Welcome Back from Winter Break!

Welcome back from winter break! We had some highs and some lows our first day back:

The first thing any of my students said as I picked them up from the playground at the beginning of the day was, “Ms. GrownUp! My Dad had to go to jail!” Usually the reason is something like drug possession or something else fairly minor like that. “Oh, I’m sorry…” I said, since nothing more appropriate came to my mind. “He got sent to jail ‘cause he threw something at my mom.” My response then was just, “Oh.” How am I supposed to respond to that? I can’t say, though I was thinking, ‘Well, in that case, I am very proud of your mother for not living with abuse. I know that, while you are a delight, your siblings, especially the one who attends a special school for children with behavior problems, are a huge handful. I can’t imagine having to take care of all of you all day, alone. Your mom is stronger than I’ll ever be.’

Leaves had fallen on the ground during winter break, and there were piles and piles of leaves everywhere. On the way to lunch the class was looking longingly at the leaves, wanting nothing more than to jump in them like excited puppy dogs. One girl looked thoughtfully at the leaves and commented, “I should have brought a rake! A-something-E!” I’m not sure why she felt compelled to explain the spelling of the long-A sound in that word, but it certainly made me laugh.

One student happily shared that his father had come back from Mexico. The father had left a few weeks ago because he couldn’t find a job here. This father is, from what I can tell, a great father. I haven’t spoken to him much, but I know that during conferences he was absolutely beaming as I talked to him about his son. The whole time he just looked in awe that I was saying so many wonderful things about his kid. It was adorable. I am very glad that he was able to come back to the US to live with his family.

As I picked the class up from recess, one of the girls limped up to me and exclaimed (very excitedly), “I stepped in dog poop! I’ve got dog poop on my shoe!” I wasn’t sure what to do, but eventually made her take her shoe off outside. She then very carefully handed it to me, and I carried it with two fingers to the classroom where I attacked it with a Clorox wipe.

I was working with a guided reading group on a word-building activity. The students had an assortment of alphabet magnets (for word making) and a paper and pencil (for recording). One girl was absentmindedly holding two pencils – one in each hand. The boy next to her looked down and couldn’t find his pencil. “Hey! Where’d my pencil go?!” he complained, looking around. “E---, you stole my pencil!” he accused the girl. “What? No I didn’t,” she said (still holding a pencil in each hand.) The boy pointed at her hands, “Yeah, look!” he demanded. E--- looked at her hands and was shocked to discover that she was in fact holding two pencils. She shrugged as if she had no idea how the pencil had gotten into her hand, passed it over to the boy, and went back to work.

At the end of the day I finally let my students go play outside in the leaves for exactly three minutes. It was three minutes of pure joy, excitement, and happiness. (Except for the four students who had lost the privilege to play in the leaves because they did not do their work during math centers.) Of course, I planned poorly and let them play in the front of the school. That meant that all the parents who arrived early saw me and my class participating in utter mayhem – throwing leaves in each other’s hair, jumping on leaf piles that often contained half-buried children, (sometimes resulting in a pained yelp) and behaving completely unlike any other class that exited the building calmly, quietly, and in a line. When the bell rang and it was really time to go, I got most of the children to calm down a little bit and, like in dodge ball, not throw leaves above knee-level. I fear the leaves will be gone tomorrow, and with it the wonderful excitement they brought with them. A little chaos is well deserved at the end of the first day back after a long break.

Year Two, Update Two.

If you don't have something nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all - especially if it is being posted on the internet.

That's my excuse for not writing this year. My students are fine - they're not causing me any big problems. It's the other parts (administration, coworkers, and policy-rules) that are driving me insane this year.

If I had felt this frustrated last year, I may not have made it to being a second year teacher.

I'm basically frustrated/upset much of the time, have gotten "in trouble" for doing things like going to conferences and assessing my students, (both things that were encouraged last year...) and will probably be layed off again at the end of the school year due to further budget cuts (without hope for being rehired).


But, the kids are great. When I'm not getting in trouble or having my schedule screwed with, I am feeling surprisingly competent in teaching. Many of my students have made awesome jumps in reading since the beginning of the school year, and even though I am not using the new district-mandated math program (because I was never taught how, and it is very traditional/worksheet based, instead of being constructivist which I how I like to teach math) my students are doing pretty well in math, too.

I was so lucky last year to have such a supportive administration and such great coworkers. Maybe someday I'll have the opportunity to experience that again.

Year Two!

Well, I've been gone for a long time.

The start of the school year has been crazy and busy. But, overall, things have been going surprisingly well.

I have six more students than I did most of last year, eight more than I did by the end of last year. But, we're figuring out how to all coexist in one room together.

I have some students who I have yet to figure out and some students who have been wonderful from the first day of school.

I really like some of the people at my new school, and am having adjustment problems with others, but am hoping to work out some of those issues soon.

One new thing I'm trying is giving the students more "freedom". Last week (the...5th-ish week of school) I decided that we would no longer have assigned desks. Students can sit wherever they want on the rare occasion that we are actually sitting at desks, and can have more than 4 people at a group of 4 desks, if they want. When we are sitting on the rug, they can sit with me on the rug, or they can pull chairs up to the rug and sit on the chairs, or they can sit at desks. During centers and math time, they can sit at desks, on the floor, or on top of the desks. When I'm reading a story, they can lie down, if they want. We've been working with this for a week now, and so far I like it.

I need to record more of my second year (because I'm no longer a first year teacher!!) so that I can view my own progression from year one to year two.

Hopefully I will force myself to write down more. Because with the extra students comes extra humor/excitement/tears/excreted bodily fluids/office referrals/guided reading groups/piles of paper...

Pre School Jitters.

I'm having way more anxiety for school starting this year than I did before the start of last school year.

Last year, I had no expectations. I knew nothing. So everything was good.

This year I have expectations and I know nothing will look like I am expecting it to.

I'm at a new school with a new principal and new teachers.

I didn't get to choose this school, I was just placed there.

I was going to have one class, and it changed last minute, and it was partially my decision and now I'm regretting it. The option was given to me way out of the blue and I didn't know anything and I should have asked for a night to think about it, but I didn't, and I know it will be fine, but I'm still mad at myself for saying I would change my class.

Everything will be different and I want it all to be the same. Aside from the whole getting layed off thing last year, it was a fabulous year. I loved everything about last year.

A new year will never be able to live up to last year.

I'm trying not to have expectations. I'm trying to go into it with an open mind, an "everything will be fine" mind. But for some reason, I can't.

I am terrified and I don't know why.

Lisa

(This is my fifth post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

Lisa was a very quiet student in my class. Unlike the other girls, she never wears skirts or skorts or jumpers. She only ever wears pants. She doesn't wear braids or barrettes or multiple ponytail holders in her hair. She has either one ponytail or her hair is down. She doesn't usually hang out with the rest of the girls (who greatly outnumber the boys) in my class. Really, she doesn't hang out with much of anyone. Not in an outcast way - the others don't avoid her, they actually all seem to quite like her. Not in a shy way - Lisa doesn't cower on the fringe of groups. She just doesn't participate in the girly giggly, hair playing, actively sucking-up-to-the-teacher activities that most of the other girls do.

Lisa is perfectly behaved, perfectly. She is the best behaved student in the class. I at times called her my "Sticker Queen" because there were days when I would get frustrated and give those who quickly behaved a sticker. Lisa ended up covered in stickers because she was always the first one to clean up, the first one to sit down, the first one to start her work. Like all my students, Lisa is Latina, but was one of the 3 students in my class who was not considered to be an English language learner. She doesn't speak Spanish. In fact, at one point on a school feedback form (that was supposed to be anonymous), her mother complained that all the ELL students were given too much attention and stole the teacher's attention from the English-only students. (Which I know is not true in my class since, of those three monolingual English speakers in my class, one is a significant behavior challenge, one is a always-in-the-middle-of-everything busybody, and one is Lisa, the sticker queen who is praised and used as a model constantly.)

Academically, Lisa was generally just slightly below where I would have liked her to have been. But, she always did her work, always tried hard, and always worked well with others, despite the fact that she wasn't drawn to hanging out in large groups.

One day Lisa whispered to me, "Ms. Grownup, I'm wearing boys shoes." I responded, "Okay. Hey, as long as they're comfy, that's great!" And that was that. They were gym shoes, white/blue/black instead of the girlie white/pink/purple color combination that is sold in the girl's shoe sections.

Lisa was always awesome. I very strategically sat her between two girls. One girl was academically much lower than Lisa and quite hyperactive. This girl, Juliette, sometimes struggled with partners. Lisa was always a fabulous partner to Juliette. Even when they weren't doing specific partner work, Lisa helped her read or sound out the spelling (she didn't tell Juliette how to spell, Lisa simply helped sound out the words). When Juliette got off task, Lisa tried to draw her back. On the other side of Lisa sat Clara, a girl with fairly low self-esteem (both academic and social). Lisa "helped" her academically, even though in reality Clara had advanced quite a bit and was about equal to Lisa in reading ability. Lisa was always there to pay attention to Clara though, which was important. When the two of the worked together, they worked quietly and slowly, but generally got the job done.

During a kind of raucous science activity one day, a student shouted across the room to me, "Ms. Grownup! Lisa says she's a boy, but she isn't." I shouted back, "Lisa can say she is whoever she want to be." And again, that was that. I was going in a thousand directions at the time, and didn't get a chance to think about it until later.

Do these conversations mean anything? I don't know.
Am I reading more into it than is actually there? Perhaps.
Does Lisa feel more like a boy, than like the girl who society wants her to be? Or was the other student misinterpreting something she had said? I'm not sure.

In class, I didn't talk about gender much except to point out that there is no such thing as a "girl color" or a "boy color." To talk about the fact that girls and boys can wear whatever colored clothes or styled clothes they want. To show examples of and talk about how there is no such thing as a "girl job" or a "boy job." I tried to make sure I called on each gender equally for each type of lesson/style of question (though I never charted it or had anyone chart it for me, so I don't know if I was entirely successful in doing so.)

Maybe next year I should talk more explicitly about gender, discussing what students' perceptions are, and why they have stereotypes about gender. In college, the first unit plan I created had a really neat lesson on gender stereotypes. Maybe I'll try to modify it to first grade and use it next year.

Jason

(This is my fourth post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

Jason was only in my class for a few weeks. Four weeks, five, maybe. He came in unexpectedly one day (just showing up at my classroom door with the secretary, as new students tended to do). His cousin began the same day in the class next door.

Jason was a fabulous reader, placed in my super-high group (and in fact, I never got around to testing him all the way, to see how "high" he really was.) His math skills, however, were very low. Basic concepts confused him. Maybe he had been at a school before that focused even more on reading than we did. Maybe they didn't do enough math in his old first grade. Or, maybe he was just not a mathematician. I don't know. I worked individually with him, but he wasn't there long enough for me to really get to know him.

Anyway, one day, after having been in the room for weeks, Jason looked over at the wall and saw our Weekly Reader issue with Obama on the cover.

"Hey!" he shouted with a grin. "I know that guy!"
"Yeah?" I asked.
"Yeah! We talked about him at my old school!"
"Tell me about him," I suggested.
"That's 'Bama! I voted for him! I want him to be president!"
"Well, he is," I reassured Jason.
"Yeah..." Jason responded, still looking adoringly at the picture.

Jason got very excited about things in a very adorable way.

During science one day we were doing observations. He came up to me with the science material and started talking and exclaiming about the object he was observing.

"It's so happy!" he shouted, I think talking about the whole situation, not the specific object he was observing. "It's so cool!" he continued.
"Yeah?" I prompted him.
"Yeah...I think I'm going to explode of happiness..." he sighed with satisfaction under his breath, as he walked back to his desk.

Unfortunately, Jason left as suddenly as he arrived. One day he was absent, and his cousin told me he had moved. "Moved, like, to a new house?" I asked, "Or moved to a new school."
"He moved far away," she answered, shrugging her shoulders. And, I never saw Jason again. His cousin ended up moving a few weeks later as well.

Wherever they went, I hope they're living together still. Jason was a little spacey, a little scatterbrained. His cousin took good care of him. They had lived together when they both went to Awesome School, and I think helped each other in different ways. (Jason helped with the reading, his cousin helped with developing social skills.)

Luis

(This is my third post in the series I am writing about each of my students from this past year.)

At the beginning of the school year, about the third week of school, one of my students informed me that she wanted to be called by a different name. I had been calling her by her first name, and she preferred her second name. I was glad she felt comfortable enough to let me know, so I immediately made her a new desk tag and announced to the class that she wanted to go by her second name.

As could be expected, the other students started shouting out random other names that they wanted to be called. Luis wanted to be called "The Hulk." That one, I didn't allow.

Luis was fairly average in most respects. There were times that he drove me crazy. There were times that he worked hard and tried his best.

He liked to write. Luis once wrote a story about La Llorona and The Hulk. This story ended up being about 3 pages long. It was epic and hilarious. (La Llorona and The Hulk were fighting to see who would win. Since La Llorona is a sort of boogywoman, and The Hulk is a fictional charactor, I allowed the fighting.)

Luis was one of the few students I had who generally stayed on task during literacy centers. At each center the students had an activity to do (a computer game to play, a word sort to sort, partner reading to share, a literacy game to play) and they always had something they had write to prove to me that they had done what they were supposed to do. Luis was good at getting those accountability pieces done.

At the first conference in the fall, I was telling Luis's mom how wondeful he was, and she asked about his behavior. I told her that his behavior was fine - not perfect, but on par with everyone else's. She was surprised. She said he was always getting in trouble at home, constantly moving and bothering his sister. I'm glad that I was able to put in a good word for him at that time.