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.

My turn under scrutiny May 13, 2008

I had a formal observation today.  What I mean is, I was the one being observed.  (Usually it’s the other way around.  I do 2-4 observations a quarter.)  Every one of us, even the master and mentor teachers, needs to be observed once each quarter, and this was my last observation of the year. 

The mentor teacher who observed me is a fifth grade teacher, who seemed delighted at the chance to observe someone who is outside her world of upper-primary and middle school (usually she works with the middle school teachers).  She also mentioned, somewhat wryly, that her last visit to a preschool was when her children were that age, and let’s just say, that was a loooong time ago.

The odd thing was, I was nervous.  I had a hard time concentrating on preparing for my lesson before school started, and during prep, Jan was laughing at me because it was so odd to see me so discombobulated.  I saw my master teacher in the office when I was getting something off the printer, and I told her, “I’m nervous about my observation!”  She just rolled her eyes at me and told me not to be ridiculous.

My master teacher was the one who did my most recent observation, and that lesson rocked.  She gave me awesome scores, and I was absolutely thrilled.  So I know I’m a good teacher, and I know that I know my stuff.  I’m also usually so confident….

Back to the room.  I finally got my head together and I carried off the lesson on ordering the numbers 1-6, with my audience of special ed teacher, parent volunteer, para, and the mentor, who was madly scribbling notes.  (Have I mentioned my trained monkey routine?  I am always being watched.  It is never just me and the kids.  I’m used to it, but some days….)

And it went okay.  I mean, it went well, but I can think of lots of things I could have done better.  I didn’t ask good enough questions.  And did they all get it?  Some of my kids don’t know all the number names to six; why was I asking them to put the numbers in order?  And the fact that Miss L. was falling apart the whole time didn’t really help. 

On the plus side, I had three kids (including Z., who had wonderful braids and ponytails all over her head in honor of Crazy Hair Day) order the numbers 0-19 with no sweat, and the stuff I did in the whole group was pretty cool.

This stuff can make you crazy, though.  I think I’ll go into my final observations of the year feeling more mellow and more forgiving than ever.  School is almost over, after all.

I don’t care how great you think you are May 1, 2008

Yesterday a kindergarten teacher in my mentoring group turned to me at our weekly meeting and hissed, “you should just come and observe me and get it over with, I don’t care when. Actually, just skip it and give me all twos, because I don’t give a shit!” Her voice was filled with anger, but her eyes were filled with tears.

I was speechless. I think I babbled something like, “uh, okay” and then the master teacher started the meeting.

So this morning I went to her room and asked if anything was wrong (the tears seemed to indicate stress at home), and was there anything she wanted to talk about, or anything I could do. She started ranting about our teacher quality program, and how stressed and overwhelmed it makes her. She said the program is unfair, because she has been comparing her observation scores with other teachers, and that it is inconsistent. You know, another teacher got 4s and she got 2s, and she was sure they did everything the exact same way.

I told her that comparing scores was a toxic thing to do, and tried to get back on the subject of how I could help her this quarter. She said, “I don’t care how great you think you are, but don’t even try to help me. It’s too late. I don’t give a shit.”

But it really seemed like she does give a shit.

And I give a shit; I was a little bit sick to my stomach all day.

Remembering my priorities April 16, 2008

Today I spent 45 instructive minutes in a first grade classroom, helping with a writing assignment.  I moved around and helped several children, but mostly ended up at the end of one table with five delightful boys.  The assignment was to write about your favorite place, describing it using your senses — what does it smell like, feel like, taste like, sound like, look like?

B. got to work even before the teacher had finished giving directions, I noticed.  He clearly is a good reader, and a confident writer.  Meanwhile some other children were having a hard time even putting their names down — one boy had his head on the table in misery — so it was a while before I got down to B.’s end of the table to look at his writing.

Here’s what he wrote:

“My favorite place is [name of homeless shelter].  Because it’s good for me and my mom and my sister.  And they give us three meals a day.”

I don’t know B. at all, as he hasn’t been in the class long, and the last time I spent time there was 1st quarter.  I asked him if he would keep writing, but he refused.  I said, “But Mr. R. wants you to write about your senses.  What does it smell like?”  B. replied, “it smells really bad in there.  You wouldn’t want to smell it, no way.” 

“Well, what does the food taste like?”

“It’s nasty.”

“B., are you sure you want this to be your favorite place?” I asked.

B. pointed emphatically at his second sentence.  “They - give - us - three - meals - a - day,” he said, emphasizing each word.

I was silenced, thinking about a boy who feels so grateful to have three meals a day that his favorite place is the stinky shelter where he lives.

B. happily commenced drawing on the back of his page while I helped T., and chatted with the other three boys near him.  T. just started a month ago, too, but he never went to school before.  His parents never sent him to kindergarten, and did not enroll him in first grade until March.  He cannot read or write, and does not know the names of most letters.  He did not know how to write a capital T or capital I until I showed him.

Mr. R. told me that the parents said, by way of explanation, that he had been ”home helping out the family.”

But a sweeter boy would be hard to find.  “What’s your favorite place?” I asked, and T. replied, “Chuck E. Cheese.  I been there TWICE.”  I asked him to tell me each new sentence, and helped him to find the words on the class word list, or wrote them down for him to copy.  He worked really hard, with intense focus, looking at my words, and then copying them down neatly and in the right order.

The other three boys down by B. and T. were just as cute.  Each boy mysteriously decided that Chuck E. Cheese was his favorite place, too, and they argued vociferously about it while surreptitiously copying the words I had helped T. to write.

The five of them were amazed to learn that I happen to hate Chuck E. Cheese.  “It’s so noisy,” I said, “and the pizza doesn’t taste good, and the kids are all running around like wild.”

“Yeah, the kids go CRAZY,” grinned A.

It was a wonderful afternoon. 

I went to the grocery store with my sons after school and felt so grateful to have the money to buy bananas and bread and donuts and yogurt.