Today was the first day of 'Super Saturday', a series of 5 Saturday mornings where kids from K-8 sign up for enrichment classes in the area and learn all sorts of cool things, like cooking, robotics, bridge building, chess, foreign languages, calligraphy, cryptography and so on. I teach the bridge building and cryptography classes. For those who don't know what cryptography is, it is
not the art of tagging graves with graffitti. (Hah.) It is the science of secret writings. Codes. Ciphers. Encryption. That sort of thing, but this is for kids. They eat it up.
Every once in awhile I get someone in my classes that is either hyper-energetic (not to be confused with hypoallergenic) or who knows a lot about the subject matter and is very eager to share. I have a young boy in my cryptography clas that is very knowledgable in some of the basic codes, and while he does not come off as a know-it-all, the rest of the class is feeling the weight of his prior knowledge.
I've already warned him not to 'steal the teacher's thunder', and he understood what it meant, but the request was quickly lost as we went through some of the basic codes. He'll be a handful this time around. I almost can't wait to show him something that he doesn't know, just so that he'll be quiet and learn about it. I think I may have impressed him that I know more about his world than he knows about mine. While he was waiting for the rest of the class to finish an assignment, he started doodling. And he drew a rather detailed spaceship that looked familiar.
So I looked at it, and commented, "Someone's been watching 'Star Wars: Clone Wars', haven't they?"
He looked up at me and said, 'How do you know about that?'
Then I took his shaken-up mind and gave it a drop kick. "That's the Malevolence that you just drew, isn't it?"
"How do you know this??" he said, amazed.
Score. 
Also in this class, I had my first ever emotional breakdown! It was heartbreaking on its own. The young boy couldn't grasp the concept, which was my fault for not explaining it properly. But once we got the idea down, he was good to go. So many young sponges.
This time was also the first time I had a class in my 'advanced' cryptography class. That was fun, trying to shake the cobwebs loose from kids that had already taken the 'beginner' class. That might be a way to repackage the classes, come to think of it. Anyway, one of them has a 'secret spy book' that shows all sorts of ways to be a spy and use code tools, gadgets, codes, etc. Last year he was the one who stole the show for a bit, until we got to a point where I showed them all some things that weren't in the book. It was fun to watch him start to learn something new, and see the class' reaction that hey, the book isn't going to be all the spoilers that they thought! And whoa, this code is wild! This same boy is now in the advanced class, and he brought his book. Too bad there's nothing in the book that I'm going to teach them! LOL
Also for the first time, I have more girls than boys in bridge building. That, I think, is awesome. It's almost a 2:1 ratio. Future mechanical and civil engineers! And they learn just as fast, if not faster, than some of the boys. So phooey to anyone who thinks girls can't pick up engineering!
Lotsa firsts.
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On a side note, ever cry at a cartoon or animated feature? 'Bambi' counts.
But have you done it recently? I did, watching a death scene in the anime Naruto.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
That's what I love about anime. They don't sugarcoat the scenes. Characters die. Sometimes violently. And they don't come back. Characters fall in love, or discover something about themselves as they grow older. And they age too. At least, in some of the better-written animes. Yeah, there will always be anime that is kid-friendly and sweet and doesn't touch on some of the more adolescent or adult themes (and I'm not talking about sex, though you can get that too if you're so inclined), but there are also the ones out there that do have those themes. That's what makes them more 'real', and that's why I like anime. Naruto seems to be filling the void now like that.
fun
