What a crazy week. Did you know that there were 2 earthquakes in Texas this week? As incredibly bizarre and inconceivable as that sounds, it's true. Pretty minor ones, but earthquakes nonetheless.There was a 2.5 magnitude quake in Grand Prairie around 11:30 on Thursday night, then a 3.0 magnitude tremor in Irving around midnight. GP and Irving are very close to where I live, but not close enough for me to have felt anything. I heard about it the next morning and wondered if someone had mistaken Halloween for April Fool's Day.
Earlier this week, my school had a mock election. All of the kids received ballots that had names and pictures of the 3 candidates and their running mates. I don't even remember the names of the 3rd party contenders, except that one was Barr. There was also a line for write-in votes. I was kind of hoping someone would vote for Mr. Teacher.
Walking around the room while the kids were voting, I noticed that one child had put a check in the box for McCain, and he was writing in Obama's name on the write-in line. I had to explain to him how this was not proper procedure.
Later in the afternoon, when the votes had been tallied, it was announced on the loudspeaker that the results were in. McCain had 120 votes, Obama had 640 votes, Barr had 1 vote, and there had been 1 write-in vote for Martin Luther King, Jr.
When the kids heard that Obama had won, they went nuts cheering. I had no idea that 3rd graders were so into the political fray, or that they were such big supporters of Barack Obama.
The cynical side of me kind of has a feeling that many of them thought they were voting for THE Rock, instead of BA-rack, which would go a long way towards explaining their joy in the results.
4 comments:
I wish we had done a simple paper ballot mock election. Instead our district did this complicated on line thing.
I spent a week registering students in my class (I have them 1x a week for 45 minutes)
Then I spent to days getting kids in and out of my lab as the polling place. I got called out while the 1st graders were voting because the principal's computer decided to go ballistic while he got out an important report.
The music teacher took over - and in the craziness didn't realize the entire 1st grade voted on line then used a paper ballot (for those whose number didn't work for some reason).
I was really upset by the awful bigoted statements I heard from our 5th and 3rd graders. (They were directed at both major party candidates. )
Have you seen the clever MoveOn.org video about Barack the vote? The funny one about one lazy voter being the difference in the whole election?
Have you seen the "Babies for Obama" vid on Youtube? I'm thinking that it's just a lot funner to say "oh-BAMMMA!" but OMG, that vid is just soooo adawwaboo!
I myself noticed that many third graders were very into the election. They would ask me who I was voting for, and while I kept my vote to myself, they proudly announced they were voting for Obama. I asked a few why they were voting for Obama, hoping for some great answer from an eight-year-old. Of course I got many "I dunno"s and shrugs. I think it is important that we teach the students to choose candidates on their beliefs and not what their parents want them to do. I know elementary schoolers are not going to be able to understand the issues, but I know many voters in college who do as they are told by mom and dad.
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