When the cat’s away, the mice will play May 9, 2008

We had the best time today.

The entire school and almost the entire staff went to a big celebration in a park, and we had the school to ourselves. Three kids were absent today, as was Ali, so it was me, Jan (my para), and 12 preschoolers.

We went on an exploration adventure, starting with the basement. We bumped into the head janitor, who took us into their dark and mysterious lair, and even down to the sub-basement to see the boiler room. The kids were thrilled. Then we went up staircases that we don’t usually use, visited every floor, peeked in windows, did a class visit to a boys’ bathroom, and one to a girls’ bathroom, ran around wild in the upstairs gym, visited the behavior lady (who hasn’t met any of my angels all year), peeked into the teacher’s lounge (the school secretary came by just then and was horrified by the thought I was going to take them inside, so we just peeked), and then ran down the hall by kindergarten.

Me being me, we normally walk in a line, in ABC order (I guess I mentioned that before), with hands on our elbows, and we are always very quiet. These things help us to be safe, and to be respectful of all the other children and adults working in our building.

Today, since no one was around, they got to walk in a clump, talk loudly, lie down on the floor, and swing their arms freely.  (They understood clearly that this was a once-only deal, and that we go back to our normal line on Monday.)  When we got the kindergarten hall, I explained that this would be the only time in their entire lives when they would be allowed to run in the hall, and then had them go one at a time down to the end, where Jan was waiting.  They ran with glee.

Today was, in a word, awesome.

I bet it’s the one thing they remember from this year!

Tears April 29, 2008

There is a boy in my class — we’ll call him David, for reasons which should be clear to fans of David Shannon’s No, David! books — who is always getting into trouble. 

He is a sweet boy, actually, and I’m always happy to see him, but he is impulsive and loud, and needs a lot of redirecting.  I find myself saying “No, David!” to him almost every day, and it hurts me to hear the way I talk to him sometimes.  It takes great effort to remember to praise him and smile at him and outnumber my negative remarks (”Please be quiet, David….Sit down, David!….Stop touching him, David….Finish your work, please, David”) with positive ones.

His mother, who is young and single and clearly loves him very much, told me when we met in August that David’s father is in jail, and David “has a lot of anger issues.”

I don’t see the anger much, mostly just boisterous noise and happy misbehavior, but every once in a while, I do see deep sadness.  Today at story time I was being videotaped modeling a repeated interactive readaloud, so I was really concentrating on the story, but part of my brain registered that David, sitting right in front of me in his assigned spot, was not looking quite right. 

By the time it was time to go, he was in tears.  I scooped him up and sat him on my lap, on a bench in the hall, and we rocked while he cried on my shoulder and said, “I want my mama,” over and over.  It was as much as I could get out of him, so I let him sob and be sad, and when he was ready, I took him by the hand to the after-school program.

The Little Things, part 3 April 27, 2008

When I taught preschool at a daycare center, during my first official year of teaching, I had a big classroom with a large area where we could sit on the floor for circle time, in an actual circle.

Now, many years later, I am teaching preschool in a public school, in a very small classroom.  Our meeting area is quite small (and doubles as the block corner during centers time), and there is no way to fit the class in that space in a circle.  So I divided the space up into three rows, with room for 5-7 children in each row, and assigned seats.  Seriously.  Every child in my class has a spot on the floor where he/she knows to sit. 

When I visit other classrooms, the teacher gathers the children together for story time or morning meeting or circle time or whatever they might call it, and the kids either sit in a big circle (where some are too far away from the teacher to see the book she’s holding, and some are sitting right next to her looking out across the circle so they too cannot see the book she’s holding) or they sit in a clump (where they fidget and fuss and elbow each other).

My kids, with me the control-freak as their teacher, are in perfect little rows, each with their own space.  It works beautifully, even as I acknowledge how control-freaky I can be, because no one is sitting next to someone they like to chat with or fight with, and those who need to be near me are front and center so I can reach down and pat their knees, and those who need space are on the sides, and Miss L. is in the back corner so Ali can help her out if need be, and she can easily leave to “take a break” if she is getting overwhelmed.

Okay, so I’m ridiculous.  But boy, does it work.

The little things, part 2 April 26, 2008

Perhaps because I really started out teaching in daycare, before I taught kindergarten at that inner-city school, I still obey the rules about licensing and ratios and proper supervision.  I never want to have my students out of my sight, because if something happened to them, it would be my responsibility. 

So — I want to avoid having children go out into the hall to put their papers in their backpacks.  Send a few 4 year olds out in the hall together and pretty soon they are running around and chasing each other.

I bought a file basket, and have one hanging file for each child, of course labeled and arranged in ABC order.  (We do lots of things in ABC order!)  Whenever a child finishes a drawing or makes a book or does a worksheet, they go put it in their “work file”.  A few times a week my assistant moves their work into their backpacks.

No kids unsupervised in the hall, and no papers on the floor of the hall, where they fell from being haphazardly stuffed into a cubby or locker….

The little things April 26, 2008

From the beginning, when I started out teaching in an inner-city kindergarten, if things go wrong, I more or less blame myself.  And I ask myself, “what could I do differently next time, to prevent that from happening again?”

It has led me to do lots of little things that make a huge difference.  For example, I got really tired of hearing children say, “he budged me!” when they were trying to get in line, or walking in line.  So I asked myself, “what’s something I could do so I never have to hear the word ‘budged’ again?” 

It seemed to me that if every child had a place in the line, there wouldn’t be any confusion, so I started doing the line in ABC order (using first names, of course).  Every year I write the children’s names in alphabetical order before the first day of school, and start teaching it to them on the first day of school.  Within a few days I’ve got it memorized, and can rattle it off:  Amy, Ben, Carrie, Chris, Darnell, Eduardo, John, Julie, etc.* all the way to Xavier or Zed or whoever has the last name in the alphabet that year.  Then on the job chart, each week someone else gets a turn to be line leader (and holds open doors for us), and someone gets to be the caboose (and close doors for us).

My preschoolers can do it by the third week of school without help, and from then on, lining up and walking in line is a breeze.

*not their real names, from this or any year.

Their pockets overfloweth April 17, 2008

At the end of the morning, at story time, I asked my Spanish-speaking volunteer to help A. and C. with their colors, out in the hall.  They are both smart, eager boys, but for some reason, learning the colors in English has been really hard for them.  As A. got up from the meeting area to walk over to our volunteer, a bunch of legos fell out of his bulging pockets.

At that moment, the special ed teacher that I team-teach with came back in the room.  “Ali!” I said, “Can you read the story?!”  She could, of course — thank goodness for Ali – and I took A. by the hand and marched him to the assistant principal’s office.  There I had him empty his pockets.  It was like Fibber McGee’s closet.  The AP and I could barely keep from laughing when we saw how many legos the boy had taken.  He just kept reaching his hand in and pulling out more and more legos.

We found out the C. had put him up to it, so after A. was informed that we would be calling his mom, and he would be losing recess (and of course, after we explained why it is wrong to steal things from school), I fetched C. from working on colors in the hall with the volunteer. 

“C., did you tell A. to steal legos?”

“No,” he said.

I switched tactics.

“Why did you tell A. to steal legos?”  I asked.

He shrugged, as if to say, well, I don’t know.

“Empty your pockets, please.”

Guess what?  More legos!  Back to the AP’s office I went, this time with a different boy in tow.

The whole incident was interesting because A. is the wilier one.  I would have thought he was the one behind the plan.