The kids who need preschool the most June 26, 2008
This article in the San Jose Mercury News reports that only 15% of preschool-age children living in poverty are in high-quality programs. This is where I want to tear my hair out and rant that we should more like the French and the Italians, and have universal preschool. This is where I want to run around and shove yell, “Wake up, people! We are missing an incredible opportunity to reduce crime and poverty and illiteracy!”
I used to teach kindergarten in high-poverty areas. Every day I went home feeling like a failure, because it was so hard to give my students everything they needed — but had not received — in their first five years of life. I needed to go backward and get them through preschool, but then to have enough time to get them through kindergarten and ready for first grade was almost impossible. Now that I teach preschool, I can take a child who has missed much of what he needed in his first four years of life, and take him through a year of rich preschool experiences, and yes, get him completely ready for kindergarten. It is amazing the difference a year makes.
Teaching on the Titanic June 26, 2008
What a discouraging week. The lead master teacher at my school has decided to work elsewhere. She wants to work at a school with strong leadership and a staff dedicated to improving results for children. That witch!!! Seriously though, can you blame her?
So I am left contemplating a return to work in the fall, minus the one person who knew what we needed to do to improve, minus 3-4 great teachers who have left for better schools, and with a principal who seems utterly incapable of providing the leadership we need.
In one of her last acts as a master teacher at my school, Wonder Woman sent out a report on how we did meeting our goals for the year. Only K, 2, and 3 did well. Everyone else actually increased the number of students failing the state test.
I want to quit the mentoring program, go into my classroom, shut the door, and focus only on my kids, to the exclusion of every single freakin’ adult in my building.
ahh, summer June 16, 2008
Things are looking up. Finally.
After my not-so-great last day of school, I had a not-so-great last day for teachers. My children came to work with me, and I thought they might be helpful, but instead they were bored and underfoot. I tried to keep them busy and slogged away at taking things down, cleaning, organizing, covering, labeling. At last I was able to palm the boys off on a friend — having promised to take her sons the next day — and managed to finish up. At the end of the day my pedometer read 19,000 steps, which was a personal record. (My previous highest was 18,000, and that had only happened once.) And most of those steps were in my classroom, just trudging around, cleaning up.
I said goodbye to people, but not with any real sadness. It was one of my uncomfortable realizations this year that I don’t have any really close friends at work, and that I never have. Odd as it may seem, I just don’t have that much in common with them. Ah well. My close friends exist, they are just not at school.
Then, Friday came. My first full day of summer vacation, and it was wonderful. I had four boys in my care who immediately went out back and started playing with water. The weather was gorgeous, the boys were happy, the grass was green…it was great. I can’t remember a single thing I did on Friday, just that I enjoyed it.
After a very full weekend — which included both a visit to the theater for a play AND a trip to the movies to see “Hulk” — I had a nice quiet Monday. I slept in, got one boy ready to be picked up for camp, drove the other boy to his camp, accomplished a few things, went to a wonderful yoga class, and just breathed in the cool fresh air that was coming in through the windows.
It was a good year. I accomplished a lot as a teacher, and I learned a lot as a mentor. I know I have a long way to go to be a good mentor, and I’m going to give it another year.
In a little while, I’ll start reading about reading, and I’ll think about the fall, but for now it’s going to be sleep, novels, and yoga.
A bad ending June 12, 2008
I’m glad we had Monday at the park, because the last day of school wasn’t so great. Our plan was to walk to the library for storytime, which would have been really fun (and would have taken up most of the morning). Alas, it rained heavily, so we were trapped inside our small, humid classroom which we were all thoroughly sick of.
David was hyper and I actually yelled at him. Twice. Miss L. stayed under the house corner table for a long time, where I later found she had shredded several tissues. David and A. were even louder and more shrill than usual, C. and the other boys switched centers (leaving messes behind) continually, and I felt frantic.
What was worst was that J.’s sister came in at the start and told me in halting English that O. had exposed himself to J. on the preschool bus, and then the behavior lady, the social worker, and the assistant principal all got involved, and my baby O. got suspended! On the last day of school, no less, and he never even got to say goodbye. The poor guy is still four years old, he’s never done anything like this before that we know of, he can barely form a sentence let alone hold a conversation or tell a coherent story about something that happened on another day, and he’s probably a candidate for special education. And J. wasn’t upset. AND HE’S FOUR. I told the AP I disagreed with his decision and he said that the punishment was consistent for anyone who exposes themselves, even if they’re only four, even if it’s the last day of school.
Having that happen just put me in the worst mood all day.
Now I’m back at work to clean up and seal up my room, and I find out that Jan has been laid off. So I’m losing my wonderful wonderful assistant teacher, on top of everything else. (I’m already losing Ali, who is going to be a preschool teacher at another school, and I might lose Nan, who wants to finally use her social work license.)
I wrote O. a love note, saying what a good boy he is and how much I enjoyed having him in my class, and sent it home with his older brother. I decided to skip the staff party, being totally not in a party mood or in a mood to hang out with coworkers.
I went home, had a glass of wine, and read the notes I got from two parents, and they were lovely. It was nice to be appreciated.
Now it’s summer. Once I adjust to the reality of being just a housewife (it always really bugs me the first week of summer), I will relax and enjoy myself.
A perfect day for the park June 11, 2008
On Monday we went to my favorite coffee shop in the world and got treats (cinnamon twists for the kids, coffee and scones for the grownups) and then went to a cute neighborhood park to play all morning. The weather was gorgeous, and the morning could not have gone more smoothly.
(We did have one hiccup right away — when J. arrived, she was dressed in a fancy blue party dress, for our end of the year party. Her mom doesn’t speak English, but it was heartbreakingly clear that she had understood the word “party” and dressed her daughter beautifully for such an event. Of course, it was my fault for calling this our “end of the year party” since we were going to be at a park getting dirty. Odd kind of party, I know. Anyway, we had a change of clothes for her to borrow, so J. got to play in sweats and a tshirt, and then we changed her back into a princess before she went home.)
We go to the coffee shop and the park every year at the end of the year, and we usually have a ton of parents with us. This year we had only a handful.
K.’s parents came, and I got to chat with dad about her. She is very bright and strong-willed, and has become quite fluent in English this year. She also fell in love with books, and spends a lot of time with her little shadow, F., “reading” her our favorite books. K. learned all the letters and sounds this year, and is actually starting to read a little. I chatted with dad about next year, when she will be getting all her reading instruction in Spanish with the bilingual ed teachers. I wasn’t sure what to tell him — she knows the English alphabet and sounds, and is about to read in English, and now she’s going to start over in Spanish? Will she get confused? Who knows? I hope there’s a way for her to work on both simultaneously. Clearly, I need more information. Now that I am getting more and more Spanish-speaking students, I need to know what happens next.
D’s mom and R.’s mom — who would seem to have nothing in common other than being single mothers — talked animatedly to each other all morning. Z.’s mom came and thanked me for being a good teacher, and I raved about her delightful and smart daughter.
The sun shone, the children went down the slides, they shared their sand toys with other kids, and Jan found a caterpillar, which was soooo exciting. O. came over to get me. He pointed, but didn’t have the words, so he took my hand and brought me over to see. Jan had carefully placed the caterpillar in a tree, just out of reach, and about 5 kids were oohing and aahing.
I love my job. Sunshine, caterpillars, children. What could be better?
Diary of a preschool teacher, pt. 2 June 6, 2008
It’s Friday night, I’ve got three days of teaching left, and I’m one glass of chardonnay down so far. In my role as mentor teacher, I did an observation cycle (pre-observation conference, observation, post-observation conference) with a teacher who didn’t want me in her room all year, so it came down to the last minute. So far in the last week she has ranted & raved, sent me a rude email (upsetting because seriously, I never get those), and complained about me to the principal. I was DREADING the observation.
Then I go into her room, watch her do the lesson, and guess what? It was beautiful. She complained all year, but boy did she learn a lot in the end. Afterward I told her, “you know what? You are full of shit.” She looked surprised, but grinned when I told her how good her lesson was. So I gave her really good scores and we survived today’s conference relatively unscarred. I still haven’t told her off, the way I’ve wanted to all week, but maybe I never will.
I just know that in the fall, if she tries to use me as her punching bag again, I’m not going along with it. We have a really weird relationship; it’s not a close friendship, but it’s definitely a close something. She’s the one whose shoulder I cried on when my son was having trouble in school, and I knew I could say “you’re full of shit” and have her understand what I was talking about.
Anyway, on to the diary of a preschool teacher. This week in preschool:
- One of my students — I am reluctant to say who — mouthed the toilet seats at the end of a rough morning. It wasn’t a deliberate action, but more the action of someone who was not in control of his/her emotions, behavior, senses, or mental health.
- J. laughed today, for the first time all year. She is a quiet girl for whom English is not the first language, and when I heard her delightful laughter from the block corner, I was thrilled, but also chagrined that I hadn’t realized I’d never heard it until now.
- We’ve been singing the ABC’s all week. Then we started singing the ZYX’s, which I learned from Ralph’s World, and the kids love the part where we sing, “Next time let’s all move to Texas.”
- In keeping with my tastes in snarky humor, we read Do Not Open This Book, and Good Boy, Fergus, and Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, and my kids understood all the humor and participated in reading with great enthusiasm. No boring books in my classroom!
- Mysteriously, two or three books each day have ended up on my desk needing repairs. A few are probably beyond repair. I can’t figure out what’s happening, as my class LOVES books, and all year we’ve had this happen about once every two or three weeks at most.
On Monday we have our end of the year party, on Tuesday we’re going to take down and put away and clean clean clean, and then on Wednesday we’re going to the library for story time, and then we say goodbye.
What we did this year June 3, 2008
I asked the children to tell me the story of our year yesterday, so they told me things that we did, played, learned, and sang, and I wrote it all down. Here are some samples:
This year, we:
- had a necklace of nametag on the first day of school
- didn’t know how to write our names on the 1st day of school
- learned how to write our names
- had field day
- had a fall party
- made necklaces on the 100th Day of School
- had Hat Day
- had Crazy Hair Day
- ate popcorn and cake
- had Hot Chocolate Day
- had Gingerbread Day
- played with trains
- had Pizza Day (wow, notice a food theme?)
- had Dress Up Day
- learned how to count the numbers
- learned letters
- learned how to tie shoelaces
- went to the library
- went to the park
- sang “I Think You’re Wonderful”
- sang “I am a Pizza”
- sang “Octopus”
We even looked at our daily sign-in book from the first day of school. Only one child could write her full name, and many of the kids didn’t even try. There were also lots of mysterious and cryptic scribbles. Then we looked at the page from that morning, and it was amazing to see the difference. Even M. can write her name.
This is a nice thing about this part of the year, when you look back on all your great memories.
