Tales from Fifth grade

~ Competetive much? ~

2011-05-25T14:11:00.003-04:00

In the middle of yet another round of end-of-the-year testing.

(I won't even get started on my feelings about that.)

The room is silent; students are (mostly) focused on the big, yucky test they have to do.

Which was when S felt the need to ask the entire classroom, "Is anyone past number 76 on the science part of the test?"

Everything's a competition, I guess!

~fo' shizzle ~

2011-05-23T09:58:00.002-04:00

Question on spelling test: "Write five words that begin with 'sh.'"

Student only provides one word: "Shizzle." Because I'm apparently teaching a rapper wannabe.

This is the kid who hasn't passed a spelling test all year, yet he can spell the word "Shizzle" perfectly.

Sigh.

But, as a dear friend pointed out, he could have put a very different sort of word beginning with 'sh,' so I guess I should be thankful!

~ When you have to try not to laugh ~

2011-05-18T12:58:00.002-04:00

My little story teller, R, started my morning off by asking me for a favor. A favor embedded in a story, of course.

There, in the middle of all the morning hoopla, when I have breakfast choices/attendance/field trip money/field trip chaperones/kids to get on task, was R.

"Mrs. N," he says, "can you do me a favor today?"

"Probably....has anyone seen K this morning yet?"

"Well, you're gonna need to keep an eye on me this morning," R continues.

"Oooook.......C? C? What did you have for breakfast?"

"Doncha wanna know why?" says my storyteller.

"Why?"

"Well, I hit the kitchen floor with my head. But not on purpose, ya see, we were messing around with electrical tape, and my brother, he taped my hands together in front of me, and so then when I tripped over a chair, I couldn't put my hands out to stop me from falling, and so I fell on my head, and I didn't bleed, but I had a bump, but the bump is gone this morning, but my mom still said I have to be careful not to pass out today at school. So I need you to keep an eye on me."

He was so dead serious about it, and it was all I could do not to laugh. I was expecting him to ask for a bathroom pass

~ Question of the Week ~

2011-05-16T12:53:00.002-04:00

S. is typing away on her report about zebras this morning in the computer lab when she jumps up and comes to find me.

"Mrs. N, isn't it botox when they suck all the fat out of you?"

"No, it isn't."

"Oh. Well what is that called when they suck the fat out?"

"Liposuction."

S. heads back to her computer. Thirty seconds later, she's back.

"Mrs. N, how do you spell liposuction?"

With only a handful of days left to the end of the year, I'm not even going to ask what on earth liposuction has to do with zebras.

~ Eew, Eeew, Eeeew! ~

2011-05-10T12:45:00.001-04:00

Did you know that it is now a violation of student's rights to send a student home because they have head lice? Yup...that's apparently changed this year. The school may notify parents that they think the child has head lice, but they can't do head checks anymore.

So...when C walked up to my desk during Social Studies itching, itching, itching his head, I was a little grossed out. Then he asked me if I could check his head because it was itching really bad.

Um, no.

He then stood there at my desk for 3 minutes vigorously itching his head and explaining to me all the things that he thought could be making his head itch, including ticks and the worms they used for fishing bait yesterday.

I kept repeating, "Please make sure you tell your mom tonight," in between every explanation he gave, all the time silently praying that whatever little nasties had taken up residence in his scalp would not decide to jump ship and land anywhere in my general vicinity. Yick...

~ Conversation of the Week ~

2011-05-05T13:05:00.002-04:00

Overheard while waiting for my kids to come back from gym:

Aide from autistic room: Ok, now we're going to gym.
Autistic child: But--
Aide: You are not going to talk about dogs right now...
Autistic Child: But did you--
Aide: ...you're going to talk about gym class right now.
Autistic Child: No, not dogs! I'm talking about marsupials.
Aide: Ok, you're not going to talk about marsupials right now, you're going to talk about gym class.....

~Creative Geography~

2011-04-27T11:05:00.002-04:00

Geographical term of the day: Peninsula

My kids typically do not have trouble with the concept of a peninsula. Since we do live in Michigan, they've heard the terms 'Upper Peninsula' and 'Lower Peninsula' most of their lives.

So when, in Social Studies, I ask them to find an example of a peninsula, there isn't usually a problem. Usually.

But there's always one. Or sometimes two. This year it was two. One who informed me that Oakland is a peninsula, another who told me Nevada is a peninsula.

Sigh.

~ I'm Getting There ~

2011-04-25T10:58:00.002-04:00

It's project time in Social Studies. We're learning about historical figures who influenced the American Revolution. They have to have a picture of their person on their project. C told me, about 3 minutes after he started, that he was done. When I asked him to show me what "done" meant, he hung his head and said,

"I didn't know what to draw, so I drew an alien. And a toilet."

I'm not counting the days till the end of the year yet, but I'm definitely getting there.

~Really? Is it 1836?? ~

2011-04-19T07:33:00.002-04:00

We've been analyzing characters from fiction in Reading class for the last couple of weeks. This morning I'm grading character outlines that the kids had to complete on one of the characters in their novel.

To answer the question "What personality flaws might prevent the character from reaching their goal?" D answered:

"She's a girl"

Picked my jaw up off the floor and wondered when, exactly, being a girl became a personality flaw.

~ Define "Reading" ~

2011-03-29T08:32:00.011-04:00

I'm beginning to think it's inevitable. During our half hour of silent reading, I look up from my book/stack of papers/student I'm talking to and notice M (or C or A or whoever) is sitting at their desk, with their book closed on top, staring into space, writing notes, or making faces at their friend across the room.

My first response is a throat clear. Occasionally the delinquent reader will jump a bit, make eye contact with me, and go back to their book. I don't have to interuppt what I'm doing, which is especially important if I'm talking to another student about their book.

However. The throat clear rarely works, epecially the week before spring break. So I go to response two. I say their name softly. The student glances up, and we have this little exchange:
"A., reading, please."
Student holds up their closed book with a look stating that their teacher is obviously among the most ignorant people in the universe for asking them to read when they clearly have a book within sight already.
"Ok, now open and read, please."
Loooooong sigh. Student flops book onto desk, opens it, and at least pretends to read.

In some rare cases, this still doesn't work. Which forces this resourceful teacher to pull out all the stops. In a move borrowed from Jim Fay's "Love & Logic," I pat the student on the shoulder and quietly say, "I can see you don't really want to read right now. That's fine. You can make up your reading time later today." Occasionally, the student is silly enough to take me up on it. They quickly find that, shockingly, we're just so busy with learning and such during the day, the only time left to finish thier reading requirement is during recess or lunch. After the first month or so of school, they all know what "make up your time later" really means. Problem solved. For now.....

~ Overheard ~

2011-03-24T14:56:00.000-04:00

Walking the hall today. Student is packing things up at her locker. Teacher is standing next to her, saying "....and no more food in your desk at all. Especially not chicken fingers. That's just gross!"

~Reason #238 ~

2011-03-21T13:56:00.001-04:00

Reason #238 why I am so glad to be back in 5th grade this year: Math is so much more entertaining.

It is fraction time in 5th grade, and today we wrote fraction stories to demonstrate the fraction 2/3. This assignment had two requirements:
1. The answer must be 2/3
2. It must have a picture that makes sense with the story.

After five minutes of raised hands asking, "Can we....?" with me replying, "Is your answer 2/3? Does your picture make sense? Then yes you can do it, " these are some of the stories I got:

* A blueberry popsicle was cut into three pieces. Two senior citizens each ate one piece and put the rest back in the freezer.

* A cucumber was cut into three pieces. I threw two of them at my brother. What fraction did I throw at my brother?

* A pizza was cut into three pieces. I gave one piece to my dog and threw one at my brother.

* A square was chopped into three pieces. A friend and I are eating a piece each.

* I had three slices of cake. I threw one at my teacher and a hobo grabbed one and ate it. What fraction of the cake did I lose?

Gotta love that fifth grade humor!

~St. Patrick's Day: A Teacher's Perspective ~

2011-03-17T10:37:00.004-04:00

"If you're

not wearing green,

please grab

a few green stickers

from the table

and put them

on your shirt.

EVERYONE - hear this:

There will be no

pinching,

poking,

or in any other way

putting

your

hands

on another person

who is not wearing green.

If you pinch,

poke,

or in any other way

put

your

hands

on another person...

bad things will happen."

~ Trying to keep a straight face ~

2011-03-14T07:33:00.001-04:00

You remember your elementary school music programs, right? You had the kids who loved music and were pretty good at it, who were loving every minute, the kids who loved music and were no good at it, but were still having a good time, and the kids who really could care less about music, and were only having a good time because they had a half a dozen kids within easy "bothering" reach on the bleachers.

We recently had our 5th grade music program, and it's always been interesting to be on the other side of the bleachers.

During one of my earlier years of teaching, we had no auditorium in our building, which meant our programs were at the high school a few blocks away. During this program, because there wasn't a lot of room on stage, some classes had to leave the stage and wait in a nearby classroom while the other classes were performing, then go back on stage. One parent got wind of this and decided to tag along while we were in the hallway, giving her already hyper daughter Snickers bars and Mountain Dew in between songs. Needless to say, this concert did not go well.

Thankfully, we now have our own auditorium, with a stage big enough to accomodate everyone. At our dress rehearsal for the program, in between chuckling over my enthusiastic (and rythmically challenged) clapper whose short stature put him right in the front row and giving death glares to the kid in the back row giving devil horns to the kid in front of him, I spotted D in the back row.

His face was twisted and puckered, tongue protruding, and his eyes crossed as he tried to watch where his tongue was going. I tried to give him the death glare but failed. I wanted to giggle instead.

I tried again. No such luck. And he knew it, too, the little stinker.

The song began and D's facial gymnastics came to a halt. I asked him later what he'd been doing. "I was bored. I was trying to get my tongue to touch my nose." I tried not to laugh as I told him, for his mother's sake, not to try that at the actual program. He tried not to laugh when he asked me why not and I told him so he didn't look stupid in front of all the parents.

Sharing the story with his mother later that week, she just shook her head and said, "It could have been so much worse..."

~Homophones, oh homophones!~

2011-03-08T10:22:00.003-05:00

We've been working (and working, and working) on homophones this week. Words that sound the same but are spelled differently.

In a possible sign that I've been reading too many fantasy books lately, I completely missed a homophone this morning.

B: Mrs. N, my ancestors on my mom's side came from the ferry.

Me: The what? Did you say the fairy?

B: Yeah, the ferry.

Me: Oh, like the Ellis Island ferry? Like a boat?

B, looking at me strangely: Yeah, like I said, the ferry.

~You've Gotta Give Him Credit! ~

2011-02-25T13:52:00.002-05:00

Grading Social Studies papers today....

Question: You are watching a home game of the Indianapolis Colts. What state are you in?

Correct Answer: Indiana.

Special Ed, See the World Differently Answer: I'd be watching it on TV, so I'm in Michigan.

~ The Tape Nazi ~

2011-02-22T15:30:00.002-05:00

I'm usually pretty picky about what our school supplies are used for. If they're paid for with school money, they should be used for school purposes, not to tape your nose in a disgusting position, not to draw & color a cute little smiley face for your friend's locker, and not to create paper airplanes.

As picky as I usually am, during this year when our supply budget was reduced by half, I became extremely picky.

Kids are constantly wanting to use my tape for non-school-related projects. Taping pencils/pens/notebooks they destroyed back together, hanging decorations on their locker. Typically they ask, and I tell them no. But they keep asking. Until this year.

This year, C & H have become obsessed with paper airplanes. Not just simple four-fold paper airplanes...complicated airplanes, requiring not only paper, but paperclips, staples, and frequently, tape. The two of them learned the hard way not to use my stash of lined paper to fuel their obsession. Instead, they blew threw an entire three years' worth of accumulated scrap paper in about a week. Their numerous requests for staples, tape, and paperclips were also turned down in no uncertain terms.

And yet....I walk back into the room during our latest indoor recess to find C & H in the corner taping together yet another convoluted paper airplane with my tape!

Without a word, I walk over, pluck the tape dispenser out of their little paws, and deposit it in my desk drawer. Where it has stayed ever since.

Students who need tape for legitimate school purposes have been wandering around the room looking in vain for the tape. When they finally come to ask me about it, they find they must undergo interrogation to determine why they want the tape, and finally, they are given the least amount of tape possible for their school-related project and sent on their way.

The Tape Nazi - that's what they've turned me into.

~ The Little Things ~

2011-02-17T14:30:00.003-05:00

Once a month, our school honors kids who have shown respect or friendliness for that month. Two kids from each class are honored at an assembly and the next week, they're given a special lunch to celebrate, as well. Each month, one teacher from each grade level is invited to join the kids during their special lunch, and this month...you guessed it...it was my turn.

I was not looking forward to cafeteria pizza, although I was pleasantly surprised to find a huge assortment of fresh fruit, and a really yummy chocolate and coconut filled cookie for dessert. I was also not looking forward to being in the cafeteria during fifth grade lunch. The lunch ladies routinely call the fifth grade teachers to tell us how loud, noisy, and bad the kids are during lunch. But it truly wasn't as noisy as I thought it would be.

The highlight of my lunch came about two minutes in. The pizza came directly out of the oven and was served to us too hot to eat. A couple of the girls tried to pick it up, but put it back down right away. I decided to open my fork and knife to cut my pizza. The girls sitting around me all gasped.

"Where did you get that fork?" they asked.

I showed them the baggie with the plastic fork and knife, and soon they were all tearing into them, cutting their pizza into bite sized pizzas. "We only get sporks in the cafeteria," they told me, "it's so cool that we get real forks!"

Sometimes it's the little things we take for granted.

~ Valentine's Day: Bah, Humbug! ~

2011-02-14T12:27:00.001-05:00

I am a little less than fond of holidays which require a classroom party. Valentine's Day is one of those, and in order to make the beginning of the week run a little bit smoother, the fifth grade celebrated early, having our parties on Friday last week. The kids came in this morning ready to work, settling in to our writing assignment very nicely.

Until....

Morning announcements began as usual, with a fifth grade student reading birthdays and other details over the school's P.A. system, then leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance. We finished the Pledge, but the announcements didn't stop.

First, the music teacher announced that a group of "special people" would be singing a little tune for Valentine's Day. Then there were three heavy, huffing breaths directly into the microphone. At this point, my class was at a low buzz wondering what was happening. Then came some nearly non-melodic singing, which dissolved into a sort of non-rhythmic rapping, none of which could be understood over the P.A. My formerly calm class was now giggling and growing louder by the moment.

Then, as if enough hadn't already been done, the announcement came to turn our TVs to channel 18.

I shouldn't have listened.

Played for the whole school, channel 18 was the music teacher in his room singing, clapping, and doing a little Valentine's Day song with motions. My class was speechless for about an eighth of a second, before they all started talking at the same time.

Five minutes later, we were calm and back to work again. Finally.

Call me a Scrooge, but seriously...bah, humbug Valentine's Day!

~ A Math Conundrum ~

2011-02-07T14:30:00.002-05:00

Math assignment today: Choose 1 from the easy problems. Choose another 7 from the harder problems for a total of 8 problems.

Student: "If I do two problems from the easy section, can I count it as one harder problem?"
Me: "I guess that would work."
Student: "So if I do all four easy section problems, I can count it as two problems?"

What I Wanted to Say: "So, just to be clear, you're asking me if you can do 10 problems instead of 8? Go for it - you can use the extra practice."

What I Actually Said, With a Long Pause, Giving The Impression That I Really Didn't Want To Say Yes: "Well, I guess that would be OK."

~ Miraculous Momma!~

2011-02-01T12:16:00.001-05:00

We have a daily planner in fifth grade. We call it the assignment book. Each day has a space for the kids to write their assignments for the day in every subject, then check off when they've finished them. Unfinished work goes home for homework. Mom/Dad/Guardian initial each day so I know they've seen homework and reminders. The kids bring it back to school and I check to see their parent looked at it. If they haven't had their parent initial it, they have to stay in for part of recess.

For a few weeks, I've suspected that D has been faking the parent initials in his assignment book so he doesn't have to stay in at recess. I had trouble proving it, though, since other correspondence with mom showed that she had childish handwriting herself. So I waited, and sure enough, D tripped himself up.

I greet the kids at the door in the morning, and when D came to the door, no assignment book. I asked him where it was, and he told me he forgot it in his desk the night before. I made a mental note and waited to see what would happen before recess when I checked for parent initials.

I got to D's desk and he showed me his section for the day, all filled out. Then we turned our attention to the section for the previous day, and miraculously, mom had initialed it. Since I had a few more kids to get out to recess, I quietly asked D to wait for me in the room next door. He sputtered and tried to ask how long, but in the end went. When everyone was gone, I brought him back over.

"So, your mom must be pretty amazing, since she managed to sign your planner last night while your assignment book was locked up in your desk at school. How did that happen?"

D unfortunately chose to feign ignorance; he had no idea how this had happened. I waited him out - he was sent next door until he chose to be truthful with me. He actually whined about being bored on one of the moments when I went over to ask if he was ready to tell me the truth. After many hours, he finally came clean. Of course, his hours of stonewalling only made the consequences worse. Too bad his miraculous momma wasn't there to somehow bail him out!

~ Always something new ~

2011-01-26T15:30:00.001-05:00

C is the macho guy in our class: never admits to needing help, too cool to do his work, or get excited about anything in school. So it was a little strange when today on my way back to the room after lunch I met a visibly upset C in the hall.

"You're heading the wrong way," I said, "What's going on??"

"S was calling me names. Even when I told him to stop, he kept going and I'm seriously gonna punch him if he doesn't stop."

"Names like what?"

After a long pause, "He keeps calling me a rapist."

So while the rest of the class did busy work, the better part of my afternoon was spent interviewing witnesses, determining that S really did call C a rapist for no apparent reason, forcing S to have what was hopefully the most uncomfortable conversation of his life so far when he had to explain to me exactly what a rapist is, and writing out detention forms.

During this indoor-recess, too-cooped-up time of year, it's always something!

~ Yay for Snow Days! ~

2011-01-19T07:26:00.002-05:00

One storm, rolling in Monday afternoon

+

One child, off his meds

+

Indoor recess all day on Monday

=

A severe case of thankfulness for Tuesday's snow day!

~ Snow Day, Maybe?? ~

2011-01-17T09:16:00.003-05:00

Apparently, not everyone is as enthralled by snow days as I am. Case in point, this morning:

E: "Mrs. N, it's Monday, right?"
Me: "Yes."
E: "So....do we have school tomorrow?"
Me: "Well, E, that depends on how hard you do your snow dance tonight."
E: *long pause* "I have to do a dance?"
Me: "It's just a joke, E. We're supposed to have school tomorrow, unless there's a snow day."
E: "Aw, man. I hope we don't get a foot of snow. I hate snow."

I hate snow, too. But I love a snow day!
Come on, big nasty clouds!

~ The Storyteller ~

2011-01-13T08:00:00.002-05:00

My day has started, for several years, by greeting each student coming in the door with a handshake and a "Good Morning!" This year, the tradition is a little different, because of R. Now my morning goes something like this.

"Good Morning, A."

"Good Morning, D."

"Good Morning, R."

"Mrs. N...did you know that little kids run really fast in bare feet? Well, they can....."
or
"Mrs. N...did you know that I left my jacket in my locker? I did, and I think I need it because, you see, ......."
or
"Mrs. N...you know I got a remote control helicopter for Christmas? And I didn't even have it a week and the charger broke. So I had to....."
or
"Mrs. N, which do you think is more dangerous, getting thrown from a dirtbike or squashed by a snowmobile? I'd have to say, the snowmobile 'cause you see....."
or
"Mrs. N, did you know that every time I play this computer game I forget my password? But then I...."

This from the boy whose parents never show up for conferences, whose pants have been six inches too short for a couple of months and no one at home seems to have noticed. He's my neediest one, and his stories are nearly always an interruption when I'm working on something else. I have to fight the urge to return him to his seat, to ask him if there's any point in what he's telling me. And sometimes I have to do that. But more often it's important for me to listen, to let him know that he is important enough to have my attention. More than that, I see the rest of the class watching how I respond to him. So I make the effort to listen, to model for them that everyone is important and valued in this classroom. Some days I manage it, but some days, just hearing "Mrs. N, did you know.....?" sets my teeth on edge. Patience, Lord, patience, please.

~ I can't even imagine ~

2011-01-11T15:30:00.002-05:00

How some kids can even start to concentrate on learning and assignments, I will never understand.

One of the secretaries called very early, interrupting the early morning grading frenzy today. She was letting me know that the office had to be notified if C's dad showed up at the classroom to get him. C's parents are divorced, so he and his brothers were living with Dad. Dad had become depressed and over the weekend told his kids he was going to kill himself. Mom, understandably, took the kids and called Protective Services. C spent part of his day in the office, talking with a couple of officers. As a result, there is now a police order that if Dad shows up at school, the police must be called to deal with the situation. Added to that, there's also a previously scheduled family court date tomorrow that C will be attending.

I can't even imagine that level of stress and anxiety.

Yet C handled it pretty well today, considering. No outbursts, got all his work done on time, and generally participated in class. I would have let him crawl under a table and hide from the world if he'd wanted to.

~ My Red Folder ~

2011-01-10T14:40:00.000-05:00

Each of my kids have a red folder in their desks. This is a catch-all for unfinished work, projects, and anything else that needs to be kept for more than a couple of days. They hate using thier red folders; I'm constantly nagging at them to put it in your red folder, not just in your desk.

But what they don't know is that I have my own red folder. I keep it in the bottom drawer of my desk, forgotten for months on end. It's a small folder, and I don't really have a name for it, but it's my catch-all for the little notes of appreciation students and parents have written me over the years. I remembered it again cleaning up Christmas gifts from students. I found a couple of nice handwritten cards and remembered I had a place for them. Opening the folder up is a little like time travel; many of the kids whose names are signed on these notes are in high school now, some have even graduated. But these notes take me back, to the time they spent with me. I get a little teary-eyed, remembering.

~ There's a letter from S, who was only here a few months before she moved. She liked my class so much that she, in her words, "could sit 12 hours of every day learning something new with you."

~ Another layer down, there's a handmade birthday card from the whole class. They made it to cheer me up while I was at the doctor's getting tested for mono because I was feeling so terrible and they were doing busy work with one of the parapros.

~ Another card, this one a handmade Christmas card from kids who are sophomores now. They made it during class, passing it around under my nose to get it everyone's signature on the card.

~ A letter from a parent, the first half all business to notify the school of a different bus route for her daughter. The second half is why I kept it, though, it's a thank you for helping give her child confidence in herself.

~ A Thank You card from a graduating senior from my very first class, thanking me for the part I played in helping her graduate and remembering some of the Chinese words I taught them that year.

I don't share this to toot my own horn. The truth is that for every scrap of paper in this folder, there have been multiple angry phone calls from parents, kids I didn't reach, or who couldn't wait to get as far from my classroom as possible. Even though my red folder holds only a handful of paper, as I glance through it, the notes remind me again why I work in this field, why I decided to become a teacher in the first place.

So think about the teachers in your life: your own teachers, your child's teacher, or just a teacher you know. Let them know if you appreciate the job they're doing - maybe your little scrap of paper, your five minutes of time, will end up in their own "red folder," a reminder of why they go to work every day.

~Utterly Disturbing~

2011-01-07T13:03:00.002-05:00

Overheard today -
Kids are discussing middle names, when one nice, sweet boy chimes in.
"My parents just told me the meanings of my first and middle name. My first name means 'demon' and my middle name is another word for like a god or angel or something. So my name means 'demon god.'"

Yeesh. Thankfully he does not live up to the supposed meaning of his name. I've met his parents, too, and they seemed normal. Now, I'm thinking not so much....

~ Dear Self ~

2011-01-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

Dear Future Self,
Should you ever be a parent to a fifth grade boy, do not give him cologne for Christmas. His future teacher thanks you in advance for the headache free, non eye-watering days.
Love,
Mrs. N

~ Reason #46 ~

2011-01-05T09:06:00.002-05:00

Reason #46 why I love fifth graders...

When you come back to school the day after Christmas vacation only to discover that the janitors have played a very fun game of "rearrange the furniture" while you were gone, don't worry. Just meander down the hall and find a couple of your students who were dropped off early. Take them back to the room, tell them you want it to look like it did when we left for break, and continue on with your work. Ten minutes later, the room will be back to normal.

If you try this with third graders, they will argue with eachother for 7 minutes, then realize the other kids are lining up at the door and madly scramble around trying to get things back in order, all the while asking you every 3.78 seconds where this table or desk or lamp goes. You will begin to see that it would have been less time consuming to just do it yourself.

Ah, 5th grade, how I love being back!

~ 20 Questions ~

2010-12-16T12:40:00.000-05:00

Ah, indoor recess. On my top ten of things I dislike, this is right up there. Recess should be for playing, running, getting fresh air, and generally coming inside more calm than when they went outside.

With the windchill hovering at 1 degree, the kiddos are inside for recess. I, foolishly, decide to stay in rather than run away to the teacher's lounge. I know the next twenty minutes will be like the game 20 Questions, except it will go on and on until the kids leave for lunch. Indoor recess with a teacher in the room is like open season. It's now time for students to ask every single question they've been not-so-patiently waiting to ask all day long.

"Mrs. N, can we throw the ball in here?"

"Mrs. N, can I use the restroom?"

"Mrs. N, can we use your tape?"

"Mrs. N, why is this book called Niagara Falls, Or Does It? That doesn't even make sense."

"Mrs. N, can I use the computer?"

"Mrs. N, what is this for? What does it do? If you don't use it, why do you have it? Did you ever use it? Why don't you use it now?"

"Mrs. N, I know I'm not supposed to, but can I use your stapler just one time on my paper airplane?"

"Mrs. N, when the schedule says 'Math p. 88 - 89' does that mean we're using our math books?"

"Mrs. N, why does the green whiteboard marker actually look blue?"

"Mrs. N, did you know this picture has my cousin in it?"

On and on it goes, with me giving primarily one word answers which don't seem to faze them at all, the questions just keep coming while I keep hoping for a nine degree temperature jump...

~ Still Learning ~

2010-12-15T07:30:00.000-05:00

As much as I teach them, they teach me just as much. For example, we just finished reading the book Because of Winn Dixie by one of my favorite authors, Kate DiCamillo. I've been reading this book aloud to kids for several years now. It's a great story, but one I've read many, many times. So I was surprised when my kids pointed out something I've never noticed before.

The main character's father is the pastor of a small Baptist church. His wife, the main character's mother, has left them before the book even starts, and that is something he won't talk about, even to his daughter. Throughout the book, the main character doesn't refer to her father as Dad or Daddy; she calls him "The Preacher." I had never really given it a second thought, until this year. As we were reading, S piped up.

"Why does she call her Dad 'the preacher?' That's pretty weird."

I asked for thoughts from the rest of the class, and they had some good ideas, all centering around the disconnect the main character feels from her father. As they were sharing, I was thinking, "I was an English major - I had to write incredibly lengthy essay answers to questions about stuff just like this. How is it that I've never noticed this relationship being mirrored in the name she calls her dad?"

But the kids weren't done. About a week later, we were getting close to finishing the book. There's a climactic scene with the girl and her dad looking for their lost dog, and she finally has the courage to ask her dad about why her mom left and why he didn't try to stop her. At last, her dad answers her questions and shares the hurt he's feeling too.

We're reading along, through the last chapter, when J blurts, "Hey, she started calling her daddy 'Daddy' instead of the preacher!" Again, we discussed why, and again, I thought to myself, "How did I miss this?"

It's another reminder for me that this, teaching, will never be just a rote job, a numb "do the same thing over and over" job. Every group is unique, every group has something to teach me, too.

~ I Heart Snow Days ~

2010-12-14T09:50:00.002-05:00

A lovely 15 inches of snow fell through the weekend, leaving the roads a mess, and at our school, we got one of the loveliest gifts of all: a night before school cancellation.

No waking up ten minutes before the alarm, wondering if the phone will ring, or missing the call because you've given up hope and already jumped in the shower. Love it when the phone rings the night before and you don't even have to set the alarm. Aside from two snow days in a row, this is by far the best type of snow day.

Kids enter the room ready to work, teacher enters the room feeling as though she actually got enough sleep and is ready to deal with kids again.

Combine this with the fact that this gives us one four-day week and one two-day week right before Christmas break and this snow day couldn't have come at a better time.

I heart snow days.

~ When Creativity (or Stupidity?) Attacks ~

2010-12-09T12:31:00.002-05:00

After a particularly terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad Thursday a few weeks ago, the kids were having a good Friday. They'd remembered they are fifth graders and decided to behave, follow directions, and engage in all around good behavior. What better way to reward good behavior on a Friday than to have a little extra recess?

The sun was shining and it wasn't too cold out yet, so we headed out. Football, basketball, and kickball games sprang up immediately, and I sat back and enjoyed the fact that it was Friday and it was sunny.

Nearly 15 minutes had passed when one of my moms showed up. She was dropping off lunch to her daughter and needed to let her know it was there, and she stopped to say hi to me, too. In the less than ninety seconds that my back was turned, I heard it start. At least half a dozen kids yelling at me and the only thing I could hear clearly was "bleeding!" After shushing the half dozen screamers, I saw him: D was making his way from the kickball game toward me crying and holding the back of his head, which was streaming blood down his neck and all over his shirt. When I asked what happened, he told me a rock hit the back of his head.

The mom volunteered to take him down to the office and I began a conversation with the other three kickball players.

"Did he fall and hit his head?"

"No, the rock hit his head."

"How did that happen?" I asked. This question produced three different answers:

1. "Well, um, we might have been just tossing some rocks in the air."

2. "Someone threw one, but I'm not sure who threw the one that actually hit D's head."

3. "Mrs. N, we got bored with kickball, so we were playing Dodge-Rocks."

I decided answer number three was probably closest to the truth, so I sent each of the kickball players to a different room to stew for a little while so I could calm down enough to talk with them.

While each one had a slightly different version, all the stories went something like this: We were bored. Then someone, and I don't know who, said, "Let's play Dodge-Rocks!" We decided to do that, and so we were throwing rocks and then one hit D's head and he started bleeding.

Since they were all throwing rocks, they all got detentions. Except D, since he was home with a bleeding head. In the office later that afternoon, the secretary told me that karma punished D. I asked what she meant and got the rest of the story. In the office, having his head examined and his mother called, D fessed up. Dodge-Rocks was his idea. His stupid idea. I'm not a believer in karma, but I'd say his own stupidity punished him that day. One less thing for me to do...

~ A Good Surprise ~

2010-12-07T09:27:00.005-05:00

Today started with a bad surprise. I'm here early every day, frantically trying to catch up on grading papers, and today was no exception. However, in the middle of grading a set of math papers, the principal came on the P.A. system. He sounded flustered as he asked any student in the hallway to take their backpacks and go to the cafeteria. I didn't think much of it - students who get dropped off in the morning are supposed to wait in the cafeteria, and I thought they were cracking down on students roaming the halls illegally.

About three minutes later, however, the P.A. system beeped again. It was the principal again, sounding a little more flustered. "Teachers, your students are being held on the buses, and you may want to grab your coats and wait outside."

After sitting outside for half an hour, we came back in and learned that a large backup battery in a computer lab had overheated and started to meltdown, producing a terrible sulfuric smell that enveloped the whole building. The fire department was called, and once it became clear that no one was in danger, they cleaned the smell out, replaced the battery, and let us back in the building.

I was dreading going back in. I was lining up backup plans (i.e. a movie) in case the kids couldn't settle down and work after the excitement and confusion. But they surprised me. They came in, got their things out, and went to work. I suggested they work on some Christmas word searches I gave them last week, but most of them opted to work on the writing project that's due this week instead.

Amazingly good surprise to end a morning that began with a bad surprise, leaving me so thankful for this group of kids once again.

~ There is no Autopilot ~

2010-12-03T14:35:00.004-05:00

Which is more of a distraction: the preemptive strike or the patient pause and listen?

Situation: Math time. Multiplying by powers of ten. Kids are getting it and we're almost ready for independent work time. I see C out of the corner of my right eye reach towards a still-wrapped sucker on his desk, hear the crinkle as he lovingly caresses said sucker. "Mrs. N--" he starts. "No," I say, "C, the answer is no."

"But you didn't even hear the question," he says while the class chuckles at his crestfallen look.

"No sucker right now," I say, clarifying.

"But how did you know that?"

"I'm magic," I say as the class laughs.

Two minutes later, the buzz of talking has subsided and we're finally back on track, and I'm left wondering. Was my preemptive strike all that effective? Should I have been patient, listened to the question, and then answered? I know there isn't really a correct answer, but I still need to ask the question.

During my first few years of teaching, I used to long to be a more seasoned teacher, to have all the answers down. But that's no longer the kind of teacher I want to be. The wisdom I've gained is that there isn't an autopilot response for every situation, there isn't one right way to teach content. Constant evaluation and appropriate changes keep this job fresh and interesting.

Maybe I'll try the "patient pause and listen" next week....

~Where to start?~

2010-12-01T13:20:00.004-05:00

With a blog neglected as long as this one has been, knowing where to start is proving a bit difficult. So to recap:
*after a year in third grade, I've been moved back to fifth grade.
*after retirements and shuffling, I have a new set of co-workers in 5th grade.
*my partner teacher from 3rd grade was also moved to 5th grade, so we can continue to be partner teachers. Which means that....
*...I still don't have to teach science!!! Yeah!

As for the kids this year...well...they're nice. I don't have some of the crazy behavior I've had in years past. Nobody's having screaming breakdowns, or calling me names, or throwing things at other kids.

But of course, they have their moments...case in point: Veteran's Day.

Our school has an assembly on Veteran's Day to honor family & community members who have served in the military. It's often very moving, and typically a little bit lengthy as well. During the hour and a half we were there I confiscated two mini-skateboards (or TechDecks for those of you who know what those are) that were being mini-skated all over the floor and bodies of anyone sitting nearby, and removed one child from the rest of the class for pushing and grabbing at other kids.

After the assembly, we went to the library to check out books. At which point, three of them were removed to the office for crawling around on the floor chasing each other instead of checking out books.

Then it was back to the classroom, where the story of why there was such a commotion during the assembly came out. H. had taken A's dollar. Then threw it to another kid, who gave it back to A. Then, for some unclear reason, A continued to keep her dollar on her lap instead of in her pocket, which is when H took it again and gave it to K, who gave it to someone else to pass back to A, but somehow H ended up with it again, and it hadn't been seen since. Even though he insisted he didn't have it. Right. In the end, H agreed to pay A a dollar since he was the one who started taking it in the first place.

But, like I said, these are nice kids, and those kinds of days are few and far between. It's a lovely change - not dealing with crazy kids on top of lesson plans, new state regulations, and a mountain of papers to grade. It's one of the things I love about this job; change is always coming.

~Holy Neglected Blog, Batman!~

2010-06-04T10:32:00.003-04:00

Time does fly when you're....having fun?? No, that doesn't sound quite right....

Do over.

Time does fly when you're writing lesson plans, scraping chewing gum out of carpet, policing handheld pencil sharpeners, practicing multiplication facts, setting up science fair projects, chanting "Put your bottom on the chair and your feet on the floor" for the eighty-seven-thousandth time, making birthday root beer floats with no ice cream scoop, grading papers, dealing with the kid who has "no idea how that knife got in his pocket," getting another group of kids hooked on Harry Potter, introducing fractions, and bribing children to behave.

Oh, and my house burned down.

Suffice to say, I've been a busy girl since the departure of the student teacher. I have missed my independent fifth graders even more these past few months as I've had a lot to deal with in my other life, you know, the one outside of school in which dear hubby and I deal with insurance adjusters, investigators, contractors, etc, etc, etc. But it's looking like I may not miss those fifth graders much longer. As of last week, my position for next year was tentatively in fifth grade.

I have mixed feelings about this move. On the positive side, the amount of trivial, "Tell him to stop looking at me!" complaints will decrease significantly and I'll get to keep my classroom instead of spending summer vacation packing and moving it elsewhere. But, there'll be no more classroom content to play Heads Up Seven Up for ten minutes for a break and no more ability to say the word cock during spelling with no one snickering.

And of course, anything could change by next fall. If I've learned one thing over the years it's "Assume nothing." Ultimately, it truly doesn't matter to me anymore. Give me fifth, third, fourth, whatever...I have a job, which is something I'm thankful for each and every day.

~You know you're a teacher...~

2010-02-08T12:48:00.001-05:00

You know you're a teacher when you're jealous of the two feet of snow that fell in Washington, D.C. because you haven't had a snow day since the beginning of December.

And the natives are getting restless...

~ Things Teacher Ed. Programs Fail To Mention ~

2009-12-01T14:42:00.002-05:00

...alternate title...These Things Only Happen To Me.

Thing One: How to continue teaching while in the middle of a massive nosebleed.

Shockingly, this topic is not covered in Introduction to Teaching Elementary, nor in any other college course. Fifth graders tend to understand that they need to chill and let you take care of things, so when you tell them to just work at their desks, they do it. Third graders, on the other hand, continue to bring you their worksheets to tell you they're finished, or that they don't get what to do. Luckily, Ms. L. rescued me and played Addition/Subtraction Bingo for fifteen minutes while my blood clotted.

Thing Two: How to get candle wax out of berber carpet so the principal and/or head of maintenance won't find out you spilled wax on the carpet and ban candles from your room, thus forcing you to endure the smell of ripe children.

While carpet cleaning is not on the list of topics, learning to teach cause and effect is. Observe: Because of the massive nosebleed, Ms. L played Bingo with my kids. Because Ms. L. was playing Bingo, she needed suckers for prizes. Because she needed suckers for prizes, she used the sucker jar on my desk. Because she used the sucker jar, the recently lit candle sitting next to it was accidentally knocked on the floor. Because it was knocked on the floor, candle wax splattered all over the carpet. Because of that, I learned something new today. Thanks to google, I now know that the best method for removing wax from carpet is to place an absorbant paper towel over the wax, and then iron the paper towel, causing the wax to melt and be absorbed into the towel.

So even though my carpet will probably have a slightly pinkish spot until they shampoo it next summer, and my room will likely smell like Cinnamon Apples for several weeks, I don't think anyone will notice....

unless you tell them, that is.....shhhh!

~ Define "bad" ~

2009-11-25T12:39:00.002-05:00

Sitting at the computer today while Ms. L was having the kids pack up their stuff, I was startled by A. "T said a bad word," he blurted before running back to his desk. Without any other context, and fifteen minutes before Thanksgiving break, I decided to keep an eye out, but not pursue.

My mind was changed by B, who almost never says a word, when he came back in the room from getting his things from his locker and told me, "T said a bad word." I asked a few more questions this time, and found out it was the A word, said to another student. I asked the other student, and he told me the same thing.

I pulled T aside to investigate. He first tried to deny he said anything bad. When I pointed out the unlikeliness that three other people in class were lying to me about it, he tried a new one. "Well, sometimes at my house I hear voices when no one's there." Stifling laughter, I responded, "Really? So you think three different people in our class are hearing voices in their heads, and they all three think the voice is coming from you?" "I guess so," he says.

Since I was getting nowhere fast, I told T I was pretty sure he wasn't telling me the truth, and asked him to have a seat and think hard about what he might have said in the hallway. The tears came then, "Well, I guess maybe I said the d word to A." This was not what I'd heard, but at least he was admitting to something. I had him start on a letter to his mother, telling her what he'd done in school that day.

He worked away for a while, then announced he was done. "Ok, read it to me," I said. Here's how it went:

Dear Mom,
Today in school I called A a dummie.
From, T

"Oh, honey," I said, "you think dummie is the bad word you said? That's not a nice word, but that's not the bad word they told me you said. Three people, T, three people told me you said the A word." He didn't even deny it at that point. Just told me he wasn't sure how to spell that word. "Did you say it?" I asked. "Well, yeah, but I can't spell it."

What followed was a conversation in which he first pretended not to know any word that meant "not telling the truth," wondered why he had to add the fact that he lied to Mrs. N to his letter, then argued about having to have his mom sign the letter and return it to school.

Just in case I thought the half day before Thanksgiving was going to be an easy day. Guess I'll enjoy my break that much more now!

Pie, pie, and more pie

2009-11-03T11:11:00.004-05:00

One of the things that didn't change when I came to third grade was the approach to writing. I've used Writer's Workshop and individual conferences with students for years, and while the lessons are a little different for younger writers, the basic structure is the same, and leads to moments with kids where they really get writing, and get excited about it.

D. came to tell me she was done with her story. "I read it, it makes sense." Her story went like this:

I love pie. I cud eat

pie all day

if I kud.

Reglar (regular)

charey

pie.

I love pie.

D. has a hard time writing. She doesn't read very well, which makes writing even harder. I started asking her questions. Why do you like pie so much? What's your favorite kind of pie? Why is that your favorite?

She started talking about making pie with her Grandma, and how her Grandma sometimes puts frosting on the bottom of a cherry pie, which makes it extra good. Just talking to me about it made her smile.

I knew we'd found it. "There's your story," I said, "Your first story basically says you like pie. I don't know anyone who doesn't like pie, but I've never heard of putting frosting in it."

D. went back and completely rewrote her story to tell about making pie with her Grandma and how that makes her feel. She ended up with something she was really proud of.

This is why I love Writer's Workshop, for kids like D. who absolutely hate writing when they come to me, and realize by the end that they do have a story to tell.

~ Something bad will happen ~

2009-10-28T13:54:00.002-04:00

Third graders, in some respects, are easier than fifth graders. An obvious statement, perhaps, but I'm continually finding new ways that this is true.

For several years, I have done away with an established system of consequences. There's no checkmark, no first getting five minutes of recess taken, then ten, etc. I find it's much more effective to ask the child what they think should happen to them, or just tell them if they don't stop,

something bad will happen.

I've used that vaguely threatening phrase for several years, but I'm finding it to be much more effective with third graders because of conversations like this one, with J. On our way back from the Kindergarten bake sale, I asked students to walk quietly, single file, no voices. As usual. And then, I used my vaguely threatening phrase, "If you decide to talk, you can be sure something bad will happen." Which was when J piped up, "Like getting our snack taken away, Mrs. N?"

I almost thanked him for giving me his consequence, and had to keep myself from laughing out loud. "That would be really bad, wouldn't it J?"

Fifth graders usually know when to shut up, so you don't get these kinds of insights into exactly what they don't want to have happen.

I think they might be growing on me...

~Perspective~

2009-10-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

While out of my room so the student teacher could teach without students interrupting to ask me a question, I escaped to the computer lab. As I sat there, typing out a Social Studies outline for the year, a parapro from the autistic room came in with a student.

I think they were learning verbs, because she had a set of cards that she showed him and he'd have to say, "The boy is running" or swimming or jumping.

From the get-go, this student was agitated. "No school!" he kept blurting. She'd patiently reply, "Yes, school."

After nearly every card he completed, his first request was, "New cards, please!" with increasing urgency. She continued to patiently ignore him and give him the next card.

In my most frustrating day, I have less repetition and agitation to deal with than she did in the fifteen minutes she worked with him. Yet I still find myself losing my patience with kids when I've had to remind them again how to add, or subtract with borrowing.

What a reminder to take a deep breath and remember the patience God has with me.

~ Too Much Information ~

2009-10-22T10:12:00.000-04:00

Our little class has been working hard all month to collect personal connections to the books we're reading. Last week, each student had to have their own connection to the book they're reading written in their reading journal. Most of them did a nice job. So did A., although his was possibly a little too enlightening:

"I'm reading Captain Underpants. He wanders around in his underwear a lot. And so do I."

~Why's that again?~

2009-10-21T15:15:00.000-04:00

We're finishing the state testing this week. MEAP. My favorite thing ever. Fifth graders are so over MEAP testing, but for third graders? Well, it's their first time, and they have lots of questions.

The biggest question? "Why do we have to use Number 2 pencils?" We gave them a couple of Number 2 pencils at the beginning of the week. When we got to the second day of testing, we asked them to get their number two pencils out. Pens, odd pencils, and crayons came out, along with the question. WHY the number 2 pencil?

"Because," we told them, "number 2 pencils make the computers that grade your test happy. We have to make the computer happy."

But still, each testing session brought about more questions. T actually got a little teary eyed when I took his camoflauge pencil away and handed him a good old number 2. "But WHY?" he whined.

And just now, as Ms L read a funny story about standardized testing, another question. "Why do you have to use a number two pencil?"

"TO MAKE THE COMPUTER HAPPY!" the rest of the class informed him.

Who would have thought this was what they'd have trouble with?

~ Oh, the things I thought I'd be missing~

2009-10-20T08:44:00.000-04:00

A new realization has come to me since teaching third grade. The drama queens we get in the fifth grade have their roots in the third grade.

Mean girls. Drama Queens. Queen Bees & Wannabes.

Call them what you will, I've got at least three of them, ripping a path of destruction through my classroom.

We typically aren't aware of the problem until someone blurts out, "I HATE YOU!" They're good at keeping things under the surface. Then the detective work begins.

Last week, we worked hard on personal connections to stories. For example, the person in the story we were reading had a little brother who drove her nuts, and those of us who had younger siblings understood the story much better because we knew what that was like. We had a personal connection. They all went off to read their own books, and at the end everyone got a chance to share a connection they found to their own story. All fine and good.

The next thing we knew, M was shouting her hatred at a couple other girls at break time. After some calm down/thinking time next door, I went in to talk to her. Her side of the story? "I only said that because K said that my connection in reading wasn't right when Ms. L said it was fine. And then K went and told B my connection was bad and B said to A and K that they weren't going to play with me anymore."

Wow. So, I poked my head in and interuptted break time for B and K and A. I sent them all to different rooms and then pulled them one at a time to verify M's story. Which they did, K saying that she thought M's connection was a bunch of baloney and didn't like it when M argued with her about it, which is why she told B. B saying that she didn't like M arguing with K and that's why she decided that M couldn't play with them. A saying she just wanted to play with K and B and didn't like M all that much, only she didn't know why. Except that B and K didn't like her either.

Following all of this? It was enough to make my head spin as well. A round of consequences was had by all, and I was left shaking my head.

They act like fifth grade girls. With a couple of key differences. One, when I talked to them, they all cried. Fifth grade girls sigh and roll their eyes over stuff like this. They rarely cry. Two, with fifth grade girls, I would never have even known about this whole thing. The whole scene in the classroom would have been communicated in a series of facial expressions, gestures, and quiet whispers, and it would have become truly nasty out on the playground, away from the prying eyes of any teacher. Third grade girls just haven't figured that out yet.

I thought I would have less of this to deal with, not more. Third graders continue to surprise me...and not always in good ways.

~Oh, the things I'm missing!~

2009-10-19T08:00:00.002-04:00

There are several things I miss about teaching fifth graders.
Sense of humor.
Independence.
The ability to remember more than two consecutive directions.

But then there are the things I'm really glad to be missing.
The Period Club.

Yes, the period...the dreaded monthly visit. Er, dreaded unless you're a fifth grade girl, that is. Across the hall (which is fifth grade land) M. has started her period. Soon, a bevy of girls from across the hall head to the bathroom several times a day, because they're sure they've started. They have conferences in the bathroom to discuss whether they've started, and how they can tell for sure.

And so my former partner teacher finally took away their bathroom passes. The girls have designated times to use the restroom. And they have to be supervised.

The thing is...the girl who started her period was supposed to be in my room this year. So it seems I've missed out on the Period Club.

There are still things to do a happy dance about.

~ My new job description ~

2009-10-16T14:01:00.003-04:00

Apparently, my job as an educator of today's youth includes dentistry.

Little M. came up to the student teacher yesterday to inform her that her tooth was hurting.

Ms. L gave the same response I would have given: "I'm so sorry. I know that's not fun. Since I can't really do anything about it, make sure you tell your mom tonight."

Today, M. told us her mom had a question for us. "She said to ask you if you're going to pay to get my tooth fixed since you didn't do anything about it."

Hmm. Like maybe pull out the novocain I keep stashed in the desk? Or maybe perform dental surgery right here and now? Because apparently it's now our job to educate, instill character, and keep track of every student's dental needs.

Because I need something else to do...

~ Use # 241 for Scotch Tape ~

2009-10-05T11:50:00.003-04:00

My student teacher was observed today, which meant I was kicked out of my room for a bit. As I sat in the hallway, hole punching and filing paperwork, Mr. X across the hall stepped out on the phone. When the vice principal got on the phone, the following story unfolded...

K., a student in Mr. X's room, was having a rough morning. He'd been sent to the hall multiple times, where he disrupted other students and molded modeling clay around his nose. K. decided he was ready to come back in, and so Mr. X let him in.

Within 10 minutes of being invited back in, K. managed to get some Scotch tape. He decided to tape the inside of his throat. Yup, that's right, the inside. This had the unfortunate consequence of making him gag. And we all know where gagging can lead. Mr. X was calling to request clean up of his floor. Delightful.

My first thought was that apparently crazy had moved across the hall this year. My second thought...who would have thought Scotch tape could be used for such a purpose. I guess it's true...you learn something new every day.

~ Unexpected ~

2009-09-21T07:49:00.002-04:00

Someone said the word "cock" during a spelling lesson in my classroom this week, and nobody even noticed. Well, except me, ready to give out the evil eye/teacher look to the first person who let out the tiniest little guffaw or poked the kid sitting next to them to giggle about the other meaning of that word. Except these weren't fifth graders, they were third graders, and not one of them even moved an eyelash.

How refreshing.

There've been some big changes to my little life recently. To recap:
* Last week of school in May, superintendant decides that one section of 5th grade will be cut. That means me. I think to myself, "Low seniority stinks!"
* In June, the school board asks the superintendant to find other places to cut besides fifth grade. He agrees and in July the board passes a budget which includes me keeping my place in fifth grade. I think to myself, "Yay!"
* In August, the secretaries come back to work and fifth graders begin withdrawing from the district in alarming numbers. My class list drops to 17. In the meantime, second and third graders begin enrolling in large numbers. I start thinking about what to do with all that extra room in my classroom.
* Six days before school starts, I get the call. I can keep my room, but I'm going to be teaching third grade.

I have mixed emotions about this move. I really love fifth graders, their independence and sense of humor.

But for now I'm enjoying the chance to play the game "Heads Up, Seven Up" without anyone rolling their eyes, that a couple of them sneak up to ambush me with hugs when I'm not expecting it, and not having to give a death glare to the kid who suggests another word for rooster during the spelling lesson.

~Mushrooms, revisited~

2009-05-28T21:20:00.003-04:00

So my classes seem to have a theme of obsession with mushrooms. Field trip, shmield trip. We're looking at mushrooms!

Today was no exception. It was our annual trip to White Pine Village. It's a really cool restored historical village, with lots of activites for kids to do, and also a candy shop and an ice cream store, which, if you asked a fifth grader, are the most important stops in the village.

Except for this year.

I had my little group of seven. They stopped to see the old sawmill, which was operating today. The two boys were absolutely fascinated with the little hole in the wall where the sawdust was disappearing up a ramp. They politely asked the men running the sawmill if they could go behind the building to see the sawdust pile. Really valuable historical stuff, I'm tellin' ya! When the man said, "Sure," they turned around with the best can-we-can-we-oh-please look I've ever seen. Before my head had completed one entire nod, they were off.

We waited. And we waited. The girls, who were most definitely not interested in the sawdust pile, were about ready to mutiny and leave the boys behind because they were Hungry when the boys came roaring back, two huge white morels in their hands.

They showed their mushrooms off to everyone they could think of, ate their lunch in about twelve seconds, and then began begging to go mushroom hunting.

So we spent our last twenty minutes at the historic village mushroom hunting. Successfully. They found fifteen or twenty huge morels. They were so excited they even forgot to fight over who would take them home.

So chalk up yet another field trip in which my lovely children, when asked, would only be able to tell you about fungus. Yep...educationally valuable stuff!

~ To the Rescue! ~

2009-05-22T08:07:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, it was Bitsy Bender. Today it's a bunch of lilacs. Saving my day, that is.

Yesterday was the first annual "NutriWalk" at our school. Kids walk about a mile, and then get healthy snacks and water as a gym activity. This involves a)riding a bus to the park, b)walking a mile and c)walking back to school, all of which are things that send my autistic one into fits of panic. Especially the bus. All I heard, all morning long, was that busses are bad, they can tip over, they're loud, they're too bouncy. And, oh, by the way, he hates busses.

We put his earplugs in, and since he's destroyed all his other little fidgety items, I frantically searched my desk for something he could fiddle with on the bus ride. And I found this:

Bitsy Bender. Given to me ages ago by a good friend. Bitsy was contorted, rocketed, magneted, and flipped all the way to the park. And not even one small, "Busses are evil," comment was heard. He was so calm when he got off the bus, he even completed the mile walk and the walk back to school without complaining. Truly, miracles do still happen.

Bitsy Bender saves the day.

And today, her superhuman counterpoint is.....a vase of lilacs. Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

It starts with what felt like a Monday morning. I didn't sleep well, I made the coffee too weak, I had to change my white shirt after a muddy dog decided to show love by jumping on me, I couldn't find my favorite jacket even after checking all the normal places, and I finally straggled into school thirty minutes later than I wanted to be.

Which is when A. showed up with a vase full of lilacs and this heart-warming statement, "Mrs. N, my mom wants me to give you these 'cause she doesn't like this vase anymore."

Ah, fifth graders. They still know how to make my day.

~Pass It Around~

2009-05-18T08:55:00.005-04:00

I love this book.

It's a tale that starts out sounding like it's a simple childrens' story.

And then it starts hitting you right in the heart. "This is the danger of loving: No matter how powerful you are, no matter how many kingdoms you rule, you cannot stop those you love from dying."

Powerful stuff that most authors aren't brave enough to put in a childrens' novel.

Because I adore this book, I always read it aloud for my kids, and they always love it, too. We've used the book this year for lessons on quotation marks, paragraphs, plot structure, text-to-text connections, character development, and poetry writing.

Somewhere along the way it becomes clear that I've infected my kids. They start checking the book our of the school library. There's a bit of a waiting list for the copy I have in my room. They talk their parents into buying it from book orders.

This morning I had to ducktape the hardcover back on our classroom copy. The dust jacket has long since vanished. The pages are dog-eared and filled with old sticky notes marking someone's favorite passage.

Love of literature and stories is infectious.

Who have you passed the bug along to?

~Not Me! Monday~

2009-05-11T13:04:00.002-04:00

I most certainly do not ever, under any circumstances, bribe children with suckers. And if I did, I certainly would never bribe them to run all the way down to the teacher's lounge to buy me a diet cherry pepsi because I need the caffeine. Nope, that would never happen in my classroom...

Triple Meltdown Thursday

2009-04-30T21:16:00.003-04:00

It was one meltdown after another today with my little autistic one.

It all began with seeing a high school band concert on the schedule and vowing that he would not sit on the floor in the gym because it makes his knees and feet hurt and it's dirty and it has germs.

The meltdown fun continued with indoor recess. I returned a couple minutes before the end of recess after lunch to find it absolutely silent, and they were all reading.
"Did you guys get in trouble at recess?" I asked.
And before the first two words were out of anyone's mouth, he was screaming, "It wasn't my fault," throwing books, lifting his desk off the floor and dropping it.

So naturally, when he made it back from the office mid-concert, and I said, "Please sit down." He sat. On the floor. With no drama. After I'd heard all day how floors are dirty, bad places where children should never be required to sit. Ever.

By the days end, he walked into the Special Ed teacher's room, plopped himself on the floor, rubbed his palms on the floor and then licked them. Licked them.

Because, as he explained to her, floors have all kinds of germs on them, which would make him sick so he wouldn't have to come to school and sit on the floor.

So maybe the next time we have an assembly, I can remind him that by sitting on the floor, he actually increases the chances of getting to stay home.

It might work. It just might work.

~"Not Me!" Monday~

2009-04-27T13:25:00.005-04:00

I most definitely did not send a student into the hall today.
And this sentence very definitely did not come out of my mouth,

"I'd love to have you back in my classroom as soon as you can use words to ask questions instead of throwing glue sticks."

Nope, not me....

~ All in the Family ~

2009-03-31T08:38:00.002-04:00

Two years ago, K. was in my classroom. I loved K. and her spunky little ways, and one of the things I remember about her is the way she turned in assignments. Never just folded in half, or even in fourths, not this girl. She'd start by folding them in half, then continue the fun by accordian folding the assignment, or maybe creating a little fan out of the paper. It was a little mini-adventure just to get her paper unfolded and laid flat to read it.

This year, her little brother R. is in my room. R just folded his math paper in thirds, folded all the edges back a couple of times, and then proceeded to staple the life out of it. When I told him I didn't really want to have to use a staple remover just to grade his assignment, he solemnly held it up, showing me that all the answers were on the front of his little art project.

Is the desire to fold paper genetic, or what?

~ Top Five ~

2009-03-27T11:13:00.004-04:00

Top Five signs that Spring Break is only days away:

5. When asked to get his reading book out of his desk, D. begins growling at me.

4. During math time, the boys manage to make a fraction game into a full contact sport.

3. Every set of directions is followed by someone asking, "Do we have to?"

2. Whispered arguments erupt during reading time over whether Spring Break is this coming week, or if we have one week of school left. A. finally settles it by interrupting me mid-sentence to ask if we have school on Monday or not.

.......and the number one sign that Spring Break is only days away......

Teachers with small, thin smiles passing each other in the hallway, reminding each other that we will make it to break with most of our sanity intact. Maybe.

Creative Geography

2009-03-24T10:06:00.003-04:00

In education, we deal with a lot of what is sometimes called "creative spelling," where a child who has no idea how to spell a word will pretty much make up a spelling. Take, for example, the word "aghsome."

But I think we need a new term in education, so I'm introducing, "Creative Geography," where a child who has no idea where countries or major landforms are located makes it up.

My partner teacher's kids have social studies with me every other week, and they are enormous creative geographers. For example, if you didn't already know, my partner teacher's students tell me that Canada comes in two parts, one part north of the U.S., and one part south. They also think Chicago is a country and Mackinac Island is it's own state. Truly.

Today, as I was grading their final projects for our Colonial Times unit, I came across quite the interesting picture. One student chose to make a poster for his project. He drew a picture of a cabin with some farm fields and a garden patch with a slave working, and in the background, a volcano, spewing lava over the entire scene. You didn't know that there were active volcanoes in the thirteen original colonies, did you?

Neither did I.

Note To Self

2009-03-13T08:31:00.001-04:00

Dear Self,
For future reference, field trips on Thursdays are a BAD thing. It tricks the mind into believing that Thursday was actually Friday, which leads to Friday feeling like Saturday, which leads to the minds of children believing that they shouldn't actually have to do any work. 'Cause it's Saturday.

So save yourself a headache, and from now on, only take field trips on Fridays.

Sincerely,
Mrs. N.

The Time Has Come

2009-03-12T12:42:00.002-04:00

It came early this year.

It's usually April before I have to give the Dreaded Talk. But it's only the beginning of March, and judging by the smell I'm gonna have to give it early.

The your-bodies-are-changing-and-you-must-start-showering-every-day-and-also-wearing-deoderant talk.

Cause they just came back from gym, and oh my glory are they ripe!

An Exercise in Pointlessness

2009-03-11T13:43:00.003-04:00

I like extra paperwork about as much as the next person, which is to say not at all. So I was less than happy when our grade level was told we'd be giving a writing test to our kids which would need to be scored by us using a rubric. We'd need to score the essays blind, with students using numbers instead of their names , and we couldn't score our own students because of the potential for bias.

Sounds fun, right? Oh, but wait, there's more!

Then, because I have the extra special job of being the grade level chairperson, all the scores came to me, I had to type in all 115 names of students in our grade level, get a class list (with their numbers) from each teacher, and enter the scores on a spreadsheet to be sent to our principal.

Lots of extra work for me, but I do get paid for this position, so I don't mind it so much.

Usually.

According to plan, I should have had a set of scored papers from everyone by February 27th. A week and a half ago.

According to plan, I also should have had a list of student names with numbers from each teacher by February 27th. A week and a half ago.

But of course, what ever goes according to plan when education is involved?

First, I had Ms. Procrastination next door. After being told she'd have them on three separate dates, I had to threaten her with having to enter her own scores on my spreadsheet and figure out how to attach the file and send it to the principal. She hates technology. I got the scored papers within forty-five minutes.

My next hurdle was getting a class list from Mr. Unorganized. I personally don't understand how a teacher can survive without a printed class list. I make dozens of copies of mine and use them for everything from lunch choices to setting up reading groups to grading. But he doesn't. And there's nothing really wrong with that. Which I had to repeat to myself like a chanting monk as he was telling me he didn't have a class list and wasn't going to spend that time typing just to give me one. His idea? I'll just pass them back out and have the kids write their names on them. All fine and good. Except he forgets to give them back to me and has to unearth them from his desk when I go over to beg for them yet again.

Finally, I think I have the final piece, the missing names for these assignments, and I can finish this project at long last.

Except then I look at the names. The first names. Followed by no last names.

I march back across the hall. I believe his exact words to me were, "What now?" Yep, professional to the core. He tells me he'll have them do it at recess and then give them right back to me.

Indoor recess. Again. I wait. And wait. And finally decide he probably forgot and go across the hall, again, to find him. He isn't there, but the papers are, sitting on top of a pile on one of his desks. I grab them, start hollering at children to come put their last names on and make sure they print. It's mass chaos, half of them want to tell me how to pronounce their last names, and the other half want to ask me if they have to put their real name or their nickname. Yeesh. This is also when I realize that Mr. Unorganized has not assigned his children numbers based on alphabetical order, or any particular order at all.

*sigh*

When the commotion subsides, I'm left with two papers with no names, and Mr. Unorganized has returned. Shockingly, no one claimed the paper with a large zero at the top, and the one child who hasn't put his name on a paper claims that C. took his paper and put his name on it.

It's at this point that I decide I'm beyond caring. It is Not. My. Job. to figure out what on earth he's done with these kids and these papers. Not. Not, not, not. I take what I have, enter the scores on the spreadsheet, toss the ones with no names, and send the whole thing on its merry little way.

But here's the real kicker. I have absolutely no idea what these scores are actually being used for. We're not using them to decide what to teach. The sixth grade teachers aren't using them to get an idea where the kids are at before they start sixth grade. They're going in some dusty file that no one ever looks at. And we get to test them twice a year. Which means I get to do this all over again before the end of school.

Argh.

Run, don't walk!

2009-03-06T13:02:00.002-05:00

I walk in the room during lunch recess to see K banging the tape dispenser on the table.

"What is it that you're doing?"

"N broke the whole bottom off it," he says, sand pouring from a large gap, "I'm just trying to fix it."

I shake my head and run, run as far away as possible. Which unfortunately is only as far as the teacher's lounge.

Expanding the Union

2009-03-04T14:02:00.003-05:00

Word of the Day: contiguous. As in, "How many contiguous states are there?"

I think my explanation of "contiguous" was pretty good. Contiguous states are the states that are touching at least one other state. They understood that.

Nope, the problem seemed to lie in the fact that they weren't entirely sure what qualified as a state.

"Oh!! So Cuba is not a contiguous state!" No, sweetie, Cuba is a different country.

"Well, how about Mackinac Island? That's a state, right?" Ah, no. It's part of our state.

"What about Greenland? Antarctica? Those aren't touching anything else." Honey, those aren't actually part of the U.S.

"This part right here..." (pointing to Vancouver Island) "it's not contiguous...which state is that?" Well, my dear, it's not a state, it's part of Canada.

They didn't stop at adding land to the United States, either. As I circled the room, B. piped up. "Hey, is Canada split in half?"
"Um, no," I reply confusedly.
"Well then, what's that?" she says, pointing to Mexico.
"Mexico," I sigh, praying the middle school Social Studies teacher will refrain from murdering me in my sleep.

Thankful Thursday

2009-02-26T09:56:00.007-05:00

Thursday, oh Thursday, you've been so much kinder to me than Wednesday was.

* This Thursday I found my new favorite spelling mistake: AGHSOME. Allow me to translate for those of you who don't deal with creative spelling every day. aghsome = awesome. As in, "I'm having an aghsome morning!" I'm trying to think of anyplace, ever, where 'gh' makes a 'w' sound. So far, I'm drawing a blank. Any ideas?

* This Thursday I found the newest slogan I'd like tattooed to my forehead for later use. "Where is your MUTE button?" As seen on one of those T-shirts I can't believe parents actually spend money on and allow their children to wear. I don't think any child should be wearing a T-shirt which says that, but I can see where I could definitely use the slogan.

* This Thursday morning, since my kids are in the middle/end of roughly 40,000 projects and assignments, I declared this to be a work session morning. We made a list, I told them they were in charge of keeping track of where they were and how much time they had left, and we went to work. And amazingly enough, they're actually doing it! Aghsome!

* This Thursday morning, my autistic child came in, followed directions, and got all his work done without a single temper tantrum. Double aghsome!

Hope your day is as AGHSOME as mine - what do you have to be thankful for this Thursday?

Not quite what I had in mind

2009-02-25T10:10:00.002-05:00

Today's spelling assignment: search and find words that end in Y and add a suffix to them.

First word they found: loganberry. Which they changed into loganberries.

I was thinking about more useful words...words that they may actually USE in their writing.

*sigh* I guess this works, too...

It is well

2009-02-24T07:45:00.003-05:00

As much as I disagree with some of the things my administrator does in the building, I'm always thankful that she is a woman with strong faith, and that we have that in common.

So this morning I'm walking through the building to my classroom anticipating
~what kind of mood my autistic child will be in
~filling out a lengthy narrative report on another student who should qualify for special ed, but probably won't
~having another meeting with another specialist dealing with my autistic student
~having to redo fully half of the writing notebooks I graded yesterday because our computerized grading system booted me off without saving what I'd already done
~on top of the large basket of papers I've not had time to grade yet.

As I'm walking, the music my principal plays in the hallways in the morning starts to seep in through the rest of the stuff of life and teaching...
"It is well with my soul."
Amen

Objection

2009-02-23T13:36:00.002-05:00

Random comment of the day, in the middle of a social studies work session.

R: "This music is veeeeerrrrry relaxing."

Mrs. N: "I'm glad you approve, R. It's called Music for Reading."

R: "But we're not reading, we're working....I guess it'll still work."

Reflections on Teaching Year 7

2009-02-20T11:03:00.005-05:00

“Giving Up”
Reflections on Year 7

“Write it down,” the assistant principal told me. “Write down every single thing you’ve tried with her, then give me a copy." So, I sat down to type.
I let my mind wander back to that honeymoon period, the first two weeks of the school year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thump, thump, thump, thump. It seemed innocent at first, like it was a nervous habit and she couldn’t help it. It drilled itself into our subconscious, hammering at our sanity.
Thump, thump, thump. “So our next step is to bring down….” Thump, thump, thump. “…to bring down….” Thump, thump, thump. “…what was I saying?” Glassy eyes stared back at me. Miserable. This was miserable. I walked back to her desk. “Please stop stomping. No one can think or concentrate. Please stop.” Thump, thump, thump. It was unbelievable that I would be begging a student to stop a behavior. She’d already been kept in from recess, sent to the office, and removed to the hallway. I’d put pillows and exercise mats under her desk, only to have them viciously kicked across the room. And still, every single day, every single hour, every single minute: thump, thump, thump.

While sharing my frustration in the staff lounge one day, a voice piped up from a nearby table.
“I know exactly who you’re talking about.”
“Really?”
“Yup. The boy I shadow was in her home room last year. The stomping made everyone crazy. I finally took her shoes.”
“Off her feet?”
“Yup. I only had to do it once, and she never stomped for me again.”

Well, now, there was an idea! Take the shoes once and be done with it. This was new territory for me, though. I’d never forcibly removed clothing from a student, or from anyone, for that matter. I waited until the next day, after a quick phone call to keep the parents informed.
It started soon after the first bell. Thump, thump, thump. I gave her one last chance. “Please stop stomping,” I murmured with my hand on her chair, knowing she wouldn’t but hoping she would. Sixty seconds of thump, thump, thumping later I took a deep breath. I was so nervous my hands were trembling. I moved her chair away from her desk, knelt beside her, and began unlacing shoes from her uncooperative feet which lashed out soundlessly. I wrestled the shoes off and returned, shaking, to my own desk.

Unfortunately, this first time wasn’t the last time. I learned to wedge both her legs between my own legs and the desk and use one elbow to keep the knees down while I unlaced and pulled. After a seemingly endless couple of weeks, the thumps ceased.

For about a day, lovely silence reigned in our classroom. And then, “Shhhhhhhh. Shh. Shh. Shhhhhh.” At first, we were so relieved to have the stomping over with that the shushing was a welcome replacement. Yet as the weeks wore on, so did our patience. After the second month of shushing, I looked at the eyes of my twenty-five other children and knew, I had to do something else for the rest of my kids.

So she began her days living in the office. Given a fresh chance each morning, the choice was always hers. Our days fell into a pattern.
“Shhhhhh. Shh, shh, shhhhhhh.”
“Please stop shushing.”
“SH! Shhhhhhhhh. Sh. Shhhhhhh,” she’d continue.
I’d ask her to join me in the hallway, where she’d be given the choice to stop or go to the office. Her response? “Shhhhhhhhhh.” Lucky for me when it came to physically moving, I knew her kryptonite: she hated to be touched. “Well,” I’d sigh, “if you need some help moving, I can help you.” Her response? “Shhhhhhh.” So I’d tell my partner teacher where I was going, place my hand on one of the shushing girl’s shoulders, and begin to move her toward the office.

At times like these, she’d suddenly find words. “Stupid, get your hands off me!” or “What’s wrong with you, I said don’t touch me!” or "Pervert!" Words all the way down the hallway; words combined with pushing, shoving, scratching, and twisting. I’d leave her there, again, feeling like a failure, again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I sat staring at the computer screen, remembering. After typing two pages of all I’d tried with her, I realized I hadn’t really given up on her at all. One failed attempt after another, I had fought for this child. The fact that this school wasn’t the best place for her didn’t mean I’d given up, just that my efforts were directed at getting her the help she needed, help I couldn’t give her.

Another Note to Self

2009-02-19T13:27:00.005-05:00

Dear Self,
In the future, please try to keep better track of your students. When one of them goes home sick, try to notice this fact on your own, without assistance from other students. And definitely don't say to the rest of your class, "Where on earth is R?" because then you'll feel really, really stupid when they tell you he went home sick two hours ago because he threw up in the bathroom.

Perhaps, self, you're attempting to ensure that you win the "Least Attentive Teacher" award. Be assured that this award, in fact, does not exist, and is not an honor you really want on your record.

Seriously, self, get it together and start being a better teacher!

Sincerely,
Mrs. N.

Huh??

2009-02-18T13:34:00.003-05:00

Explain directions (for those auditory learners).....

List directions on whiteboard (for those visual learners).....

Make students repeat directions....out loud.....twice (to check that they understand)....

Begin activity.....

"Mrs. N, what does it mean 'trace?'"

"Mrs. N, what questions am I supposed to answer?"

"Mrs. N, when am I supposed to read the book?"

"Mrs. N, you didn't tell me I was supposed to read the book before I answered the questions!"

"Mrs. N, where am I supposed to put this?"

"Mrs. N, are we supposed to, like, use this hole punch to do this?"

"Mrs. N...."

"Mrs. N...."

Strong support for my belief that drinks, ice cream, and chocolate should be available at all times in the teacher's lounge.

Dusting off

2009-02-11T08:03:00.003-05:00

When everything you do goes wrong, somehow....
When everything the experts tell you to do still doesn't work....
When you wonder if you're here to teach, or just to make sure children behave....

After you've gone home, dug a deep hole in the Psalms and curled up in there for awhile....
After you've decompressed in the bathtub (with ice cream)....
....and had a good cry....

You get up and ask for the strength to do this just one more day, knowing that it's in your own weakness that your Father makes you strong.

Candle, anyone?

2009-02-03T13:41:00.002-05:00

Mini Corndogs for lunch + Fifth-grade bodies = one enormously odorific classroom!

Belief and Practice

2009-02-03T09:57:00.002-05:00

Today I pulled out my writing conference notebook. This is where I take little notes on each of my students as a writer, what I've noticed they do well, and what writing skills and styles they still need my help with.

I believe that conferencing with each child is key to improving them as writers. I believe that writing can not be taught using whole group instruction alone, and I believe that in order to know which skills my students need, I, as a teacher, need to be very connected to what they're doing as writers. I need to know what they're writing about, how they're writing, and what they struggle with. And I can't do that without actually sitting down with them and chatting about their writing.

That's what I believe.

Then there's my actual practice: a semi-dusty conference notebook, where the last time I had a writing conference with a kid was October 9th. Yeesh. There's no excuse for that. None at all.

The End Result

2009-02-02T12:16:00.004-05:00

You just don't know what the end result will be when you're eight and the doctor standing above you says, "I'm going to give you a shot, it's really going to hurt, but then nothing else I do will hurt," and then proceeds to give you an excruciatingly painful local anaesthetic in the head. You just can't see the end result of that action: a q-tip shoved up your nose and writing four days of sub plans.

I started feeling tired and achy last weekend. I've had fatigue before though, and gone to the doctor for nothing, so I got my tired body out of bed and shuffled to work on Monday morning. By noon I knew I was running a fever, so when Mr. N urged me again to go to the doctor, I agreed. Which is when they shoved the q-tip up my nose. Not pleasant. Not AT ALL pleasant. Ten minutes after the q-tip incident, the P.A. walked back in the room and cheerfully announced,
"Influenza! Looks like you won't be going anywhere for the rest of this week." Then she takes another look at my file. "But didn't you get a flu shot?" she asks.

No, no I did not get a flu shot, which is the end result of my experience as an eight year old. Since then, needles have been among my least favorite things on earth. Since then, I will avoid any needle that is not strictly required, including flu shots.

Which is why I was sitting in the doctor's office a week ago, recovering from a q-tip probe, mind spinning with, "WHY didn't I finish those emergency sub plans the first week of school? WHAT on earth will I have a sub do for four days? Can I leave an introduction to decimals with a sub? No, not a good idea. How many movies can I show in the next four days?"

In the end, of course, this was really a minor disaster...my kids are mostly unscathed and my health is improving. But I've learned my lesson. Next year, I brave the needle!

Ick.

2009-01-19T14:55:00.003-05:00

This lovely thought from one of my social studies students:

"Mrs. N! Can you just imagine if a horse had to use a litter box?!?!?"

Woohoo!!!

2009-01-19T13:44:00.002-05:00

18 degrees, baby!

They're goin' out!

Here's hoping

2009-01-19T07:40:00.004-05:00

I found little tiny tire tracks on my whiteboard this morning.

Indoor recess strikes again.

We're starting at -4 degrees today. Hoping, hoping, hoping it gets above 10 before noon.

Day 3 - Please God, Make It Stop

2009-01-15T14:50:00.004-05:00

Floating Golf Ball experiment knocked over by children throwing tennis ball. Water everywhere.
Autistic Child with hands in ears screaming, "I'M NOT LISTENING! SEE I'M BEING BAD!"
One of them has bad bad gas. Too afraid to light a candle and have open flame around spastic children.
Breathing through mouth.
E. wants help finding a hiding place for hide and seek.

I tell her I'm a little swamped.

Snow Day needed. Badly.

Day 3

2009-01-15T11:40:00.003-05:00

Indoor recess makes us think that Mrs. N's scotch tape not only can, but should be used to tape our noses and mouths shut.

It's days like these that make me think I should have become an accountant.

Day 3

2009-01-15T09:53:00.003-05:00

Indoor Recess: Day three and counting: -19 degrees

There is gasping with joy when a jar of suckers is held up. Only the gasping doesn't end, because they're entertained by trying to outdo each other. They may pass out before they actually stop.

We're so watching a movie until I can ship them off to Art.

...and so it begins...

2009-01-12T07:53:00.005-05:00

I'm really not sure I like winter anymore. It started snowing way early this year, and just hasn't stopped. And now...the cold begins.
We're looking at indoor recess all week long, folks.

And that's never pretty.

***update***
It's noon and I'm listening to the fourth graders storm outside for recess.
Yahooo!!

Broken again

2009-01-07T09:47:00.005-05:00

Sometimes I wonder...how do the teachers who have been doing this job for 20 or 30 years have any heart left? Every year seems to bring another student who takes a slice of that heart.

Yesterday it was D. I've been fighting all year to have him tested for special education services. The child can tell you the prime factorization of 84, but can hardly read or write, which is an enormous red flag for possible learning problems.

But...there are issues. Mom and Dad are divorced and NOT amicably. Older sister isn't even allowed to see Dad because he molested her, but the judge let the boys stay, saying they'd survive.

D was called down to the office yesterday. I didn't know why. He came back during recess. "Doooo you wanna know why I had to go down to the office?

"If you'd like to tell me."

"It was social services people. But for Mom's house this time."

"...oh..."

"It's all cause Doug was hitting my sister, like really hitting her, like he wouldn't stop."

"Who's Doug?"

"Doug is um...he's the...well...the one my mom likes."

He left then, in true ADD fashion - distracted by something else - while I sat there feeling kicked in the gut. How does this kid have a chance? Dad's an abuser, Mom seems to have a pattern of relationships with abusive men, relationships that obviously leave her kids confused since D has no idea what to even call the latest guy - is he a boyfriend, fiance, what? All I can do is cry out to Jesus for this child - that somewhere along the line, he'll see what normal looks like, he'll know he can make different and hopefully better choices than his parents did, he'll know that this lifestyle isn't all there is, that there's more, that there's hope.

I cry out - and then I ask him if there's anything I can do for him. A puzzled stare. "Nope, I'm fine," he says, and I realize he probably wouldn't know what fine was if it walked up and hugged him.

Another piece of my heart, gone.

Stick a Fork in Me

2008-12-18T07:03:00.003-05:00

Yep - stick a fork in me...I'm done. My nice, good, normal class suddenly exploded yesterday into a bad episode of People's Court with a little circus freak show mixed in. The whole fifth grade watched a movie yesterday afternoon. I heart movie days - I can get a TON of work done whilst my children are staring glassy-eyed at the screen.

Or I can normally get a ton of work done.

The fun started right after lunch. B and E came to find me and tell me that M stole one of B's boots and put it in E's locker. Following me so far? This isn't the first little scuffle these three have had - E and M are "one-friend" girls, and they want their one friend to be B, who can't stand up to either of them. I pull M out in the hallway and ask her to tell me about the boots. "I didn't touch anything," she says, "I figured E took the boot, that's why I told B to look in her locker. They think I did it, but I didn't. I was with S all during lunch." So, I pull S out to check the alibi. S tells me, "Yup, M found the boot in the hallway and put it in E's locker on the way outside." Pull M back out and point out that if she wants to use someone as an alibi, she might want to get her story straight with that person first. Ask again if she took the boot, and she tearfully confesses, she was trying to get E in trouble so B would like her better. Yeesh.

As I'm on my way in to get a discipline write up for her to fill out, another student comes up and tells me that K is scraping snow off his shoes and pants and throwing it at her and her friends. Argh. I know he's guilty - the kid throws any little thing he can get his hands on...eraser bits, teeny paper balls, cookie crumbs, you name it. Anything small enough that he thinks he won't get caught. So I pull him in the hallway, where he insists, "It's not me, it's the two boys sitting behind me, that's why everyone thinks it's me."

So I go head back in the room to question the two boys and the ten other people sitting around them. I'm interrupted by my autistic child, J, shouting, "I'm bad, too! Take me in the hallway!" Having had a bad episode with his social worker, he somehow thinks being punished more can make up for it. He continues shouting until I'm forced to put him in the hallway so everyone else can hear the movie. As he's going to the hall, I hastily interview about fifteen other kids as to whether K was the one throwing snow. Shockingly, no one saw anyone except K throwing things.

In the hallway once more, I check M's discipline write up, where instead of writing what she did, she's written that she promises she won't be bad anymore. Tell her to write down exactly what she did, ask K who's telling the truth, him or the fifteen people who saw him throwing snow, all the while punctuated by J shouting "I DID IT! I THREW SNOW! I MASHED IT INTO PEOPLE'S FACES AND PUSHED THEM DOWN, AND HURT THEM, AND THEN I KICKED THEM! GIVE ME A YELLOW PAPER TO WRITE HOW I'M BAD!!!" K tells me that, yes, he might have thrown just a little bit of snow, but it started when someone else put snow down his back. As J shouts, "LOOK, I'M EATING TAPE!" I say to K, "Really, those girls across the room who you were hitting with snow were somehow able to put snow down your back from across the room?" He admits, they did not. I hand him the discipline writeup and a pencil, turning my attention back to J, who's still demanding a yellow paper to write how he's bad. Have him get his office pass and take a break by walking to the office and back, check M's write up, which now accurately lists her behavior, sign it, and send her down to the office to deliver it to the principal. Leave K sitting in the hall and head in to try to get a few papers graded.

J returns from his walk to the office, and all is calm. Until the assistant principal shows up to give me the detention form for M. J sees the paper, is reminded that he wanted one, and begins shouting, "I'M BAD! GIVE ME A PAPER! SEE, I'M CRUMPLING UP THE OFFICE PASS! I'M RIPPING IT! I NEED A YELLOW PAPER!" I take him back out to the hall for the duration, check K's write up, where he has somehow forgotten to include the little fact that he flat out lied to me. "Oh, yeah," he says, "I forgot about that." Sure.

Write ups complete....J quietly sitting in the hallway....me alternating between praying that my mental stability will last until Christmas break and asking God to please send us a snow day. Done.

What day is it?

2008-11-17T08:54:00.004-05:00

I say, "Find some examples of two word sentences." Child says, "This one has four, but it's close enough," and is prepared to argue the point.

I say, "Suggest some G rated movies for our next reward movie." They say, "Kung Fu Panda. It isn't rated G, but it should be," and they're prepared to argue the point.

Add in taking a bite of my breakfast apple only to discover the whole thing is rotten, going for some liquid caffeine only to discover the entire pop machine is sold out, and what do you have???

Monday morning.

ick.

Gimme an R!

2008-11-12T09:24:00.003-05:00

I have a phenomenon happening in my classroom this year which has never occured before. I have cheerleaders. *shudders with fear*

I'm not entirely sure when this happened, but it may have had something to do with the homecoming pep rally, in which the varsity cheerleaders were more involved than the varsity football players.

A few short days after this rally, I got my first, "Hey, Mrs. N! Look at us! Ok, ok, ready? Ok, WHO'S GOT THAT BEAT, THAT AWESOME COYOTE BEAT? THAT BEAT GOES...." followed by a blur of clapping, snapping, and leg patting, which may or may not include the solution to last Sunday's crossword puzzle.

But then, the fun really started. Two other girls, watching all this go down, snootily remark, "Well, we can do it faster, Mrs. N. See? Ok, ready? WHO'S GOT THAT BEAT....." and so it goes, until hummingbirds everywhere are quivering with envy.

I thought that would be the worst of it. That I'd have to listen to the Coyote Beat in varying speeds while waiting for the lunch ladies to be ready for our class. But I wasn't counting on the Stealth Cheerleaders.

These are the girls who, each time I take my eyes off of them, are undercover cheering. They lull me into a falsely believing I have their attention, and then, when I least expect it, I'll look around and discover that two or three of them have made eye contact with each other, and are silently mouthing, "who's got that beat," while air clapping.

I've had a lot of crazy experiences as a teacher, but nothing quite so creepy as the stealth cheerleaders.

Note To Self

2008-10-31T13:53:00.003-04:00

To: Future Self (w/ children)
From: Present Teacher Self
Re: Things not to do to your future child

Dear Future Self,
Never ever....ever....show up in your fifth grader's classroom wearing a giant pig costume and oinking while video taping him/her watching Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. Just don't.

Sincerely,
Present Teacher Self

A Little Much?

2008-10-28T13:35:00.003-04:00

I walked into school after lunch to find I had been trapped by one hundred twenty third graders. Not only had they trapped me, they were also seranading me. One hundred twenty little voices, with a disembodied guitar coming from somewhere, singing "fa la la la la...la la la la." My first thought was that they sure were practicing for Christmas caroling a little early this year. My second thought was, "How in the world am I going to get to my classroom?"

And then I heard the words "pumpkin patch" mingling with all the fa la la-ing. Yup, not Christmas caroling....Halloween caroling. Eeesh. As if the costume wearing, sugar eating, worst party of the year day wasn't enough, we're now degrading and twisting songs from the hap-happiest time of the year to fit the theme.

My third thought, "What in the...."
Fourth thought, "Thank you, God, that I don't teach third grade."

loooooong sigh....

2008-10-16T10:49:00.002-04:00

Woke up Tuesday morning with abdominal cramping, running back and forth from bed to toilet and back again. As I lay there, curled into a ball, I came to the slow realization that the state of Michigan has dictated four days during the year when I cannot be sick and stay home from school. So, I took a shower, took a ten minute nap, got dressed, took a five minute nap, did minimal hair and makeup, and staggered to work.

All to give the MEAP test.

Back in the day, we had a three week window. In fifth grade we had three different tests to give, and three weeks to do them whenever it fit with our schedule. Yes, imagine that, flexibility.

And then....

One little reporter from Jackson decided to print what the fifth grade writing prompt was. We all had to retake the writing test. And now the state of Michigan tells us the exact day we MUST give each specific test, so we avoid that kind of thing again.

Which means I drag my butt to work, sick or not, on those days, so my kids won't mess their tests up because they have a sub who can't find the pencils, or is unable to read the directions to the test, or decides that there's no reason they can't do the MEAP test in groups. If you think I'm exaggerating, read this. A substitute can't be left to give a test that is this important.

So, a big thank you to the state of michigan for creating such a rigid system that it leaves no room for actual human beings. Yup, good job.

Always another first

2008-10-08T08:43:00.004-04:00

Teaching has many firsts - first year, first kid who calls you nasty name, first time you see that "lightbulb" go on. My latest first wasn't any of those, though. Last week was the first time I broke a kid's bone.

Now, before anyone calls CPS or my principal - let me explain. On Mondays and Fridays, our schedule gives us a four hour block with no breaks, no recesses, no nothing. So, I build a break in and we typically go outside and play some sort of running game. This gives them a chance to take a break, and entertains me. The game I like to come back to, the one that entertains me most, is called Army/Navy. Each line of a square gets labeled with a different branch of the armed services, and as I call out a branch, everyone runs toward that line. The last one there is out. I like to switch it up a bit and call out several different branches in a row, so the kids are wheeling around the field like a drunken flock of birds. Like I've said before, I'm in this career simply for the entertainment value.

So last week, as they're careening around the field, I see one of them trip over his own feet and go down. He pops up, grimacing and holding his hand. I immediately assume he has a small scrape, because of the asphalt, and call him over, cheerfully asking if there's blood. He holds his hand out and breathes a shaky "No," as I look down at his hand. I'm all ready with my "No blood? Then you're still in the game!" when I notice his pinky finger is laying on top of his ring finger.

"K! Does your finger always look like that?"

"Not really."

Off to the office he went, mom came and whisked him to the ER, he came back to school the next day with a nice red cast, and I had another first to put on my list.

reflections on teaching 6th year

2008-09-15T09:43:00.004-04:00

VI.
Don’t Lick the Mushrooms
sixth year

I run into them almost everywhere I go. One of the Brookes walks out the door ahead of me at Meijer, Makaila sticks her hand out the window of a passing bus, Joe saunters by with Grandma at the park, Wyatt B., Holly, and Kayla stalk my house, befriending the cat. That year, my sixth year, I finally had the perfect class. The class with a personality that complemented my own. The Wyatts, Kayla, Kyle, the Brookes, Seth, and Tim. It was the first year I really felt able to let my whole personality shine through the teacher persona, because these kids didn’t take advantage of it.

I knew this class would be special two weeks in, on the first field trip of the year. We packed ourselves onto the bus and headed for a nature center about a half an hour away. The friendly staff took us on a nature hike to look at trees. Were these kids concerned about trees? Nope, they were obsessed with mushrooms. Now, I have to admit, there were some really vibrant, beautiful mushrooms in those woods, but these kids took mushroom hunting to a whole new place.
“Miss L! Look at that big yellow mushroom!! I think it’s poisonous!!” they hollered.
“Well, were you planning on licking it?”
“Eeew, no!”
“Well, then, let’s not worry about it,” I stated calmly, thinking that would be the end of it.
Not more than ten minutes later, I heard Kyle yell from the front of the line, “AH! There’s a big mushroom! It might be poisonous! Nobody lick it!!”

They weren’t the brightest kids I’ve ever taught. Most of them were of average intelligence, really. After two weeks of studying for a geography test entitled “Where Am I?” many of these kids failed miserably. But they were the most entertaining answers of any test I’ve ever given.
“What hemisphere do you live in?”
“Shape,” came the confident reply.
“What continent do you live on?”
“The lower peninsula,” they hazarded.
“What galaxy do you live in?”
“2006, of course.”
“What country do you live in?”
The prizewinning answer to this question was delivered by Mr. Mitch. What country does he live in? Mitchigan. Must be nice having your own country.

They were horrible at tests, and the common sense gene had missed some of them entirely. One confused child spoke with me one day about a broken pencil lead. She just didn’t know what to do until I pointed out that our generous Parent Teacher Organization had bought an electric pencil sharpener for our classroom. Brookie H. wondered why she wasn’t allowed to add something to her penpal letter five days after the due date. After I explained that those letters were on their way to Massachusetts, she looked at me with a wrinkled brow and said, “But I forgot to put the picture in. I need to put the picture in.” Makaila decided to wear strappy, four-inch, hooker heels to complete her Halloween costume. A glance at her feet after the half-hour long costume parade downtown revealed blood. I guessed her ears weren’t working when I gave my yearly teacher speech about wearing walking shoes for the parade.

This was the year I began to see that besides amazing health insurance, teaching also has a lot to offer in the way of entertainment value.
They volunteered to have themselves laminated.
They christened my black faux leather sandals the “lalligator sandals.” Their reasoning? They aren’t leather, but they look like alligator skin, therefore they are the lalligators.
Krysta folded every assignment into an accordion.
They humored me and played games purely for my entertainment. The Christmas party that year found them helping each other put thick, winter mittens on before attempting to unwrap a package sealed shut with heavy-duty packing tape.
They joked about me torturing them, but I think they secretly enjoyed our daily running games. Army/Navy tag, complete with last minute switches, aircraft carriers, and rowboats became our game of choice.

Those little things paled in comparison to their largest invention of the school year. They invented a high school boyfriend for me. They found it unbelievable that there was no man in my life and were curious about my dating past. When they learned I’d had no boyfriend during high school, they didn’t believe me. And so, they created Ben.

It all began when one of the Wyatts was having computer trouble. I was bent over the screen, trying to coax the problem out when James wandered up to turn in his assignment. On his way back to his seat, he meandered by the computer where I was working and said, “So, Miss L, tell me about Ben.”
I was only half listening to him, and confusedly said, “Ben Youngs, from across the hall? What happened to him?”
“No, not Ben Youngs,” he said, as if that were the most ridiculous thing he’d heard all day. “Your high school boyfriend Ben. Tell me about him.”
“What’s wrong with you? Are you a crackhead?” I said without thinking.
James hit the floor, shaking with laughter as I cringed at the thought of what I’d just said. I caught him alone later in the day and apologized, asking if I’d hurt his feelings. His response was, “Seriously, Miss L? I thought that was completely hilarious.” Any other class, a slip like that would have meant at least a fifteen minute calm down period, and probably a phone call from concerned parents. But not these kids.

That was just the beginning. As the year wore on, Ben continued to be treated as a real person, although he felt to me like an imaginary friend. They often greeted him when they came in the door at the beginning of the day and they waved to him while I was reading our class novel. My brow often furrowed as Sethie, or Joshie, or Krysta would walk up to my desk with a huge toothy grin. I would look up, ready to assist them in whatever way I could, only to see them do the “Hi, Mom” wave and say, “Hi Ben! How’s it going, Ben? Are you having a good day, Ben?” I would roll my eyes, turning back to the task at hand.
“Aw, Ben, is she ignoring you, Ben? I’m so sorry, Ben.”
“Don’t you have something to be working on? I think it’s due in about three minutes,” I’d warn.
“What’s that, Ben? You’re going to talk her into not collecting this assignment? Aw, Ben, you’re the best!” They would traipse off, happy to complete their work after their brief interlude with Ben.

Little did they know, I’d have the chance to return the favor. When I let it slip in March that I had spent the last weekend visiting my new boyfriend, my real boyfriend, their curiosity immediately spun out of control. On a walk down to the park, they flung questions at me.
“So where does your boyfriend live?”
“Somewhere.”
“No, seriously, where does he live?”
“In Boringville.”
“That’s not a real place! Well, if you’re not telling us where he lives, at least tell us what his name is.”
“Eggbert.”
“No, it’s not! Tell us his name!”
“Ok, if you guess the right name, I’ll tell you.”
“That’s not fair, there’s like a million names.”
“Then if you want to know you’d better start guessing.”
The torture continued for days, but eventually I shared the details with them. Their comment? “Your boyfriend is from Detroit and he lets you walk around with that old crappy cell phone?”

The year ended too soon for me. For the first time, I shed tears on the last day of school. We had enjoyed each other’s stories, successes, and quirks. We knew that Brookie P. loved frogs and Wyatt M. was the go-to guy for pet questions. We knew Joe had a bizarre sense of humor, Emily could organize anything, and Holly sometimes didn’t smell so good, and that was alright.

As a teacher, I’m blessed to have these kids in my life. They became a living reminder to me of the joys of my calling. They were the hot fudge sundae at the end of a five year liver and onions meal, coming along at just the right time to keep me dining for at least another six years.

Reflections on Teaching 5th year

2008-09-11T10:58:00.005-04:00

I just finished this today during writer's workshop. I read the last part to this class, and they wanted to tell me stories about the times when this has happened to them. Maybe you'll have a story at the end, as well! :o)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
V.
Decisions
fifth year

I hate to confess it. My fifth year of teaching is a hazy, fuzzy memory. I know I had an average group of kids, I know we went on some field trips, read some books, and had some fun together. I know I had a few stinkers. Alex, who liked to think he could pick and choose what he was or wasn’t going to do; Cody, the hyper ADHD child who acted before thinking; Robert, angry from a divorce, who sobbed when he had to call both parents and tell them he’d deliberately taken a third-graders glove and flushed it down a toilet. But really, those kids were nothing compared with the spirit-crushing previous year.

The only incident from that year that really sticks out in my mind began on one of those mornings when I couldn’t decide. Was I sick, or just tired? Should I haul my worn out self into my classroom and write lesson plans for a sub, or just suffer through the day? When the lightheadedness began, I decided a sub was the way to go. I made the phone call, threw my hair in a ponytail, and headed off in my pajamas to school.

Sometimes it’s just easier to go to school sick than it is to go through the hassle of writing sub plans. The lunch count needs to be done by 8:15, Andy can take care of that for you. Don’t mark Rachel absent, she doesn’t attend school here anymore. Students have lists of partners in their desks, don’t let them just choose their own or Cody and Alex will beeline towards each other. Make sure you don’t let those two wind up working with each other. The schedule says lunch is at 12:05, but you have to start lining them up at 12:00 so they have enough time. Walk them to gym, make sure to check that the gym teacher is actually in the gym before you leave them there. Have Johanna pass out this packet of papers to go home, but don’t let her do it more than five minutes before the bell rings or they’ll lose them before they leave the room.

Teachers do so much during the day without thinking; verbalizing it for another adult is almost impossible. So, we write the plans, usually not knowing what that early morning phone call will bring us. It could be a retired teacher, who knows all the tricks of the trade and will have those kids behaving better than you do. Or it could be a frazzled, burned-out hippie, who wants children to be free to express themselves. Lesson plans, who needs lesson plans?

On this particular day, my sub would be a familiar face. A local, she’d been in my room before. She wasn’t my favorite sub, but she wasn’t the worst either. She could be mean-spirited with the kids, but she followed the lesson plans and left good notes. I wrote the plans, straggled back home, and poured myself back into bed, thankful for the coziness.

The phone call came at about 3:30 that day. I had made it to the couch by then, Vernors and soda crackers in hand, so when I heard my partner teacher’s voice I was partially lucid.
“Gina, I am so sorry to bother you, but I needed to give you a heads up.”
“Ok,” I croaked.
“You may be getting some phone calls tonight.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she continued, “Mrs. Smith brought up thong underwear in social studies class today.”
“Huh? She what? Thongs?”
“Uh-huh. Apparently the lesson was on Pursuit of Happiness?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t leave anything about thongs.”
“Yeah, well, she took it upon herself to give an additional example of pursuing happiness. I think the exact quote was ‘You have the right to wear thong underwear, even if you have a big fat butt and no one wants to see it.’”
“No,” I gasped. “Why – what – why would you do that?”
“I don’t know, I couldn’t figure it out either. The kids were very disturbed. I’ll let you go, but I didn’t want you to be caught off guard if a parent called you tonight. I let the principal know already.”
“Thanks, Dawn,” I answered as I hung up the phone.

Thong underwear. Fifth graders. These were two concepts that shouldn’t go together. This woman had children. Would she want her kids spoken to like that in school? “Well,” I thought, “there’s another sub who’s not allowed to be in my room anymore.”

She was in good company. There was the man who let the kids run wild. A woman who left a note saying no one misbehaved and everything was fine. I found out later the kids had thrown books out the second story window on her watch. Another woman was unable to show the video I’d left because she couldn’t locate the enormous, thirty-inch television strapped on the cupboard directly behind my desk. She didn’t bother to ask the kids the location of the TV, either. Another sub informed me that she had helped me out by not using the plans I’d left. Instead, she told my fifth graders a ninety minute story about Bobo the Duck, then let them color. Now that must have been an educationally valuable day.

Maybe I shouldn’t care so much. After all, one bad day probably won’t destroy these children, or their education. They’ll recover. But even though I know that, these thoughts still run through my head when I wake up with an achy tickle in the back of my throat, or after I’ve spent the night running from bed to bathroom and back again. Yet, I do care, and I know that the next time I watch the numbers on the thermometer rise above 100 degrees, I’ll find my slippers and shuffle off to school to write detailed lesson plans for whatever the luck of the draw brings me that day.

Reflections on Teaching fourth year

2008-08-27T07:25:00.003-04:00

IV.
Progress?
fourth year

I sat down at the computer. I stared at the screen. The quiet of children reading was punctuated by muffled noises from the hallway. I didn’t even know where to start, but I knew I had to tell someone. “I just put a kid in an invisible box,” I typed, “and he stayed there.”
~~~~~~~~~~

When I got the phone call five days before the beginning of my fourth year of teaching informing me that I would be moving from fourth grade back up to fifth grade, I knew I’d have some of the same students again. I had six of them to be exact; and Chris was one of them. Colleagues and union reps offered to plead my case for me, untenured as I was. “No one should be forced to have a child with that many problems two years in a row,” but I politely refused. I didn’t believe in fate or accidents, and there was some purpose for this particular child to be in my classroom again. Plus, this was a kid I genuinely enjoyed, on his lucid days, anyways. He wasn’t purposefully malicious, didn’t seem to intentionally disobey, just couldn’t handle life in a typical classroom.

It became apparent a few days into the school year that some maturing had taken place over the summer. He’d gone from his first year in fourth grade, crawling on the floor, barking and sometimes biting people to his second year in fourth grade, sometimes barking but never biting anyone, to fifth grade, occasionally crawling on the floor, but no biting or barking. Progress.
Except that most days, Chris still couldn’t function. This year I decided to try removing him from the eight other boys in my room who loved to encourage him. Many days he ended up in the hallway; I didn’t always get him there in time.

My room was situated on the second floor of our building, at the top of the stairs. Any class coming from the ground floor used that staircase when traveling to Art, Computers, or Library. Added to that, the office was across the hall from my room; parents and students were back and forth all day long.

On one otherwise normal day, Chris began coping with some perceived problem during class by shredding paper and making towers and streets on his desk with it. This would have been fine, except for the sounds of a city being constructed on his desk. I asked him to please wait for me at the back of the room. Loud noises continued to find their way to the front of the room as construction continued, this time with books and other refuse. His next step was the hallway. I carefully propped the door open and attempted to continue teaching. From my position near the desk of another student, I heard him, then heard another class on their way to the library. I maneuvered myself to a position where I could keep one eye on the hall and one eye on the teaching moment I was having with another student. What I saw embarrassed me: Chris, rolling back and forth across the narrow hall, forcing other students to hop over him, or somehow quickly run around him as they went by.

Asking the rest of the class to take out silent reading books, I marched into the hallway, ready to yell, but knowing that wouldn’t do any good. Instead, I spotted two desks, reserved for kids who liked working in the hallway, sitting about three feet apart on the wall opposite the door. Moving Chris to his feet, I gently placed him between the desks. “Chris,” I said, “I’ve just made a box for you. There’s an invisible line between these two desks, and you may not cross it.” I stood back to watch. With a slight yelp, he flung himself at the invisible wall, hands extended mime-style, feeling the “walls” of his new cage. I went back and sat down where I could discreetly watch. Mrs. Hilliard’s class came through on their way to art. Chris leaped, snarling, but stopped short at the invisible wall. He felt the wall with his hands, growled at those walking by, but stayed behind the wall. I shook my head. Even on the bad days, he was so clever, so entertaining. I couldn’t help but like this kid.

Still, this was not enough progress for me to feel comfortable feeding him to the wolves at the middle school with absolutely no support.

I approached our school-family liaison and interim principal. District policy stated that I should take Chris’s case in front of the Teacher Assistance Team to determine whether testing him was the best option. I had followed the rules the first year I had Chris. I didn’t want to take this child’s name before the Team a second year and be told, again, that his home life had damaged him beyond repair and there was nothing anyone could do. I explained to the principal that I’d like to approach his mom about having the school psychologists do some testing with Chris, to see what kinds of help we could give him to help prepare him for middle school. When she heard of the dog days, the daily removals from the room, and the invisible box, the interim principal gave her blessing.

I approached mom from the perspective of wanting Chris to have the most successful middle school experience possible. Even after repeating a grade, he had not improved enough, and we needed more information if we were to be able to help him. Mom agreed.
So began the revolving door of adults in my room. Three different school psychologists, the occupational therapist, a physical therapist, and a speech therapist, just to name a few. They all came to observe Chris in his unnatural habitat. They agreed, every single one, that something was not right, but that was where the agreement ended. Some said “Oppositional Defiant,” some said, “Emotionally Impaired,” still others said, “Autistic.” Our resident psychologist shared with me that this was, by far, the most difficult evaluation she’d ever been involved with. In the end, they finally had to sit down with the manual for definitions of disabilities provided by the Department of Education. As a team, they went through the parameters of each disability, looking at test results and observations to determine fit. At last, the diagnosis was settled. High functioning Asberger’s Syndrome.

Would he have been tested if he had been in another classroom? It’s hard to say. The teacher would most likely have followed protocol, taken his name before the panel of teachers to get suggestions. They would most likely have been told again that home was so messed up there was no point in testing. Chris may have gone to middle school with no evaluation, no diagnosis.
But in this district, a diagnosis of Asberger’s Syndrome got you a teacher consultant who’d meet with you twice a month, a half hour at a time. Maybe a few accommodations listed on an IEP, which teachers might or might not read. So had I really helped him?

One of the benefits and one of the downfalls of living in a small town with a small school system is that even after kids leave our building, we still hear about them. So I kept up on Chris. I heard about his initial mix of good and bad days. Of teachers who found him amusing when he stood up in the middle of class with an imaginary camcorder, videotaping classmates. Then I heard about his further withdrawal. How a navy blue hoodie became his uniform of choice. He’d sit in the back of the class, hood up, interacting with no one. I heard about the meeting attended by all of Chris’s teachers; one stood up and fought for accommodations for this child, while the rest continued repeating, “We have a hundred other students a day. We’re supposed to change the way we do things for just one kid?”

~~~~~~~~~~

I saw Chris just one final time. The meeting showed that the progress he’d made in two years with me hadn’t been enough.

It was a warm, April day. Over a year had passed since he’d been in my class. I stood outside the new elementary building, policing children anxious to be on the bus home. A tall, thin boy wearing a blue hoodie exited bus 00-7 and headed for me. I didn’t recognize him at first, but as he approached, I realized it was Chris.
“Hey, Chris, how are you?”
He looked at the ground, unwilling or unable to meet my gaze and mumbled, “Can I get a pop?”
“If it’s OK with your bus driver,” I sighed. I had been foolish to assume the connection was still there.
He loped into the building, bought a Pepsi, and returned to the bus, without so much as a wave or a glance in my direction.

Reflections on Teaching Third Year

2008-07-29T11:37:00.002-04:00

III.
One Purple Candle
third year

The note in his permanent school file said it all. “There’s obviously something not right with this child, but given his home life, what can we possibly do?”
When I was involuntarily moved to fourth grade at the end of my second year, I took a quick look at the last names on my class list. His last name leaped off the page at me. Could this be another child from the same family as the boy I had last year; the chair throwing, screaming, pencil losing child? “Look out,” his teachers from last year warned me. “He crawls around on the floor, barking like a dog. Oh, and sometimes he bites.” Oh, yes, this was certainly the same family.
The skinny boy arrived with smudged glasses, hair in his face, looking at the ground. This wasn’t Chris’s class. He was being forced to repeat the fourth grade. His first fourth grade teacher had convinced mom that having to repeat a grade might convince Chris to stop acting up and start doing his work in school. His old classmates were still in the building, and here he was, stuck with the little kids, in the same grade as his younger half-brother.
I started the year with a basic math review, just to see what the kids could do. Chris aced it. Not one problem wrong. “Obviously he’s not repeating a grade because he needs an extra year with the curriculum,” I mused. “What do I do with this child?” I began the year trying to individualize his curriculum, thinking up challenging projects I hoped he’d be interested in. He half heartedly attempted some of them, but seemed more upset at being forced to do something different from the rest of the class than he was about doing work he already knew how to do. So, it was back with the rest of the class for him.
I waited for the chair throwing, or the yelling, or some form of the violence I’d seen in his older half-sibling. What I got instead were coping mechanisms straight out of a mental hospital. I believe to this day that most of his coping mechanisms were a result of boredom. He could already do about seventy-five percent of what I was teaching. When you’re bored, your mind begins to wander, and the wanderings of his mind may have taken him home. I can’t say for sure. But I can imagine what life at home must be like for the younger, much smaller, sibling of a boy who throws chairs and screams at adults at school.
Thus, the coping mechanisms. He did a bit of crawling, dog-like, on the floor. I think he barked once or twice, but he never bit anyone that year. More commonly, his hand creature would come calling. Fingertips grazing the table, middle finger up and sniffing, his hand would roam around his desk, stopping to read what Chris had written, or glance across the aisle at one of his classmates. The hand never spoke, and he never spoke to it, just made small noises for it. The real fun started when both hand creatures showed up. They didn’t like each other, you see, and trouble ensued. Arms flailing, body careening as far as the confines of the desk would allow, Chris’s hand creatures would battle it out. I’m not sure what they were fighting over; I never asked and he never told me. It’s quite possible he didn’t know either.
He thrived on attention, and like most kids who do, he didn’t care if the attention was coming for something positive or not. Laughter bolstered him, and many of his disturbances were of the garden variety class clown type.
More often, though, Chris’s coping mechanism was avoidance. He avoided school work, he avoided getting too close. He didn’t keep any close friends, choosing instead to flit from one to the next. He’d often escape into art; he drew some of the most amazing comic book art I’ve seen from a child so young.
On good days, when he was more lucid, Chris was charming, funny, and endearing. Sadly, those days were few and far between; most days ended with Chris in the back of the classroom, or in the hallway, lying sprawled on the ground, muttering to himself. He just couldn’t handle life in a classroom most days.
I took his name before the Teacher Assistance Team. Before a child could be referred for any sort of testing, the TAT team had to meet and decide if there were other strategies the classroom teacher could try, or if testing was the right course of action. All his previous teachers had taken his name to the team, and each time, the team had decided that a rough and unpredictable home life caused these behaviors; we could test him, but what good would it do? “But I’ve had kids from bad homes,” I argued, “they lash out, they make inappropriate comments or jokes, or they just get real quiet. Ten-year-olds don’t crawl around on the floor, barking and biting; they don’t pretend their hands are some sort of animals. There’s something else going on with this kid.” But my requests that he be tested by the school psychologists went unheeded. “There’s just nothing we can do,” they told me.
I’d had a pretty good amount of interaction with mom the year before, dealing with the violent older half-brother. I knew a little bit about what home was like. Four kids, three different dads; one dad who was in and out of the home and favored the two that were his. Mom, the one constant adult, sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t, often left the kids home alone with the oldest child, who was mentally about six, violent and unpredictable, undisciplined and unrestrained by the adults in his life. Mom went through phases where she tried, always unsuccessfully, to “get her life in order.” During those phases, the kids would come to school with clean clothes and snacks, much calmer than normal. But it never lasted. One week, maybe two, and Chris would show up wearing the same stained shirt all week, begging for snacks from classmates.
At Christmas that year, I knew mom hadn’t been in one of her “See, I’m capable and we have a normal family” phases, so I was floored to see his sloppy scrawl on the tag on the Christmas present saying, “From Chris.” I knew this had to be something he had taken the time to do himself. I carefully peeled back the wrinkled, over-taped wrapping paper to reveal a small square candle, marbled purple and white, sitting in a delicate silver holder.
“Oh, how great,” I enthused, “this will really match in my bedroom.”
Chris, who was having a good day, needed clarification. “Well, so what color is your bedroom?”
“It’s blue,” I told him, “but most of the pictures and blankets have some purple in them. This goes great. I already know just where I’m going to put it.”
For the rest of the Christmas party, I couldn’t help but overhear snippets of Chris’s grinning conversations with anyone who would listen. “…and it matches her bedroom…she has a shelf where she’s going to put it….”
That little purple dollar store candle still graces the top of my dresser. I can still see Chris, grinning, drawing, hand creatures duking it out, every time I see it. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to part with it.
There are kids who touch us each year with their intelligence, or creativity, or winning personality. Chris touched me with his vulnerability that day. The rest of the year wasn’t easy, bad days still abounded, but I found it was enough for me to know I had connected with this particular child, on this particular day.

reflections on teaching year 2

2008-07-16T09:03:00.001-04:00

II.
Did I Sign Up For This?
second year

As a new teacher, there is shock the first time you hear it. All educators have dealt, at some point, with the assumption, the stereotype that we’re in this field for the money and the summers off. My first time was my own mom, remarking that it must be nice to get a paycheck, even when you aren’t working. She used to make remarks like that, anyways. Then she watched me live through my second year of teaching. That year is my own personal answer to those types of comments.
Through a combination of some spectacularly horrible scheduling and my second-year naiveté, I was convinced that it was a good idea to have a majority of the special education students from our grade level included for science and social studies in my general education classroom. To defend my second-year self a bit, kindly recall that my first year was spent crammed into the tiny, overheated corner room, trying not to step on twenty-eight fifth graders. When I heard the number eighteen – eighteen! – general education students for the first four hours of my school day, the fact that these four special education students would join the rest of us for the afternoon’s lessons didn’t seem all that important.
And so, I got them. Justin was the mildest, an emotionally impaired kid who tried to be sneaky, but just wasn’t; Bobby, severely learning disabled, but easy going – well, easy going right up till the day when mom was jailed for her fourth DUI and anger leaked into the classroom; Tim, autistic, but shockingly communicative, often depressed, prone to chair tossing and self-injury; and Michael, severely learning disabled and emotionally impaired, able to spell his name on a good day, prone to screaming shortly before he began tossing desks, chairs, and stripping posters from the wall.
I don’t believe those eighteen general education kids gained much academically that year. My afternoons were spent corralling them out of anger’s way, striving to captivate children with talk of simple machines and Core Democratic Values while their classmates were forcibly removed by up to three other adults.
But the defining moment of that year, the story I tell the cynics, isn’t one of those violent removals, awful as they were. It is instead, a scene that was played out in one hundred eighty different ways; yet on this day it stopped me dead in my tracks and forced me to ask the hard question: Can I possibly find the strength to do this for the next twenty-five years?
There is the typical hum of a class lining up. It’s gym day; glasses are snapped into their cases, locker doors are slammed as tennis shoes are retrieved. I check to see who’s still tying those shoes, and who’s taking advantage of the moment to engage in a little mini-party with friends. In that moment, as my attention is focused elsewhere, two meltdowns occur. Michael has lost his pencil, and is convinced someone has stolen it. Rather than alert me, he’s decided to do his own detective work. This child – in a body larger than my own – is tromping from one end of the line to the other, lifting my kids by the shirt front and screaming, “Give me my pencil, NOW!” In the split second that my eyes are following Michael, they shift focus to Tim. He’s curled up in a corner, head keeping a steady rhythm on the brick wall as he chants, “I wish I were dead, I wish I were dead.” Life slows for a moment as I think, “Kid who’s endangering others, or kid who’s endangering himself?”
I couldn’t tell you what the answer to that question was. What I can tell you is that they did make it to gym, late as usual, and that my meager planning time was spent dealing with the aftermath of meltdowns one and two. And I can tell you that some variation of this story played itself out nearly every day in my classroom that year. But somehow I made it – somehow we made it – and I found I had more in me than I knew was there. And my mom? She’s so busy being grateful that I’m not living in her spare room, scanning other people’s groceries at the food market that she doesn’t have time to comment on the amount of time off in my year. She now understands that having the summer off isn’t about a lovely, extended vacation. She understands that it’s about recuperating from twenty-some energy-zapping individuals so that you can bear the thought of walking into a classroom again for another nine months.

Reflections on teaching part 1

2008-07-15T16:06:00.001-04:00

I.
Becoming
first year

“Here’s your keys, your room is at the end of the hall, on the left. Have fun.” And with those words, I find myself in my very own classroom. For the first time.

Twenty-eight battered and bruised desks, twenty-eight mismatching chairs, duct tape holding the dingy green carpet together. Is that a trap door in the corner? Scarred, wooden monstrosity which will be my desk. Probably spent its first life as a landing strip. Huge, saggy-shelf bookcase at the back of the room. Oh my, it’s hiding a door into another room. A secret, bat-cave entrance. Not a whiteboard in sight, it’s old school chalkboards in this classroom. Old rusty sink, not sure it even works. Six windows, four that open, but only two of them have screens. TV hung in the corner, like a pierced ear on your dad screaming, “See, I’m entirely hip and in touch with the times!”

Filing cabinets, three of them. Open a drawer and musty, years old paper grabs me by the nose. Three cabinets, nine drawers, all of them the same story. Will I need these things? These papers? These relics from another career? Black science counters taking up space at the back of the room. Wait, not just taking up space…these are cupboards. Moving aimlessly, opening cupboards, greeted by the detritus of thirty years in education. What will I possibly do with 79 rolls of scotch tape? Six bottles of vegetable oil? Thousands of pens? Coffee cans filled with crayon pieces? Dozens of gallons of tempura paint? What is tempura paint? Oh, Lord, am I expected to do my own art projects? Cause I don’t do art projects.

The books start coming. “This was fourth grade up until last year,” they explain, “those books you’ve got aren’t right, these are the ones you need. Teacher’s manuals? I’m sure they’ll turn up somewhere. Just keep looking.”

Landing strip haphazardly organized at last. Teacher’s editions gazing mutely back at me. A whole week. They want to see a whole week of lesson plans before the kids even come in the door. Every little detail, or just a general outline? Veteran teacher upstairs says, “Start with a review.” A review of what? What do they learn in fourth grade? Harry Wong says, “Start with procedures.” But what do fifth graders do while they’re learning procedures?

Just start at the beginning, I guess. Lesson 1.1. I’ll work in something about what the procedure is for using the restroom, too. Should I have them all practice? Or is just telling fifth graders what to do enough? Please, let this get easier. My weekends are going to be nonexistent.

Twenty-eight faces staring solemnly up at me. I wasn’t supposed to be their teacher. The beloved fourth-grade teacher was supposed to have looped with them. Who was I?

And that was the question on everyone’s mind: Who was I? Was I the pushover teacher, the one that all the other teachers hate to share a bus with on field trips because their kids behave so badly? Or was I the teacher whose children behave like small automatons because they are so completely terrified to so much as breathe the wrong way? Or was I something in between? Was I the worksheet teacher, sitting at her desk sipping coffee and ignoring raised hands? Or was I the inspiring teacher, who gave kids the tools to become what they were all along? Could I be?

reflections on teaching

2008-07-15T16:04:00.003-04:00

Hey there,
It's been a while and I've been busy with life, but also with a summer writing institute for teachers. We focus on teaching, but also on our own writing. Encouraged by Josephine, I decided to post chapters of my writing about my experiences teaching. Hope you enjoy!

Summer, come soon!!!

2008-06-06T10:22:00.002-04:00

~ Spent yesterday afternoon at a hearing for one of my badly behaved students. The hearing was to determine if her out of control behavior is caused by her disability since she's now been suspended for more than 10 days.

~Spent lunch yesterday searching one of my desks and lockers looking for the condoms which one of my 11 year olds has been selling to some other 11 year olds, in the presence of at least one 9 year old, who ratted them out.

~And to top it all off, I'm on the librarian's hit list because I can't find one of the library books I checked out this year.

Oh, so ready for summer vacation!

I'm back!

2008-04-30T13:52:00.004-04:00

I'm back to teaching full time again next week!
This time of year is the best part of the school year. They're largely independent, today I gave them a fairly vague social studies project, told them to make me proud, and they're off. There's been hardly a peep in my room for over an hour as they dive into their project.

This is also the time of year when they really start to gel as a class. Sure, there's still the, "Miss L., can't you do something about her, she's driving me nuts!" But now's the time when we've gotten to know each other well, and there's a level of comfort that causes individual personalitites to shine and be appreciated by classmates. Even if it's something a little goofy.

M. is the boy who never finishes a thought. Smart as a whip, always has his hand up in class, but inevitably when you call on him he says, ".....i forgot." Just now he came over to ask a question. Went like this, "Miss L., when we read our books and we're taking notes, can we........I forgot." The cool thing is, everyone else knows this about M., and loves it. It makes us smile in the midst of an otherwise boring essay that the delightful state of Michigan tells us we must write. Another student tells me M. is contagious today when she forgets what she wanted to say. It's just one of the things that makes this one kid unique, in a class full of unique kids.

Thinking about how much I enjoy all (well, almost all) of the kids in this class makes me think about my Father, and how He must feel, watching us, His kids. Obviously our sin doesn't please Him, but I have to wonder if he looks at our little personality quirks and just grins. Probably even more than that, cause he's the one who created us with these little foibles and idiosyncracies that make us who we are. And maybe, just like my class does with M., the rest of us in God's family can give some grace when those quirks show up; maybe we can remember to smile and value what God's uniquely created.

Tales from Fifth grade

~ Competetive much? ~

~fo' shizzle ~

~ When you have to try not to laugh ~

~ Question of the Week ~

~ Eew, Eeew, Eeeew! ~

~ Conversation of the Week ~

~Creative Geography~

~ I'm Getting There ~

~Really? Is it 1836?? ~

~ Define "Reading" ~

~ Overheard ~

~Reason #238 ~

~St. Patrick's Day: A Teacher's Perspective ~

~ Trying to keep a straight face ~

~Homophones, oh homophones!~

~You've Gotta Give Him Credit! ~

~ The Tape Nazi ~

~ The Little Things ~

~ Valentine's Day: Bah, Humbug! ~

~ A Math Conundrum ~

~ Miraculous Momma!~

~ Always something new ~

~ Yay for Snow Days! ~

~ Snow Day, Maybe?? ~

~ The Storyteller ~

~ I can't even imagine ~

~ My Red Folder ~

~Utterly Disturbing~

~ Dear Self ~

~ Reason #46 ~

~ 20 Questions ~

~ Still Learning ~

~ I Heart Snow Days ~

~ When Creativity (or Stupidity?) Attacks ~

~ A Good Surprise ~

~ There is no Autopilot ~

~Where to start?~

~Holy Neglected Blog, Batman!~

~You know you're a teacher...~

~ Things Teacher Ed. Programs Fail To Mention ~

~ Define "bad" ~

Pie, pie, and more pie

~ Something bad will happen ~

~Perspective~

~ Too Much Information ~

~Why's that again?~

~ Oh, the things I thought I'd be missing~

~Oh, the things I'm missing!~

~ My new job description ~

~ Use # 241 for Scotch Tape ~

~ Unexpected ~

~Mushrooms, revisited~

~ To the Rescue! ~

~Pass It Around~

~Not Me! Monday~

Triple Meltdown Thursday

~"Not Me!" Monday~

~ All in the Family ~

~ Top Five ~

Creative Geography

Note To Self

The Time Has Come

An Exercise in Pointlessness

Run, don't walk!

Expanding the Union

Thankful Thursday

Not quite what I had in mind

It is well

Objection

*Reflections on Teaching* Year 7

Another Note to Self

Huh??

Dusting off

Candle, anyone?

Belief and Practice

The End Result

Ick.

Woohoo!!!

Here's hoping

Reflections on Teaching Year 7

reflections on teaching 6th year

Reflections on Teaching 5th year

Reflections on Teaching fourth year

Reflections on Teaching Third Year

reflections on teaching year 2