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.

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.

pumpkin’s communication issues September 25, 2009

So I saw Pumpkin’s early childhood screening, and it was very interesting.  To the question, “which is bigger, a house or a ball?” he answered, “ball.”  (He does that fairly frequently — he repeats the last thing you said if he doesn’t otherwise know what to say.)  To the question, “what’s this?” (pointing to chin), he answered, “armpit.”

Today I started his portfolio assessment (I’ve got parent conferences next week), and found that he does, after all, know most of his colors.  He also knows three whole capital letters, and recognized a few shapes and one or two numbers.  But when I asked, “what is your first name?” he answered, “four.”

It occurs to me that not only does this child really not understand the concept of listening, he doesn’t understand the whole concept of questioning.  You know, someone asks a question, and you answer it, and the answer makes some sort of logical sense.  His response to “when is your birthday?” was “people give me presents,” so at least he was on topic, and he knows that when I say something, he’s supposed to say something back.  But he doesn’t know that a question requires an answer, and he doesn’t know when he doesn’t know the answer.  I tried to prompt him — “if you don’t know, that’s okay, just say ‘I don’t know’” — but that got me nowhere.

In blocks today he was very excited to check out the cardboard brick blocks for the first time.  He required several interventions from me, because he was so excited he was kicking blocks across the floor, and knocking down other people’s buildings.  I explained to him that “blocks are for building,” and that in the block corner there is no kicking, and no knocking down other people’s creations without their permission.  I told him that if he did one of those things again, he’d have to leave the block corner.

So a few minutes later he kicked some blocks and I said, “okay, that’s it, you need to leave now.”

The next minute I looked and he was nowhere in the room.

“Miss Slinger, have you seen Pumpkin?” I asked.

“No,” she said, looking around with concern.

I had an idea, and went out to the hall, where I found a very sad Pumpkin waiting by his cubby, with his backpack on.

He didn’t think he had to leave blocks, he thought he had to leave school!

Poor baby.  But this morning I grabbed our speech pathologist and asked her to hang out with my little Pumpkin and tell me what she thinks.

what needs to be done before school starts August 12, 2009

I met with the afternoon teacher — I’ll have to think of a good nickname for her — and she’s great.  Down-to-earth, sensible, articulate, friendly, mellow, self-confident, interested and interesting.  So phew, no more anxiety dreams!

She has lots of teaching experience, but none with preschool, so she had a long list of questions for me.  One thing she requested is a to-do list for getting ready for the first day.

I can think of a few things:

• send out school supply letter
• plan ice cream social for the preschoolers at the park (ask principal about dates, so he can be there too)
• buy/write/put up name tags for the cubbies (morning and afternoon!)
• get furniture in the right place
• organize/set up art shelf, which has always been a mess
• organize/set up desk (also, to be shared by two people!)
• put up new bulletin board paper and trim
• put up job charts
• put away all the stuff I bought over the summer, and the stuff I brought home (but never used!)

What things are going on YOUR to-do list?

telephone March 14, 2009

Yesterday the bear cave was gone, and the house corner was back.  The Lolas were in there, chattering away in Spanish, when Princess decided to join them.  She turned into a very noisy cat.  Within minutes I heard Princess yelling,

“Teacher!  They’re leaving the house corner!”  She was shocked.

I called to her from my seat at the math center, “Sorry honey.  They are allowed to leave the house corner if they want to.”

Princess sat on the floor of the house corner and pouted.  I felt bad for her; they might have left because she was so loud, or because of the language barrier.  However, after a few busy minutes of ordering bears with some little boys at the math center, I looked up to see that the Lolas were back in the house.  They were busy making food.

Princess was sitting at the table, talking on the “phone.”  (She had our little wooden iron for the house corner ironing board up to her ear.)

“Police?!  I need your help!”  she said, and launched into a long monologue.  I could only get bits and pieces.

At one point, she said, “They’re just talking in Spanish!  And I can’t understand them!” 

After a while I noticed that Edward, who was seated at the lego table, right behind Princess with his back to hers, was talking into his hand.  He had decided she was talking to him on her pretend phone, and so he was talking back!

They had a long conversation, during which time they never turned to look at each other, and Edward never stopped building his legos.

Finally, he had enough.  “Bye! ” he said.  And hung up.

Princess yelled, “Edward!” into the phone, then held it out to look at it.  “What?!” she said, then “Humph!” and hung it up.

Miss Slinger and I were dissolved in giggles.

bear cave March 2, 2009

We had a happy day today.  It was a nice change.

The children have been a little wild, a little off for a while now, and I’ve been exhausted.  I don’t know which comes first, the chicken or the egg, but I’m going to the doctor on Wednesday to talk about my chronic tiredness.

On Friday I went home after a morning of conferences so tired I could hardly drive.  I took an hour and a half nap, which was great, but this was after having slept 9 hours the night before!  Anyway, for whatever reason, I’ve been very tired, and it may be affecting the kids’ behavior to have a teacher who is not 100% on top of her game.  On the other hand, maybe it’s their wild behavior that is wearing me out….

But back to happiness.  And bears.  Today was our first day learning about Bears, and I’d had this inspiration that we should turn our dramatic play center into a bear cave.  It was up to Miss Slinger and our volunteer from the university to put my idea into action.  While the kids were at music, the two of them crinkled, cut, and taped big sheets of paper, and we ended up with a terrific bear cave. 

The children were so happy when they got back to the room, and our centers time was really fun.  We had bears growling and catching fish in the bear cave, I played bear concentration with the two Lolas and Ferdinand (Lola 2 won the first few games, while Lola 1 watched silently, and then Lola 1 started winning every game after that), Miss Slinger had Leo and some other kids painting pictures of bears with watercolors in the art center, my volunteer did a counting bears activity in the math center, and Harold read books about bears in the reading corner.

The only sad moment was at clean up, when Ruby took the book she was making at the writing center over to the bear cave, and Harold, who had moved to the bear cave at that point, growled at her and BIT her book.  Ruby’s face crumpled in tears — “there’s a WET spot!” she told Miss Slinger — so I reached out my arms and Ruby collapsed against my shoulder and cried very quietly.

It was still a good day.

4 minutes inside a teacher’s brain February 20, 2009

Sit on your bottom, fold your legs, hands in your lap, eyes on the teacher.

Why doesn’t this work anymore?  Why are my students ignoring me?  Why is Duck lying down on top of Ferdinand?

Everybody needs to sit down and listen right now.  I appreciate the way Edward is listening.  Thank you, Edward.

Good morning children.  (“Good morning, Mrs. X!”)  What is the letter of the week?  (“W!”  “wuh!”)  Right, the letter of the week is Ww.  It makes this sound:  wuh. 

Why is Leo wandering the room?  No, no, no, let’s not start that again.

Leo, if you want your clothespin for centers time you need to sit down right now in the meeting area.  Okay, let’s practice our letter sounds.  Do you think I can trick you?  (“Nooo!”)

Leo is not paying any attention.  Try to hook him.

Leo, look, I’ve got the letter cards.  Do you think I can trick you?

Leo is not looking at me.  Move on.

What sound?  (“MMM!”)  Right, mmmm.

What sound?  (“KKKuh!”)  Yes, /k/.

What are Miss Nelson and that special ed teacher from the district talking about over there?  Are they watching me?  Talking about me?  Argh, it’s so distracting.

What sound?  (“NNNN!”)  Yes, nnnn.

What the heck, Titch is totally not paying attention.  I know he doesn’t know most of the letters and sounds, and no wonder.  He’s not looking or listening at all.

Titch, please look up here.  Titch.  Titch!  Thank you, sweetie, please pay attention and do the sounds with us.

What sound?  (“aaaa!”)  Yes, aaa.

Great, lost him already.  And Duck is picking his nose again.  And wiping it on the kid next to him!

Duck.  No.  Please keep your hands in your lap.  What sound?  (“LLLL!”)  Yes, llll.

Leo is only doing about every third sound, and he usually loves to do the sounds with us.  GREAT, now Owen is not paying attention either.

Owen, Titch, Duck, look up here.  You need to look to learn the letters and sounds.

Why isn’t Swimmy wearing his glasses?  Why was he pouting this morning?  For that matter, why was Titch pouting this morning?  Why did Duck and Owen get in trouble in music class?  Why didn’t I remember to write the morning message?  Why have I been getting migraines every day for three days in a row?  Why are Duck and Princess so hyper today?

What sound?  (“RRRR!”)  Right, rrrrr.

Will you look at that?  Princess is paying attention!  She is looking at the cards, and listening to her friends say the sounds, and copying them.  Oh man, at least Princess is learning something today.

Thank heaven for small mercies.

the 100th day of school February 19, 2009

Today was the 100th day of school.  We were supposed to have six adults in the room, but my usual volunteer from the university spent the night in the hospital after fainting a few days ago, and she said she was going to take the week to rest, and the little boy whose grandparents were going to come was sick, so it was just going to be me, Miss Nelson, and Miss Slinger. 

Then the little boy’s grandpa came anyway!  What a nice man.  I need to get his address and send him a very grateful thank you note.

Anyway, during our centers time we had some special activities.  Grandpa manned the table with the 100th day glasses — paper glasses in the shape of the number 1oo.  Very cute.  They are a big hit every year.  Unfortunately, I forgot my camera! 

Miss Nelson and I took turns at the art center with yarn necklaces and cheerios — the idea was to string 100 cheerios on a piece of yarn.   Most of the kids got tired after about forty, but it was fun all the same. 

Miss Slinger was in charge of the ink pads and blank 100 grids — the kids at her table got to put their fingers in the ink (for once) and make 100 fingerprints.

The mentor teacher who will be doing my formal observation next came in a watched for a while.  She teaches older kids and said she just didn’t know how I do it.  I told her I think it’s why I’m tired all the time — I teach preschool.  Things were going smoothly, though, so I was glad she got to see that.

Grandpa asked me about Chester — he was pretty perceptive in noticing how low Chester’s skills are, just from the cutting project.  He also noticed how very smart Swimmy is, just from that one project.  I’d be happy to have him back in the class anytime — he was a really helpful, thoughtful volunteer.  And I like anyone who notices kids that way.

At morning meeting we shared our homework, and only about 5 kids did the 100 collections.  In past years about 15 have done it.  Kind of says something about this group, and their families….

Then for our activity, we ate 100 snacks!  The kids were so excited.  They each got a blank 100 grid, and then they had to fill each spot with a small food item — we had chocolate chips, little crackers, teddy grahams, froot loops, raisins, and m&m’s.

When they had 100 snacks on the paper, they got to eat.  It was pure contentment throughout the room.

organizing centers time, encouraging independence November 2, 2008

We have centers time every day.  Some teachers call it choice time, or free play, but I call it centers time because my room is organized into centers.  Each day we have a brief centers time meeting, during which I explain what will be available at each center that day.  Sometimes I put samples of centers time activities into a green basket under my chair, and bring it out to show the children what is available and how you use it.  Then I draw clothespins one at a time out of a bag.

Then I draw the first clothespin and read out the name that is written on it.  “Lola,” I might say, “where would you like to work today?”  Lola stands up and walks over to me and says, with great seriousness, “house corner,” so I hand her the clothespin and she walks over to our centers time pocket chart and clips her clothespin on one of the green dots next to the house corner card.

Then I draw out another clothespin, and another, and one by one the children choose where they’d like to work.  (If I draw out a child’s clothespin and he or she is not sitting quietly, they know that the clothespin will go back in the bag and they’ll have to wait until I draw it out again later.)

Here are some of the rules of centers time in my classroom:

• You may switch centers whenever you want, although if you switch too often a teacher is going to ask you to pick one thing and stick with it for a while.
• Every center has a limit to how many children can be in it at once.  Most centers have a limit of four.  There are green dots on the sticker chart to indicate the spaces available.  Once all the stickers are covered, that center is full.
• You must never move someone else’s clothespin.
• You need to clean up after yourself before you switch to a new center.
• At the five minute warning, it becomes too late to switch.  For the last five minutes everyone stays where they are and finishes the work they are doing there.

 

when things don’t go well, i blame myself September 15, 2008

Actually, things went okay today, on this, our eighth day of school.

On Friday I passed out the Friday folders to the children as I was lining them up to go out in the hall to get their jackets for recess.  They started opening their folders, dropping their papers on the floor, and chatting with each other, and I had a really hard time getting them out to the cubbies, getting them to put their folders away in their backpacks, and then getting them in their jackets and back in line to go outside.

I raised my voice a few times.

When we got outside and the children were playing, I told Miss Nelson, “well, I screwed that up.”  She was really nice about it but I could tell she agreed with me that I should have told the children what to do (or not to do) with their folders, before handing them out.

I chatted with our Friday volunteer, a senior in college who hopes to teach Spanish someday, and asked him, “did you see what I did wrong?”  He looked startled, so I explained that if something goes wrong in a classroom, it’s often the teacher’s fault.  I try to look back and figure out what went wrong, and what I should do differently next time.

I didn’t feel terrible, however, and I had a very nice, relaxing weekend.

So, on to today.  It was better, but I just had a hard time recognizing that or being able to relax.  I started my day with technological problems, and a request from a 2nd grade teacher to do a Fountas & Pinnell benchmark reading assessment with one of her students, and I realized that I hadn’t finished my weekly lesson plan or gotten my room ready or switched out the books on the shelf.  I also found out that I have three new students, one of whom would be arriving in 30 minutes.  So I really had to scramble, and when I opened the door to the classroom at 9:30 to greet my students, I felt like I had been in triage mode.  Only the most important stuff got done.

Nan didn’t show up, so I figured she had arrived with just enough time to greet our special ed students off their buses.  That’s fine, but it meant I didn’t get to touch base with her before the children arrived, which is what I prefer.

I was on my own, and had to greet the children, help them find their cubbies, remind them to get their Friday folders out of their backpacks, give stickers to the ones who remembered, greet my new girl, remind everyone to sign in and move their nametags (from “who’s not here?” to “who’s here?”), and show the whole class how to draw or write in their journal for the first time.  I ended up begging another teacher to help me for five minutes, which she did, thank goodness.

On the bright side, they soon went off to Gym and I had a little time to myself (I inhaled a cookie) to get more things done, and then I went off to assess the second grader, in my role as a mentor teacher, helping other teachers with our new reading program.  He didn’t do all that well, so now I have to go back tomorrow and try again with a lower level assessment.  Then the children returned and we had a pretty nice morning meeting.  Our first time doing centers where they get to decide where to go (using clothespins with their names on them to clip to the centers time pocket chart) went surprisingly well.  I vaguely remember that last year’s class took weeks to figure it out, and these guys seemed to figure it out on the first day.

David had a really good day, and then, alas, at blocks he accidentally knocked over Leo’s building, so Leo hit him, and David punched him in the chest really hard before Nan could react.  Thankfully Leo handled it quite calmly, and Nan was able to get both boys to take time outs.  (I emailed Leo’s mom to tell her what happened; I hope she doesn’t freak out.)

Then I read Knuffle Bunny for the first time, using the Repeated Interactive Readaloud method, and it went pretty well.  Only David and a cute spacey girl we’ll call Trixie (after the main character in Knuffle Bunny) and a few other children were able to answer questions or participate in the discussion, but that’s okay.  It’s early yet.

We had a hard time getting ready for recess, so when we got out there and I checked my watch I realized with a sinking feeling that we had only two minutes left before we had to go inside.  Yes, this would count as one of those things that was my fault.  What kind of teacher gives her class two minutes for recess?

So when I blew my whistle to line up, two little non-English speaking girls looked right at me, and then ran away to keep playing.  Several other classes were outside at this point, and no matter how often I blew my whistle, the two girls would not line up.  In fact, they had vanished into the crowd.  I had the rest of the class in line heading toward the school, but David looked like he was about to lose it, and Max started pushing, and I could see Nan fruitlessly searching the playground.  Finally I told the class to stay where they were and ran to the playground, where I found the girls and yelled at them.

Yuck.  I still feel bad about that.  What kind of teacher yells at her students at all, let alone on the 8th day of school?!  I regretted it instantly.

We managed to get inside without David punching anyone, although Max was yelling, and I found a Spanish-speaking assistant to talk to my two little recess runaways, and I managed to get everyone on the bus or handed over to a parent.

I’m home now, but I felt a little twinge of anxiety not long ago.  I haven’t had trouble with anxiety for months, and I really don’t want it to come back now.  I’m trying to breathe, deep breathing, keep breathing…..I need to be ready for tomorrow.