I was reading a story the other morning, with lots of interruptions from a wiggly class, when Pumpkin interrupted me, while raising his hand (he is sort of getting the idea).

“Teacher! Teacher!  I have to go save the world!”

I looked at him, nonplussed.

“I have to go!  I have to go right now!  I have to save the world!”  He was still raising his hand, jabbing it at the sky, urgently.

I thought about how to respond.  “Honey?  Can we finish the story first, and then you can save the world?”

He thought about it seriously, and then agreed.

And we are all still here, so obviously, it worked.

Yesterday I told the children the story of the first Thanksgiving, in my own words.  Someone, maybe Cherry, interrupted me.

“Were you there?”

“No, I wasn’t there.  This happened hundreds of years ago.”  I continued with my story.  A few minutes later Pumpkin interrupted me.

“Were you there?”

“No, honey, I wasn’t there.  I’m [fill in the blank] years old.  The first Thanksgiving was hundreds of years ago.”  Pumpkin looked at me, uncomprehending.  Any number over ten is meaningless to him.  I sighed, and forged on.  I had gotten to the part about the “funny” clothing the Pilgrims wore when I was interrupted again.  I forget who it was.

“Did you wear those clothes, too?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later, feeling ancient, I told the story to Miss Mellow when she came in to teach the afternoon class.  She laughed and said that I must have told the story with so much enthusiasm and detail that they assumed they were hearing a first-person account.

Yes, children, I came over on the Mayflower.

The mentoring part of my job is getting me down.  It bothers me that I have to do so much paperwork.  It bothers me that I have to spend so much time doing observations and conferences that I don’t really get to do much coaching.  It bothers me that I don’t know if I’m actually being helpful to anyone.  It bothers me that I’m asking teachers to do extra work and they haven’t been paid (nor have I) for all the points they earned last year doing this program.

It bothers me that I can’t just shut the door and concentrate on my four year olds.

This is the week I’m going to go in and talk to the Prince, and let him know that this will be the last year I’m a mentor, unless things change for the better.

On my worst days, I don’t know if what we’re doing has helped at all.

We have a new IT guy.  The Prince says he’s one of the best in the district, and we’re lucky to have him.  He also happens to be Plum’s dad, and I’m Plum’s teacher, so I knew he’d say yes when I asked him to help me with a computer problem.

He came before school to help me figure out why I cannot open any of the documents I wrote last year.  The ones from two years ago?  No problem.  From this year?  Again, no problem.  But I’ve got a whole year’s worth of lesson plans that are inaccessible.  Plum’s dad was still in the room when the kids came in.  Plum’s eyes were wide.  “Will my Daddy be in our room all morning?” she asked hopefully.  “No,” I replied, “just for a little while.”

Right.  Plum’s Daddy was in our room all morning.  I felt bad for him.  He was absolutely stumped.  He figured out the why but he couldn’t figure out the solution.  The good news was that Plum didn’t act the way I expected — she didn’t cling or cry.  She was happy all morning and didn’t even seem to look his way.  He was just about to give up for the day when he stumbled on a solution — “I had good luck!” he crowed — and I think my documents are back.

~~~

This afternoon I worked for almost two hours writing down the evidence from a formal observation, preparing for a post-observation conference.  I saved all my work, and closed the document.  Later, when I went to open it, I couldn’t find it.  Then when I found it, I couldn’t open it.  I nearly cried.  But the media specialist figured it out for me — the computer had saved it for me under a different name.

Is it too much to ask for technology that works?

I’ve been meaning to tell you all to buy It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages, the new book by Mrs. Mimi, the author of the It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages blog.  She is a teacher in NYC who loves teaching but maybe not some of the people she meets in the course of doing her job.

She is hilarious, and so is the book.

And any teacher (like me) who works with nice people will read it and feel incredibly lucky.

Go out, people, and buy this book!

Dear Parents,

I’d like to take this opportunity to talk to you about backpacks.

It may surprise you to hear that I would like them to be empty, most of the time.  This means I would prefer it if your child not use it as a dumping ground for crayons, markers, snacks, books, coloring books, and old art projects.  Please help your child clean out his/her backpack tonight, and help him/her keep it that way.  This will also give you a chance to check for contraband such as candy, gum, or toys that cause distractions at school.

When your child comes home from school each day, please check your child’s backpack.  There might be a note from me in there.  There might be important news about something that is happening tomorrow.

On Fridays, please check for the Friday folder, and for a week’s worth of finished work.  Please remove from the folder everything that is for you (the newsletter, the school newsletter, etc.) and keep it or throw it away.  Please don’t send it back to school.  For one thing, I already read that stuff; I wrote it.  For another, if you send it back to school, I have no idea if you got a chance to read it or not, and I have to decide if I should throw it away or try sending it home again.  Please remove your child’s finished work, and do what you will with it.  I sent it home on purpose; I do not need or want it back.

In the winter, please send your child to school with a pair of shoes in the backpack, so that he/she will not track melted snow and dirt into the room with his/her boots.  On Monday mornings, please return the Friday folder.

That is all that should be in the backpack.

Thank you.

Mrs. X.

This morning I put on my lovely new red coat and went out to meet the buses as they arrived.  When bus 3 came, I caught Cherry and Chutney as they got off and had them wait with me.  When all the kids were gone, the driver got off, and I told her that I was their teacher, and that we were there to apologize to her for their behavior last week.

“Cherry, please repeat this after me.  I’m sorry I stood up on the bus.”

Cherry hung her head.  “I’m sorry I stood up on the bus.”

“I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen to you.”

“I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen to you.”

“I’m sorry I used bad words.”

“I’m sorry I used bad words.”

“It will never happen again.”

“It will never happen again, ” Cherry promised.

I went through the same routine with Chutney,  minus the part about the bad words.  The driver at this point was looking really surprised and also pleased.  I don’t think she ever meets her bus riders’ teachers.

I found out her name (let’s call her Maria), introduced her formally to the girls, and explained that it is her job to keep them safe.  It is their job to be respectful to her, and to listen to her, so that she can keep them safe.  I said that their behavior last week was unacceptable, and if it ever happened again, Maria would let me know and I would give them a consequence in the classroom.

I held their hands and we went back to class, talking excitedly about our third reading of Knuffle Bunny.  I am hopeful that we will not have a repeat of that behavior.  They really are smart and wonderful girls.

***********

At centers time Cherry chose the reading corner.  She read and re-read Knuffle Bunny out loud; she has memorized the whole damn thing.  I think I need to call her mom and compliment her — she’s the mom who told me that when she found out she was pregnant, she started buying children’s books, and now Cherry has FOUR HUNDRED books at home.  You can tell this is a well-read child.

***********

Plum was absent, so I guess she really was still sick yesterday.  Zucchini had a wonderful time in blocks today, and no pee accidents.  He kept building towers and showing me — “Look, cylinders!  And this is a cylinder, too!”  My new student wore a coat to school today.  The room was clean, but when Zucchini opened the block shelf it was a disaster (I, in my usual anal-retentive way, have a specific place for each block to go).  I suppose I will have to visit Miss Mellow’s class again to explain how to clean up the blocks, as I forgot to mention that yesterday.

***********

We finished the day with our third reading of Knuffle Bunny, where the children reconstruct the story and tell it to me, and then we got to watch the video, using my video data projector.  It was wonderful, and a great way to end the morning.

*Cherry and Chutney got bus write-ups last week that showed up in my mailbox only this morning.  They were defiant to the bus driver and refused to sit down on the bus.  And Cherry called Chutney the B word.

*A staffer whose grandson is in my class told me that he had really paid attention to my lesson yesterday.  I tried to remember what lesson that might have been.  She said, “he knows all the three-dimensional shapes now.  He told me, ‘did you know that the other name for a ball shape is a sphere?’ and also told me about cubes, cylinders, and cones.”  I was tickled.  Someone was listening!

*Plum showed up after two days at home and burst into tears.  “What’s wrong, honey?” “I…want…my…DADDY!” she sobbed.  She sobbed all the way to the local library, so, for the first hour of the morning.  At the library she sat on Miss Slinger’s lap whimpering, and then fell asleep in her arms.  I spent most of story time trying to track down her parents, who finally showed up when we were back at school.

*I got a new student, who moved to my class from the afternoon class.  She knows Miss Slinger, and the room, but not me.  She was dressed in a t-shirt and a thin sweatshirt today, and it was very cold out (in the 30s).  I tried to give her a jacket to wear to the library, but she refused.  I gave her a partner to hold hands with, and she refused.  So she held my hand all the way there.  Miss Mellow told me later that the new girl is very moody, that mom didn’t show up for her parent conference — twice — and that the girl came to school once with a warm jacket, and not again since.

*Because of very poor test scores, the third through fifth grade teams were shaken up, and a few teachers were removed from classroom teaching (they will be doing supplemental teaching instead).  At least one teacher was in tears.  Emotions were running high.  I wish the Prince had done this back in June, but I think he did the right thing, better late than never.  It’s inexcusable when certain teachers’ students don’t make a year’s worth of progress.  Our students are so far behind they really need to make well more than a year’s progress.  Less than a year?  Shameful.

*We read Knuffle Bunny for the second time (I’m back to doing Repeated Interactive Readalouds), and at the end, I asked, “have you ever lost something?”  After we heard about a lost ball and a lost car, I told them about a time when I lost my favorite mittens.  Pumpkin looked very concerned.  He raised his hand.  “Teacher, I can give you my red mittens.  Let me go get them for you.”  And he was about to get up before I stopped him, and assured him that I have since replaced the lost mittens.  He tried again at dismissal time to give me his red mittens.  So sweet.

*Zucchini had so much fun at recess that he forgot to tell me he needed to go pee.  He had a change of clothes in his backpack — but the pants were shorts!  So the poor kid went home in a warm jacket, hat, mittens, boots….and shorts.

*I visited Miss Mellow’s class, with her okay, to talk to them about all the stuff in the room, and how most of it is stuff I paid for.  I talked to them about respecting books, and how to take care of them, and where to put them (the Mo Willems books go in the Mo Willems box, not the ABC box, and the farm books go on the shelf, not in the color box).  I also showed them how to clean up the house corner and where everything goes there.  Later Miss Slinger told me that they did a much better job of clean up after their centers time.

*I spent two hours finishing writing up a post-observation report.  It made me cranky.  I don’t think I want to be a mentor next year.

On Monday Miss Slinger called before work to say that she was not feeling well, and wouldn’t be in.  I said that was fine, and was on my way to work before I remembered that my Monday help (a special ed teacher and a Spanish speaking aide) had both emailed last week to switch to Tuesdays.  I was at work before I remembered that someone from the local university was going to be in to do a formal observation of me and my classroom (it’s part of a study I agreed to participate in).  And then five minutes later I found out that we had a mandatory staff meeting.

The staff meeting was sad — a disabled boy from an older grade died suddenly over the weekend.  I didn’t know him, but many teachers did, and the mood of the staff was somber.  When we were done discussing the impact of this loss on the staff and students, I had to go to a meeting with a teacher I would be observing the next day.  So I got back to class with only about five minutes to get ready, and there was my observer.

For some reason, this did not stress me out.  I’m usually a stress monster, but I was just amused.   And I kept a smile on my face all morning.

I smiled as the kids came in, signed in, and got to work on their journals.  The woman from the university looked surprised, but I’ve set up some really great routines in my class, and my students know exactly what to do.

I smiled as they worked in their centers, and as I rotated from center to center to talk to them about their work.  “Oh, the house corner is on fire again?  You guys know what to do.  Call 911 so the firefighters can come put it out….”

And mostly I smiled because I am no longer a first year teacher, and I have years of rich experience to draw on.  My classroom is a humming place because my years of struggle and trying to figure out what I was doing are behind me.

Sometimes it’s nice not to be young anymore!

When I picked up my class from Music, the student teacher, Mr. K., said that Cherry and her best bud Chutney were awful.  They wouldn’t listen to him, wouldn’t follow directions, turned the pages of his book (when he was trying to read it), played with the window shade, hid behind the risers, and shoved each other when they finally got in line.  I looked at them, and you would not believe what they said.

“He’s lying!” they chorused.

I apologized to Mr. K and took the kids back to our classroom.  I had a student teacher from another classroom with me, because she wanted to observe me for an hour or so to see what preschool is like.  Back in the room, another teacher came to observe (she’s another mentor and will be doing a formal observation of me in the next month, and wanted to get a feel for my room).  She was beaming from ear to ear about how wonderful preschool is, and how great my class is, and I was just thinking, “the stinkers!”

I called both girls’ mothers, and left messages asking them to have their daughters write apology notes tonight for us to give to Mr. K. tomorrow morning.  I mentioned that accusing a teacher of lying is very disrespectful behavior.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow.