raised her hand to tell us a story. Her younger brother, at two (now three), set his grandparents' bed aflame with a lighter! Of course, I had to share the one from when I was two and I set the toaster on fire with a wooden spoon.

Later, we talked about "revenge" and "getting even." I gave them a bunch of examples. I said "If James puts a mouse in Jackie's backpack, what should Jackie do to him?" Everyone was shouting about punching James in the face and stealing his homework. Don't worry, I tried to reign the conversation back into building good people by asking if getting James back was okay, a good thing for Jackie to do. But I think I really lost them here because everyone is shouting yes! One girl, Molly, said "My mom told me if someone hits me, I should hit them back two times."

Uhhhh...cultural differences?