Sound Blog 7

"Lego Crimes"

5 Questions

1) What elementary teacher lets their students start an economy based off of a lego currency?
2) Did she ever laugh at her students over their lego dilemmas?
3) How did these "grade school gangs" develop?
4) Was this something that was traditional?
5) Did the teachers think that these students had potential in the life of possibly the mafia?

6 Details

Micaela Blei is an elementary school teacher whose class runs "underground" gangs. They are not the violent type of gang but more like a 7,8, or 9 year-old, "think I'm bad" kind of gang. There are 3 grades ranging from second to fourth. According to Micaela, the students contain a lego currency; each piece having its own value. In this story, some jewels, valuable pieces, are stolen from another grade and suspicion is raised. Micaela's students confront her, explaining that their jewels are missing. Micaela went along the students, trying to get a confession. She finds that one of her students had taken all the "jewels" and built a spaceship. She comes up with a plan to get the "jewels" back to the students; to convince the student to dismantle his spaceship. Her plan works and she ends up secretly putting back all the jewels. In the end, Micaela finds herself as an accessory to a "third-grade crime."

How I feel

While I listened, I couldn't stopped laughing. I couldn't believe that these seemingly small and so young elementary schoolers could manage such intense schemes on one another. They even go as far as to rob other students of their prized lego bits. I found this to be particularly funny because of how much elementary school has evolved over the years and how suprised Micaela was that her students could pull off such huge "heists." Personally, I would recommend that anyone listen in to this story on "The Moth".