snapshots of the next day November 5, 2009

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

snapshots of the day November 4, 2009

*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.

did I speak too soon? October 29, 2009

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.

I love this class October 28, 2009

We walked to the library today for preschool storytime.  When I had the kids on the carpet in our room to remind them about walking safely, holding hands, crossing the street, and all that, Cherry raised her hand.

“We can listen to the cars say ‘RRR!’” she said.  (We learned the /r/ sound this week, with a story about getting in a race car, turning the key in the ignition, and hearing the engine go “RRRR”!  The hand motion for R is turning a key.)

“You’re right, ” I said.  I’d never had a child make that connection before.  “We can listen for cars going ‘RRR’.  We can also look for the letter R and the other letters we know on signs.”

So we started walking and pretty soon they were seeing S, M, A, R, and T everywhere.  (Yeah, somehow the letters I’ve taught them so far spell out SMART.  That was totally unplanned, but wonderfully appropriate.)  I have never had a class like this one.  They really listen to what I teach them, and then they talk about it while playing, or walking, or drawing.

We got to the library in plenty of time, and my class was beautifully behaved, as usual.  The story theme was monsters.

I crossed my legs (the grownups were in chairs) and Pumpkin noticed my foot near him.  He turned and gave me a beatific smile.

He held my foot lovingly for the rest of storytime.

And when we got back to school, I gave them a long recess and everyone pretended to be a monster.

pumpkin, my pumpkin October 27, 2009

The special ed teacher who comes to my class once a week to work with two of my other babies pulled me aside after class the other day.

“You know, I was watching Pumpkin today and he seems like he’s doing much better.  He’s even in line right now, with the other kids.”

She’s right.  He has been learning.  He has learned school routines, and he knows where he’s supposed to be at any given time, and even what he is supposed to be doing.  He still interrupts me, but he is more likely to be able to answer questions, or to be on-topic in a conversation.

When we did our letter sounds today, he looked at me when I showed the M card, rubbed his tummy, grinned, and said, “MMMMM!”

an interruption October 19, 2009

scene:  morning meeting in preschool

Mrs. X. has just introduced the letter T, and in doing the calendar, is pointing out that Tuesday begins with T, and October has a t in the middle of it.  The children are sitting cross-legged and listening quietly.

Pumpkin (suddenly going into a crab walk):  OW!  My butt hurts!  My butt hurts!  My butt hurts!

As suddenly as he started, he stops, and sits back down and looks at his teacher.

Mrs. X., somewhat unnerved, goes back to talking about the letter T.

pumpkin and the bus October 13, 2009

So this morning two big boys (7th graders, I’m guessing) came to my room with a teary-eyed Pumpkin in tow.  I hugged Pumpkin while the two boys told me that as they were getting off the bus, a kid pushed Pumpkin over in his rush to get in the building.  They were absolutely shocked, and wanted to keep discussing it with me.  So cute.  So I found out their names, thanked them profusely, and checked to make sure Pumpkin was okay.  He was, just a slightly scraped hand.  Once he was settled I found the behavior lady to tell her about it.  She wrote down the names and said she’d find them during the day to compliment them.

Then five minutes later she was back.

“Do you have this student?” she asked, showing me a bus conduct report.

“Yes.  That’s Pumpkin!  He got in trouble on the bus?!”

Apparently he got on the bus this morning and refused to sit down.  The driver asked him to repeatedly, but Pumpkin absolutely wouldn’t do it.  So the driver had to call a safety officer to come to the bus to get Pumpkin to sit down so they could drive to school!  It’s amazing they weren’t late.

The behavior lady tried to talk to him.

“Honey, when you’re on the bus, you have to sit down.”  So he promptly sat down on the chair I keep in the hall.

I tried talking to him later, and I actually had some luck.  He was able to talk about it, and he explained, “I didn’t have any place to sit.”

!!

So I told him that if that happens again, he should explain that to the driver, and the driver would help him find a seat.

cherry October 10, 2009

Cherry is my other problem.  (It’s funny; in any other year, neither Cherry nor Pumpkin would really count as a behavior problem, but this year, everyone is such an angel that these two do stand out.)

She keeps testing me.  She doesn’t listen, doesn’t follow directions, keeps interrupting.  It feels deliberate and disrespectful, and it irritates the heck out of me.  She has already gotten in trouble in Music, and she has had to sit in the “Take a Break” chair more than anyone else.

I called her mother on Thursday, and it was helpful.  For now I’m going to operate under the assumption that attention is the problem.  She needs attention, and will do negative things to get it, and it’s possible that paying attention to things is difficult for her.

So my plan is to keep giving her hugs (she is one of the huggiest in a very touchy-feely class), especially in the morning right when she comes in, to catch her being good and give her specific feedback about what she is doing right, and also to help her with personal conversation before transitions to let her know exactly what she will need to do.

We’ll see how it goes.

I don’t like being caboose October 6, 2009

My students line up in ABC order, so the line is very predictable.  So that we won’t always have the same kid at the front, and the kid whose name starts with Q or W or Z won’t always be at the back, I have a line leader and a “caboose.”

This week’s caboose is a very sweet, very obedient little girl we’ll call Plum.  On our way to Music today, she had a hard time herding the boy in front of her to stay in the line.  We’ll call him Zucchini.  Miss Slinger wasn’t at work yet, so there was no adult at the end of the line to see what was going on.  When we got to Music, Zucchini and Plum ran around the corner from the stairs to catch up.  Plum said, very sadly, “he wouldn’t stay in line!”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Plum,” I said, absent-mindedly.

“I don’t like being caboose,” she said, as they walked past me into the music room.

On my way back to the first floor, I bumped into another teacher, who knows Zucchini.  She started laughing.

“Did you see what Zucchini did?” she asked.  “Instead of following you up the stairs to the 3rd floor, he just headed down the hall here on the 2nd floor, like he knew what he was doing.  There was nobody in front of him, but he just marched down the hall.  And that little girl behind him stood here by the stairs and called after him, ‘no, no, no!’ and started to cry!”

Poor Plum.  Zucchini had no idea what he was doing, and she always knows exactly what to do.

loud October 5, 2009

Miss Slinger was gone today.  I used to teach kindergarten and was by myself with 25 kids, so you’d think I could handle 17 on my own.

And I can, of course.  But it was hard; I’ve gotten so used to having a wonderful assistant teacher in the room with me.  When I arrived at work with coffee and some berry coffee cake, I spun around the room like mad trying to get everything ready.

Put away the parent conference stuff, check!  Change the calendar to October, check!  (Take a bite of breakfast.)  Get the red scraps ready for our red collage activity, check!  Write the morning message, check!  Read my email, check!  Get everything needed for centers time ready in my basket, check!  (Take a sip of coffee.)  Try again (and fail again) to find Knuffle Bunny, check!  Set out the journals, change the date on the date stamps, set out the sign-in book, fill out the job chart, move the nametags, check check check!  (Take another bite of breakfast.)

And actually everything was fine.  It was just a little bit more intense.  For some reason, the children were incredibly loud today.  Cherry, who is STILL testing me to see what I will do if she doesn’t follow directions, stepped it up a bit.  I had a hard time not getting really really irritated with her.  And did I mention that they were loud?  The other weird thing was that they were more needy than usual.  It was “Mrs. X, can I do this?” and “Mrs. X, can I do that?” and they were tugging on me or saying, “Hey!” all morning long.

I’m still in a good mood, however, and I still do love them.

But I didn’t finish my breakfast until 12:30.