Stick a Fork in Me

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?

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!

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

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?

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....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!!

~ 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!

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.

God grant me the serenity...

After...
...being called a "stupid, gay, lesbian pervert"...
...being grabbed at, pushed, elbowed, and scratched...
...writing a barely legible detention form with a badly shaking hand...
...then trying to focus and get organized for a staff development meeting which I need to help run...
...going back and forth down the hall about 6 times because I repeatedly forgot something in my room...
...and finally, running into the doorjam of my room because I was in a hurry trying to finish a project and talk to three students at the same time.

After all of that, the other very naughty child in my room (not the one who thinks I'm a perv) observes me walking into the door and asks "What is wrong with you today?"
I sigh and ask, "Honey, did you ever have one of those days?"

...long silence...

"You mean one of those days? Like when nothing ever goes right?"

I say, "Exactly. One of those days when nothing ever goes right."

"Only like every single day of my life!!! Oh, man, that's like every day for me! I didn't know teachers had those kind of days, too. But really, not every day is like that, Miss L."

Ah, perspective. And from a most surprising source.
Cliche, but true - God doesn't give us any more than we can handle.

Falling in love

My student teacher is at a job fair today, so I'm "subbing" for him. Reading is the first subject of the day, and just happens to be my favorite. I, along with the other teachers in my grade level, scrapped the traditional reading program this year in favor of something new: reader's workshop. Instead of assigning a certain number of pages in a certain book for kids to read, students choose thier own books. The only requirements are the books have to be in their reading level, and something they're interested in. I teach reading skills using models from the books I'm reading, then the students get to practice those skills using their own books.

I have been amazed at the results. Gone are the groans of, "I have to read for how long?" And my kids' reading levels have soared - some of them have gone up almost two grade levels this year. That's huge! I don't know what genius thought up this approach to reading, but I am very grateful.

Among the many things I love about this new approach to reading, the ones that are standing out to me today are:

~ I love the hush in my room during this hour. Kids are at their desks, or curled up on a cushion, and the only sounds are the occasional sniffle left over from winter colds and the flutter of pages turning.
~ I love it when a kid who already loves to read finds an author he absolutely adores and begs me to be allowed to read one of that author's books, even though it's a little below his reading level.
~ I love it when a kid who hates to read falls in love with an author and comes to school bursting to tell me about the latest book he's read.
~ I love it when I see a kid rereading one of the books we've read as a class because it's just such a good story, he has to read it again for himself.
~ I love it when I call a kid over to talk with me about his book, and he says, "Wait, wait! I just have to finish this sentence! Aw, Miss L - you always stop me right when I'm at the best part!"

Laugh or Cry?

What do you do when a child wants so badly not to be in school that they'll try anything and everything to be sent home?

The assistant principal made his way down to my room today and asked me to check through my troubled girl's desk. I asked what I was checking for and he told me a cell phone. I assumed she had taken one from her family, or a classmate. Nope - the assistant principal's phone. Took it right off his desk when she was sent to the office for another behavior problem this morning. Not only that, but when she was called down to the office and knew she was busted, she ditched it in the bathroom on the way down, then lied to both the principal and the assistant principal about it. If I hadn't seen her with it, she'd be sitting there still, denying everything. Pardon my French, but that takes some balls!

So what do I do when a child is behaving that badly, hoping to be removed from school? I focus on the good ones, the ones who make me smile, like T.

Today, when my partner teacher checked in on his group's project, it wasn't going so well. She took one look at it and said, "What did you do?"
His reply, "I don't know, but I'm ashamed of myself."

You have to laugh, or you'll cry; and how can you not laugh at a statement like that?

Hallelujah!!

The big, nasty Social studies curriculum I've been working on is (mostly) done!!!!! I just printed out the first copy. I'm sure there'll be mistakes to correct, but hooray for the sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing something that big!

But I like a cookie....

I am counting down the days.

Not the days of school we have left, either.

I'm counting the days till I get to go back to my classroom and back to my kids. Having a student teacher has been a different experience for me. He's doing a great job, and it's been really cool to see his progress as we work on different things. But now, he's to the point where he needs the experience of handling problems on his own, using the strategies we've talked about. Which means I can't be there. At all.

Which has meant I spend my days in the computer lab working on our new Social Studies curriculum. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed having the time to actually think about what I'll be teaching, the chance to really do some research and come up with lessons that will (hopefully) engage and challenge students, the chance to have a coherent plan for what I'll do in Social Studies. But, boy, have I missed the kids. Surprisingly, I go home more tired than I did when I was actually teaching all day. Staring at the computer, typing, researching online, tracking down yet another resource, are strangely draining. And there's no one here to make me laugh, or exasperate me, or celebrate with, or just plain interact with. It's just me and the computer screen. And the occasional 3rd grader who comes in to use a computer, but is too highly intimidated by the big, scary, 5th grade teacher to actually communicate with me.

And right now, thank God, there's D. D is in my partner teacher's class and is the incarnation of Hammy from Over the Hedge. Little guy, big cheeks, the attention span of a gnat, a constant ball of motion; D is currently talking to his math paper. "Take that! Ha! Take that!" Just begging for me to mess with him.

The ease with which I can freak him out is astonishing. One three second glance, and he grinningly whispers, "What?" Two more seconds and the grin gets wider while the whisper becomes squeakier, "Stop staring at me! I hate when people do that!" Two more seconds and the whisper-tone elevates to dog whistle level, "Stop it!" Poor, unsuspecting child has no clue that he's being used by a kid-loving adult craving any interaction with a student.

Must go try it again.....

Thumb Update

My thumb continues the healing process. After a couple days of my thumb being the warmest part of my body, the discoloration left. Now the tip feels all weird and thick (perhaps this is how guitar players feel after they've developed blisters?), and today it began Itching with a capitol I. I am fighting a losing battle with the continual urge to rub my thumb on the edges of whatever I come in contact with. I think soon it may start peeling, kind of like a sunburn, which is somewhat ironic, given that it seems like it's been years since it's been sunny/warm enough to actually get a sunburn.

(and little Miss Pharmer's Wife....no comments about the delightful weather in southern CA, either! Or I'll start praying you have to drive home in a blizzard! :o)

Occupational Hazards

...or, "Why God Made Ice Cream Scoops"

Oh, the things they don't tell you in teacher education programs!

We had ice cream left over from Valentine's Day. Knowing that if I took it home it would end up on my hips and thighs, I decided to use it for something else. My kids set math goals. Those who reached their goals this marking period got ice cream sundaes. All fine and good, except I forgot to bring my ice cream scoop from home on the day of the party. oops.

No problem, though, I decided to just use a plastic spoon, which didn't work as well, but it was OK.

Except.....
I ended up having to use my thumb to get a large enough scoop, and to get the ice cream off the spoon and into the bowl. Midway through dishing eight bowls of ice cream, I noticed my thumb was beginning to hurt quite a lot. I whined about it, and one of my girls asked if I had a glove. I did, but didn't want it covered in ice cream, so decided not to use it. My thumb continued to grow more uncomfortable; by the time I was finished it was burning. It continued to ache all night, and when I got up this morning, the skin on the tip of my thumb had turned white. Yup, the tip of my thumb suffered something between "frostnip" and "frostbite." WebMD says there won't be permanent damage because my thumb has "uninterupted sensation," meaning it still hurts like the dickens whenever I push on it.

Do you have any idea how many things you use the tip of your thumb for?

Picture this!

This is the lovely mental image that awaited me while grading my kids' published writing for this trimester:
"One day I was walking down the hall when I stumbled upon two Kidney Gardeners."

One has to wonder what, exactly, a garden of kidneys would look like. Do they grow above ground, or do the kidneys develop below ground like potatoes?

Oh, the drama!

As an elementary teacher, I hear them nearly every day. The "I don't feel good" stories. Today I'm in a fourth grade class, subbing for teacher who went home sick, and so the children have a new person to try their "I don't feel good" stories on.

The first one was easy. Right before lunch, little girl who had to have her friend come tell me she didn't feel good. My response: 1. She can't feel that bad if you're the one who's telling me. 2. Wait till after lunch because you might just be hungry. Watched very same little girl giggling, laughing, having a jolly old time at recess. And still she tried it after lunch. Yeah...she's staying here for the afternoon! :o)

The second one was more entertaining. During social studies, as I'm teaching, little boy comes up and tells me he can't breathe. I look at him. Color, normal; breathing sounds, normal. Already this was sounding suspicious. Kid looks at me; I look at kid.
I say, "Oh."
He repeats, "I can't breathe."
"Well, what do you think we should do about that?"
Shrugs shoulders.
"What would you like me to do about that?"
Shrugs shoulders again.
"I think you're going to be OK."
Shoots me a disbelieving look and mutters, "But I can't breathe," on the way back to his seat.

But my favorite "I don't feel good" story today is one I overheard in the hallway at lunch.
As "Billy" walks down the hall with the social worker, he is stopped by "Ralph," who very calmly says, "You hit me." Billy says he didn't, and Ralph corrects him. This apparently happened at recess, when Billy was messing around in line, he flung an arm and hit Ralph.
But the best part was Ralph's story, "Yeah, at recess, in line, you swung around and hit me right in the head, and now I have a huge bump there and I can't see so well and I'm probably going to have to go to the hospital and have all kinds of tests done and it really hurt."
This from a child who is walking upright, with no visible signs of distress, and not even an ice pack to cure his aching head. I had to walk away and restrain myself from laughing. If only we could find a way to harness this creativity and use it for the forces of good instead of the forces of excuse-making.....

Is it just me?

Last night was the concert for the 4th and 5th grade girls' honors choir. They performed right after the high school choir concert. My girls were dressed to the nines, hair done up just so, looking pretty, and sounding (I thought) better than the high school choir which preceded them. So the concert would have been lovely, save for one thing: audience members behaving badly.

First, there was the mom sitting behind me who stood up and danced...yup, that's right danced during the concert. And we're not talking a little swaying, arms at your side kind of dancing. We're talking raise the roof, arm flinging, get your groove on dancing. Which she felt the need to explain to me. "I'm not crazy, I'm just tryin to embarrass my kid. Ya only get so many chances to do that, gotta take 'em all!"

Then there were the uncontrolled children. Don't get me wrong, I know three and four year olds can't be expected to sit through an hour long concert. But the kid on the bleachers next to me stomping up and down the stairs and jumping down a few rows, then doing it all again. He wasn't the only one. I counted at least 15 of them; yelling, jumping, running around.

Yet worse than the little children were the big children who should have known better. The high school choir, once dismissed from the stage, filtered slowly into the back of the gym and had a little party. Friends who had come to watch them sing got up out of the audience and went back to join them.

I was floored. Where I grew up, concerts weren't like that. Or at least I don't remember them being like that. If you had kids who were noisy, or needed to burn off some energy, they were taken out in the hallway where they could run and be as noisy as they wanted without disrupting anyone. When I was in choir and another group was singing during a concert, we either went back to the music room to wait, or we had seats in the audience which we had to stay in. Maybe I grew up in an exceptional community, but it makes me sad to think that these types of events are not highly regarded in my present community. They are treated like your average sporting event, rather than an expression of art and culture. Both events are important, but the behavior at each one should reflect the nature of the event. I endure them for the sake of my kids who are invovled in them, but it is most definitely not an enjoyable experience.

Where the boys are

They're in my classroom....and they're cracking me up.

I had my hair highlighted last night, and while I expected my partner teacher (a woman) to notice and comment, I didn't expect the reaction I got from my class.

While the student teacher greeted them at the door, I sat at my desk grading papers. I saw one of my boys start walking toward me and then stop and look, and then get a really odd look on his face, as though I was sitting there with a pet monkey on my lap.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Your hair! You dyed it!" he said, like I had just told him I ate worm chowder for breakfast.

"You noticed, E. I'm so impressed! You get bonus points today."

The conversational buzz which followed in my room was pretty amusing...it began with E telling a few people, "She dyed her hair!", contained several frightened sounding "AH!"s in the middle, and ended with the boy who had been actually doing his morning work instead of listening to the conversation saying, "Highlights? Highlights of what?" and the girl who sits next to him saying, "In her hair, N! Duh!"

Add in E. coming back to my desk a few minutes later to ask a question, hiding behind his notebook as though he can't face me, and the morning is off to a smile-cracking start! :o) Maybe there's hope for this group yet...

Oh, the thrills!

It's possible that teaching is the only profession in which you are guaranteed to get at least one Valentine's Day gift. Scratch that - teaching elementary is the only profession in which you are certain to get at least one gift.

Some of my favorite gifts today:
- the sugar! I've received no fewer than two mini-boxes of bonbons, two Reese's peanut butter cups, one cookie, eight Hershey's kisses, one packet of Skittles, three heart shaped suckers, and two Pixie sticks. Screw dieting. (at least for today!)
- An electric guitar shaped, leapord skin print valentine's card. I think it may be the absolute coolest card I've ever received
- Two very sweet cards from former students (sent in with their younger sister).
- an awkward encounter with a coworker. It was a little piece of Valentine's Day fun to watch her try to climb her way out of the hole she'd dug for herself. Sees me carrying flowers (sent to one of my students) down the hallway. Prances over and starts in, "Oh! Look at those! Oh, you lucky young bride, I mean, er, young person, uh, teacher, with, um....significant other person, er......"
- but the very best: A flaming golf ball tattoo. Seriously. I think I may wear it to dinner tonight, it's that cool.

hearts and chocolates and cupids, oh my!

To the elementary school teacher, the only thing separating Valentine's Day from Halloween are the costumes. Granted, given a choice between Halloween and Valentine's Day, the cursed heart-filled day wins hands down, but they do have a common denominator: sugar!

As I finished the oh-so-demanding five minute chore of scribbling "To Bobby, From Miss L." on twenty-five insipid, bland and largely meaningless children's Valentine's cards, it brought back memories of my own elementary Valentine's years. I remember spending a whole lot of time and energy finding the exact, perfect (insipid, bland and meaningless) card for each classmate. You had to make sure that no one that you didn't like might read your (insipid, bland and meaningless) card and think maybe you were in love with them. And you also had to make sure that the guy you actually did like would be able to read between the lines of your (insipid, bland and meaningless) card and realize that he was totally meant to be with you.

I'm sure some of my little girls will go home tonight and do much the same thing that I did. And nothing I could tell them would make a difference. If I thought it would make a difference, I would tell them, "Look, I've spent the last seven years working with fifth grade boys, and they don't care one bit what your card says. To them, the value of your card can be summed up in one question: 'Is there candy?' So just sign your name and move on to the next one. Spend time writing to your best girlfriends; tell them how great they are, cause they'll actually read it and appreciate it. Fifth grade boys just don't." But I suppose, in our present culture, that isn't really the focus of Valentine's day; instead of being about anyone in our lives whom we love and enjoy, it has to be about the person we're in love with.

As one who has always been single on Valentine's day, I often vow, after another sad, lonely Valentine's Day that I won't let that happen again. I decide not to focus on the diamond commercials, the plethora of flower arrangements that show up in my coworkers' rooms, or even my own single state and focus instead on the great friendships God's given me. Some years, I actually pull it off; I write out meaningful cards for longtime friends, or bake cookies for friends in town who mean a great deal to me. But more often than not, I spend it on the couch with a bowl of ice cream, tearing up during the diamond commercials and wondering if my turn will ever come.
And I wish, at this point in my ramblings, that I had something deep and spiritually meaningful to say, but the truth is, I don't; it's all been said. "Focus on _______ (God, friends, other singles, etc.) instead of your love life or lack thereof." Blame it on our culture, where you can still smell the pine scented candles of Christmas while the displays of heart shaped candies and chocolates are going up, but more often than not, this holiday only serves to remind me of what I don't have, rather than what I do have. So, fellow singles, let's pray for each other; and you marrieds out there, enjoy what God's given you and then when you get a moment, pray for those of us who are still looking and waiting.

Caught passing notes

We've probably all done it at some point in the past...passed notes when the teacher's back was turned. I know I'm guilty. The experience from the other side of the desk is a little different...and a whole lot more entertaining as well.

My partner teacher saw me in the hall at recess and said, "I've got a juicy one! They turned four shades of red when I told them to put it on my desk!" My response? "Oooh! Bring it over and let's read it together!" It was indeed a good one. In the note, which was roughly the size of Arkansas...apparently 5th grade girls have yet to master the art of sneaky note passing, were the plots of several fifth grade girls to sneak off to an unsupervised area of the playground, post lookouts, and kiss their boyfriends. Not so much an original idea; this has been tried before. And so my partner teacher got the delightful job of walking these girls through exactly what happened to the last group of girls who tried this.

But my favorite note story of this year, and most likely of many years to come, happened in the classroom next door to mine while all of us teachers were at a meeting. One of the secretaries interupted our meeting to tell us that Mrs. X's sub needed her back in her classroom n-o-w. Arriving in her classroom, she found that the problem was boys passing notes. The reason she had been summoned was because one boy, when asked to hand the note to the substitute teacher, shoved it in his mouth and ate it. Ate it!

Just in case we didn't already feel like the Queens of Crazyland, I guess...

Wow...just....Wow...

Geography tests have to be some of the most entertaining things to grade ever. ever. Well, entertaining or just plain sad, I haven't decided yet.

One friend of mine still asks me about the boy named Mitch who, when asked what country he lived in, wrote the answer, "Mitchigan." While that has to be the laugh-out-loud winner for the "I have no clue where I am" group, regional state tests have also been entertaining this time around.

First the "I'd like to laugh but probably shouldn't since I don't always remember north and south either:" Switching North and South Carolina around. I wanted to cry and tell this child that it only takes a few extra second to look over your answers and think, "hmm...north is up and south is down. hmmm...perhaps these are backwards."

But the winner for the laugh-out-loud moment in the southeast region? Pitying the poor people who live in "Vagina" or "West Vagina."

Reason # 561

Reason 561 why my children need to go outside for recess...

They're trying to walk around the room without touching the floor. The bottoms of desks, chairs, and other people's feet are all fair game. seriously, yikes.

Reason #489

Reason 489 why my children need to go outside for recess:
After being banned from playing with balls inside yesterday, I walk in the room to see ten of them, lined up on their knees next to the linoleum in my room, both hands on the floor, little rears sticking up in the air. As I watch, the kid at the far end of the line slides something down the linoleum to a kid at the other end. Everyone in the middle tries to smack it as it goes flying by. The lucky kid who catches it switches places with the kid who flung the thing in the first place. I take a closer look. They're trying to catch a penny. And when I ask, "What in the world are you doing?" this is the answer I get:

We're bored and we can't throw balls anymore. We had to do something.

Oh, of course...silly me. Please, God, let them be able to go outside for recess today!

full moon's out tonight

I wondered what the deal was when the students who normally come into the room quiet as little mice threw a full blown party this morning. I continued to wonder when the very same students who had just heard the directions not once, or even twice, but three times stared blankly and asked me what to do next. I began to be even more suspicious when I spotted the teacher next door walking down the hall holding hands with two of her students because that was the only way they would keep their hands off of other students. I was absolutely certain when I watched two of my students shove and fling eachother around in the lunch line playing their newly invented game of "push eachother off the red line."

Ask any teacher, ER doc, nurse, paramedic, or police officer. The full moon really brings it out!

and the winner is...

Winner of the oddest overheard conversation of the week (so far)...

Two students, both of them not the sharpest of the bunch, in the hallway after recess. (Names have been changed to protect the semi-clueless)

Student 1: No, you aren't drunk, Raoul!
Student 2: Yeah, I am!
Student 1: No, if you were drunk you'd be walking around in circles!
Student 2: Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh *screamed while walking around in tight circles in my doorway.*

Yep - I'm in this for the sheer entertainment value!

I can see clearly now....

....the rain is gone (for now, at least...)

Praise God for sunshine!! The children are going outside for recess today!!

Yesterday was the second consecutive day of indoor recess. *thumps head into wall* As you can imagine, my very active group does not do well with indoor recess. Sitting quietly and playing nicely isn't really their thing. So they play games which involve balls...more specifically, throwing balls. So I'm sitting in my classroom during lunch recess, enjoying my chicken noodle soup (homemade by yours truly, thank you very much), when I see a student lugging a large box of poster paper towards me.

Now, my general policy on my location during indoor recess is "the farther away from my classroom, the better!" However, if I have to be in the room, my policy is "Pay no attention to the woman behind the desk! I'm not here, take your problem to someone who's in charge of recess." This may sound harsh, but I assure you, it's for my own mental sanity. And even with these policies, here comes this student dragging this bulky box of paper toward me.

Long story short: Miss L. was given an aromatherapy reed diffuser set for Christmas by one of her students. Since Miss L. lives in a teeny-tiny house, in which the lilac scent would be overpowering, she decided to use it at school. (Yes, you can probably see where this is going.) Silly, silly Miss L. apparently took leave of her senses when she came to this decision, thinking that a small container of scented liquid would be completely safe in her classroom. Students crazed by too much indoor recess hit the bottle with a ball, knocking it onto a giant box of poster paper.

At least now I can write gigantic love letters which will smell like lilacs....now....who to send them to??? :o)