Organized Chaos

Angry birds

2012-02-14T14:00:00.001-08:00

Brown Bear's latest obsession is Angry Birds. He is amazingly good at the game but recently his obsession lays not with the game but with the stuffed version. The first day he came to school with Angry Bird we looked at each other wearily. What would this toy do to disrupt his learning? Fully prepared to have to take it away from him at some point we braced ourselves for the worst but decided not to fight that battle until we had to. Yet within twenty minutes Angry Bird was my new best friend. Anything we wanted Brown Bear to do we just asked Angry Bird to do. If Brown Bear was ignoring us all we had to say was "Angry Bird, sit on the rug" and Brown Bear and Angry Bird would both sit on the rug. Angry Bird pointed to the words in his book with his beak, he did all of his math sheets and waited for Brown Bear when he went to the bathroom. Brown Bear even talks to Angry Bird during transitions, telling Angry Bird where to go and what to do. Somehow taking care of Angry Bird makes the transition smoother for Brown Bear. It is almost as if he can't self talk independently to get himself ready, but he can self talk when he has something to direct his thoughts to.
There have been times that even Angry Bird hasn't come through and Brown Bear still has a rough day, but most of the time Angry Bird is an essential part of our class. We traced his shadow for ground hogs day and gave him his own 100 year old portrait.

I've never even played the game yet I love that stinking disgruntled bird.

100 years

2012-02-14T12:23:00.001-08:00

To celebrate 100 days of school we made portraits of what we will look like in 100 years. I saw one of my awesome colleagues do this last year and I had to steal the idea. I'm not sure we quite got the concept of 100 years but these are pretty cute anyway.

And yes that is an angry bird at 100. More on that later.

What do all of these have in common?

2012-02-14T05:57:00.000-08:00

*Frog food
*Stickers
*Plastic bins
*Fabric
*Pretzels, cheerios, goldfish
*Sticky notes
*Fly swatters
*Kids' underwear
*Yarn
*Scissors
*Masking tape
*Milk, heavy cream, salt, vanilla extract
*Bread
*Rice
*Kitchen timer
*Index cards
*Dixie cups
*Gallon size

They are all on my recipes for my $200 teacher tax deduction

I realize that some of these may seem questionable, yet I would happily write a justification for each item for the IRS. The random little things that go into good classroom management and instruction far exceeds $200. And I teach at a school who generously supplies most of our needs.

Power of the music

2012-02-12T18:58:00.001-08:00

Brown Bear was in the midst of throwing a tantrum over having to clean up his play dough. His lower lip was in full quiver and he had started loud moans of protest. We knew we were in for trouble.
In times of strife and struggle what is there to do other than frantically throw on Dr Jean's 'Who Let the Letters Out' song and let the rhythm speak for itself?
(who let the As out /a/, /a/, /a/?)
By the letter B Brown Bear's wails of protest had turned into whimpers. By d he had run into the house keeper center, desperate to fight the music taking a hold over his body. Unable to hold off any longer he yelped with excitement as we got to F and by J he was in the rug with us bouncing around to the letter sounds, tantrum long forgotten. In the grand scheme of the world music trumps anger.

Retelling Center

2012-02-07T16:46:00.000-08:00

The other day I took Baby L to visit Splattypus' new baby. Sadly Splattypus and I completely missed each other on maternity leave- she left for her leave the week before I came back to school- so we never got to teach together this year.

As we let our babies "play" (read: stare at each other's faces as we bounced them on our knees and gossiped) we chatted about school and the crazy kindergarten curriculum and how little the kids get to play. Listening to her talk about how academic kindergarten is made me step back- I know it's crazy academic and last year when I was supporting children in their general education classrooms I was able to stand back and see just how inappropriately academic it is. But in my new role as a classroom teacher I feel the pressure to get things done more than ever- and my students are even further behind than their general education peers- and I'm just coming back from maternity leave- pressure, pressure, pressure- time to push, push push!! Even though I sigh at the loss of free play opportunities I've made very few opportunities in my classroom for play- and my kids are the ones who need it the most. When I do let them play I'm sitting behind them with a clip board to analyze their conversation and play skills. The poor, poor kids in my class.

Mulling this over I rearranged my schedule to give myself more time for reading workshop in the morning and more time for free choice in the afternoon. So far it's going well. (yes, something had to go- it cuts into our math time, which, yes, is a shame, but it was a LONG math block anyway...)

Splattypus had also been discussing ways to put play into the school day outside of just free choice. This got me thinking as well. I have a retelling and sequencing center but some of my kids have a very hard time sequencing personal events using pictures of what we did. I show them pictures of us making ice cream and they have trouble identifying what we did first and last. For many of them sequencing personal events is an IEP goal and so we work on it frequently, but it hasn't been going overly well.

So, trying to add a little more play into my day, remembering how young my children are (and mine are younger than most considering their developmental delays) I've turned my retelling center into more of a play center. I took a tub and made it the ice cream maker. I added bowls and spoons from our kitchen center, a measuring cup and an empty bag of sugar. The children can act out how we made the ice cream at the center. They are still sequencing the steps and following the pictures of what we did first, second, and third- but because they are pretending that they are making the ice cream they seem to be able to understand sequencing a little better. So far it's gone well- clearly they love the center. Next step will be to add puppets or stuffed animals to reflect a book we've read so they can act that out. We'll see how it goes...

i scream you scream we all scream for...

2012-02-07T16:29:00.000-08:00

For Christmas my father gave me an ice cream maker. This may have been the greatest Christmas gift ever- sort of like the whole 'give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day or teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a life time' parable but with much better tasting food. After some successful attempts at making ice cream at home I decided it was time to attempt it at school. And of course, if we're going to do something fun at school we're going to make it as academic as possible.

We made the ice cream on Thursday morning and then waited and waited for it to be ready (waiting is HARD when you are 5 and 6). The evil teacher that I am made them wait until after lunch to taste it- we put it in the freezer to get it as cold as possible. When we were finally ready to eat it I gave everyone two small dixie cups- one of our homemade ice cream and one of a store bought ice cream (store brand of course- I wasn't about to compare our hard work with Edy's or Bryers). We took everyone's opinions on what was best and graphed it to work on our graphing skills. We've been desperately trying to understand the concept of more and fewer and graphs about how we go home just don't really hold anyone's interest.

After we'd graphed our class' opinions we put our ice cream on a cart and took our taste-test on the road. We visited the office where we asked the principals to participate in our taste-test. We weren't just working on our math skills- my kids are also working on speaking in full sentences, making eye contact, asking questions and listening for responses- so I figured surveying teachers was a great chance to keep working on these skills. Of course, asking children to walk down the hallway with an ice cream cart is a bit like leading a hurricane across the ocean. We destroyed just about everything in our path with our excitement and energy- but it was worth it.

Rock Star practically stormed into my principal's office and demanded that she try the ice cream. Rock Star can be shy and timid around strangers but the ice cream brought out the best in her. Her shyness seemed to disappear and she led the taste test. Other children used full sentences to talk to teachers and came out with expressions I'd never heard them use ("Step right this way"). Rock Star also counted to 12 when she was tallying up the graph (grant it what she was counting was 9 but still, I'd never heard her rote count past 5- I had NO IDEA she could count to 12. She'd been hiding it from us all this time- what else is she hiding?) I heard my kids explain their thinking about reading the graph in ways they hadn't before and we had a few great teachable moments where we got to go over concepts like hot and cold- concepts some of my children have trouble with.

It was chaotic but fun and I was taking data like crazy. Now we're working on sequencing the steps of what we did to make ice cream and using full sentences to retell our adventure. Next we'll try to get it down on paper so that we have our own how-to books.

I love class activities that lend themselves so nicely to academics- evil cackle laugh- oh, my pretties, you think we're having fun but little do you know how much you're learning....

one of those days

2012-02-07T16:13:00.000-08:00

There are days when I come home feeling thankful and lucky that I have such an amazing job that I love so much. Then there are the days when I come home feeling overwhelmed, tired, and exhausted. Not that I don't love my job on these days as well, but some days it feels more like a futile exercise in trying desperately to keep my head above water in the face of a hurricane. Today was one of those days.
It's not that anything went wrong, or that anything is overly out of the ordinary- it's just that so much is going on. Every one of my children has intense needs and essentially needs a different curriculum than everyone else- it's why they are in my class- and what I LOVE about my job- I truly enjoy planning and creating different activities and different teaching methods for each student. But right now I know I could be doing a better job of it, and I'm living with the frustration that it's not happening as well as I would like. My to-do list seems to be running out the door and even if I do get to everything on it I am not doing it as well as I would like. That overwhelming, creeping feeling of panic is seeping in- a feeling that I'm failing the kids, my coworkers, my IAs, my school, the parents, myself. It's like walking on a tight rope and feeling it suddenly start to shake- the sudden realization that you are about to lose your balance and fall all the while trying desperately to do everything in your power to keep your feet on the rope because falling is not an option.
My kids need fast paced instruction or I lose them- but lately I feel like I've been moving inside jello- my brain isn't responding to the environment as quickly as I would like. Reading lessons are taking too long and one moment of hesitation lets the children find an interesting spot on the floor that they'd like to investigate.

The paper work is piling up, the list of people to get back to, needs to meet, teachers to confer with, interpreters to line up, people to call.

I love my job but I love it more when I feel successful. But we can do hard things. Big sigh.

teacher pride

2012-01-26T17:31:00.000-08:00

On the way home from school yesterday I heard this story on NPR- about a Broadway play staring Cynthia Nixon. What I've kept thinking about though, is that it is written by a teacher. Not a former teacher- or a teacher soon to be retiring because she's found a better way to make money- a teacher. A current teacher. A teacher so happy and proud of her job that she continues to teach. For whatever reason you don't hear of that very much. We hear a lot about former teachers who go on to do great things, but it seems rare that someone stays in the classroom by choice, because they love it, even as they do great things. It made me proud to teach knowing that someone out there was choosing teaching along with their other dreams.

The article says:
Teaching has been Edson's vocation for well over a decade now. She found out she won the Pulitzer Prize for Wit while she was teaching kindergarten. She now teaches social studies to sixth-graders, even as her show has been previewing on Broadway.

"Teaching is me, teaching is alive," Edson says. "I'm on my feet all day; I'm with my people all day. I'm not separate from anyone, and I'm in the mix. I'm out there doing my job, every day."

miracle workers

2012-01-26T17:24:00.000-08:00

While I was on maternity leave my coworkers were working their tails off for one of our students. When she entered our class she came with paperwork indicating she had a behavior problem. After getting to know her my coworkers realized that she couldn't hear- she wasn't trying to be obstinate, she just couldn't hear the instructions.
Months have gone by. My coworkers set up doctors appointments, organized meetings, translators, doctors appointments, more meetings with more translators that led to more doctors appointments and more meetings. By the time I came back the whole movement was well on its way. There were lots of tears (on our part) as we waited for this little girl to be able to get hearing aids. As we waited she went through her day like she always had, desperately trying to comply with adult directions, trying to communicate with her peers, trying to figure out what she was suppose to be doing day in and day out. She smiled and nodded and tried to please us, guessing everyday about what we wanted her to do. It was heart breaking to watch her try to communicate- try to do whatever we asked, but never quite on target.
Today, after months of my co-workers' hard work and dedication, she entered school with shiny new hearing aids tucked behind her ears. She grinned at us and immedietly brushed her hair aside so we could check out her new jewlery. She could hear us. She could hear everything around her.

What was truly amazing was that it was as though she was seeing us for the first time as well. She noticed everything around us- asking us to label signs and materials in our room. She seemed to notice our class frog for the first time ever- she stared at him multiple times during the day, giggling and laughing as he splashed around in the tank, and begged multiple times to feed him. It was as though for the first time she could relax during the day and look around the room- no longer trying to stay on her toes to catch when she may be called on she was able to truly notice where she was.
When she drew pictures she included ears- something she had never done before. In pictures of herself she included her aids.

When we met with her in the speech-pathologists' office to awe over ears one of my former friends, now a third grader, appeared. She was coming to visit our SLP because, well, she had her own brand new ear jewlery. She isn't deaf, but her hearing is improved when she is aided. We got to watch the third grader and the kindergarten student compare equipment and stare at each other. Suddenly they were not alone with their hearing aids. We didn't even plan the encounter- but it couldn't have worked out better.

There were so many times we welled up with tears as we watched her explore her new world for the first time. My coworkers made this happen. They worked so hard, with ridiculous patience and love for this child as they struggled to make this happen. But they did it.

I love where I work. I am so blessed to work with so many dedicated people.

Outside factors

2012-01-22T14:12:00.001-08:00

When I first started working at the think tank we had a little more than 500 students. It was easy to find parking in our massive parking lot. There were even classrooms used as offices or conference rooms, leaving them empty most of the time. Over time (but not that much time, I'm not that old), this has changed. We have classrooms in trailers and we keep adding trailers, or sets of trailers. We have such a large staff that it is impossible to find parking if you get to school late. Our classes are maxed out and it's hard for classrooms to find time to use the bathroom- as we added trailers, teachers and kids we didn't get to add new bathrooms. Our cafeteria is overcrowded and our poor pe, music and art teachers have so many classes to teach that they barely get a break. We are literally bursting at the seams.
To help with our over crowding the district is opening a new school and re-districting our neighborhoods. We should lose around 200 plus students, which might sound like a lot but all things considering isn't actually going to reduce our numbers by that much.

We all know we have to lose students. We look forward to the hallways being less crowded, teachers being less stressed and for kids to actually be able to have time to go to the bathroom. But reality is slowly setting in- losing students means actually losing real students, not numbers. Kids we love. Families we've worked for years.

They drew the boundaries so that our poorest neighborhood will go to another school. A school that is not walking distance from the neighborhood, for a neighborhood where most families do not drive.

Our school worked hard for years to bring these families into our school. We understood the importance of having these parents be partners with us in their children's education and we worked hard to make it happen. It was essential to bring these parents in, teach them about the American school system, and help them understand how they can support their children. We spent years building trust between these families. We know these children will have a chance because their parents are on their side and involved.

And now they have to leave us, for a school they can't access. This means they won't be able to come to parent teacher conferences. They won't be able to pick up their sick children from the clinic. They won't come to after school activities and take advantage of school programs.
What's worse is that to the school it will look like these families just don't care. Teachers will get frustrated and the relationship between school and home will start to crumble.

It's beyond frustrating. We know our school is too big- it has to shrink. And to shrink we have to lose some of the students we love. But to make our school smaller means taking the neighborhood that needs us the most. What will happen to those kids? It is such a reminder of all the factors that play a role in a child's success in education besides what happens directly in the classroom.

I hope the transition goes well. I hope the parents find a way to get to the school easily. I hope the relationships we've built transfer over to the new school.

Writing Workshop Conference

2012-01-19T09:39:00.000-08:00

Me: Magical, what are you drawing?

Magical: My feet.

Me: Hmmmm. Those look like a lot of lines. How many feet do you have?

Magical: I don't know!

Me: Well, let's look at your feet.

Magical: I can't- they are in my shoes!

Me: Ok, well let's count your shoes.

Magical.... Hmmmm.... ONE.... TWO.... I HAVE TWO FEET!!!

I heart my job.

third grade conversation

2012-01-18T06:03:00.000-08:00

The Story Teller and his brother Brown Bear are currently homeless. They've been in and out of temporary housing since this summer and their parents are frantically looking for a new place to live. It's been heartbreaking to a third grader rely all of this information to me.

This morning the Story Teller came up to me with his large story-teller eyes. "Mrs. Lipstick," he asked, "Do you know D?"

Of course I know D- The Story Teller and D have been together since their second year in kindergarten. I taught both of them for 3 years straight.

"Yes, I know D" I replied.

"Yeah, he said he's going to give me the number."
"A number for what?" I asked, figuring that D was just going to give the Story Teller his home number so they could have a play date.

"For a house. So I can call the man. And find a house to live in."

I was silent for a moment. How do you respond when you hear that two third graders have been chatting about their housing situation and that one third grader is planning on getting a number to help another third grader find housing? Shouldn't they be talking about Godzilla and robots and playing soccer?

I love the empathy and love they show each other after being in the same class for 4 years. I just wish they didn't have to.

Progress

2012-01-15T07:43:00.001-08:00

I've spent the morning working on my students' progress reports. For students in special ed they get a numerical assessment and a comment for each of their personal goals and objectives each quarter along with the traditional report card. Although its time consuming I like that it is personalized specifically for them, and that I can write a comment. I'm not just giving a student a '3' (making some progress), I'm able to write that 85% of the time she can identify the number 3, which is up from 25% of the time last quarter. Since the goal is to identify the numbers 1-5 she still isn't close to getting a '4'- significant progress toward achieving the goal- but she is making progress.
Still, it's hard to sit here, going through pages and pages of data, wishing it showed more progress. I've been so proud of what they've all accomplished- felt everything was going so well. But to see the cold numbers- 85% of the time is lower than I thought- I thought we'd mastered the number 3. I thought one child never needed prompts to complete work but the data shows that no, I've been giving her a lot of prompts. My perceived progress isn't actually real progress. We still have a lot of work to do.
With students with special needs you can't just teach the material, you have to teach, reteach, sing, dance, repeat the material. It has to become so engrained in them as learners that they'll never forget it, and that no matter how much difficulty they have retrieving information in general, they'll always be able to access what you need them to know. 85% isn't where we want to be.
It's hard to write their progress reports and not reflect the progress I think we've made. Progress is happening everyday, it's just still progress and not achievement yet. I want to walk the line between cheering for what's been accomplished so that the parents can be rightfully proud of their children while still giving them a realistic assessment of where their child is.

True love

2012-01-13T17:05:00.001-08:00

Brown Bear doesn't always like to comply with our rules and routines. Poor guy, school is a pretty demanding place and asks a lot of him. There are days when leaving our classroom is just too much and he refuses to go to music, PE or art. Today he'd refused to leave so he was in my room during first grade math time with my Rock Star.
I haven't written about Rock Star in awhile- but she continues to absolutely shine. She has an intellectual disability but is somehow sweet and spunky all in one. I've noticed that among her typical developing peers she is quiet and reserved- hesitant to even speak. She's fully aware of the gap between her and the other children. It's almost painful to watch her try to hide her difficulties from them. In my classroom however she let's herself shine- feeling safe around peers like herself.
Brown Bear is similar to her in a lot of ways. They both are mostly nonverbal and have intellectual disabilities. They both can be very strong willed when they want to be, but sweet other times.
This afternoon it was time to take Rock Star back to her room which meant Brown Bear had to come to. I didn't think this would go well at all. Brown Bear hates transitions and the idea of walking him to the first grade classroom and back filled me with dread. I looked up and down the hallway for help, hoping someone would be able to take one of the kids but no one was around. So I braced myself for the worst, and told them both to line up. Brown Bear yelled "no !"
Great, I inwardly groaned, this is going to be an amazing way to start my weekend- an end of day tantrum. Rock Star had other ideas. She stood up with one hand in her hip and one wagging a finger at Brown Bear. Stomping her foot she said his name sharply, pointing to his coat. Then as he sheepishly complied with her she carefully helped him into his coat and guided him down the hall. The whole way she kept her arm around him, coaxing him along. Both of them were grinning and I was fighting back tars. I've watched so many friends help Rock Star like that over the years. I've watched it transition from kids being friendly to friends bring inappropriately helpful to her- treating her more like a pet than a peer. I've seen what it did to her self esteem.
But here she was being the care taker of someone else. With just the right amount of firmness and friendliness she maintained the line between friendly helping and mothering appropriately. They both love the relationship- someone out there that gets them.
Seeing a kid look at Rock Star with love and admiration while seeing a kid look at Brown Bear with love and sisterly concern made me tear up. I love my job.

Published!

2012-01-12T14:04:00.001-08:00

Last summer when I was very pregnant and hiding inside the air conditioned house I submitted an article to Learning Landscape, a peer reviewed journal published twice a year. It was accepted and published this December.
Bored with nothing to do, or interested in teaching self-regulation? Check out the journal here:http://www.learninglandscapes.ca/current-issue
I'm page 156.

Kindergarten literary jokes

2012-01-12T14:00:00.001-08:00

This afternoon Brown Bear wanted nothing to do with us. My aide and I were in the midst of a power struggle with him and he was refusing to comply with anything we said. (I should point out that it was the sort of power struggle that ends with us wanting to go straight home and change clothes.)
He lay on his back and shouted "no!" whenever we asked him to go home. Then my brilliant aide bent over and whispered "purple sheep". Brown Bear started giggling immediately. "purple dog" she went on, and he practically balled up with laughter. We continued this banter all the way to kiss and ride with a suddenly very happy boy.
I love that he knows Brown Bear, Brown Bear well enough that merely changing the colors of the animals sends him into a fit of giggles. I love that he finds a purple sheep hysterical because he knows it really should be a purple cat.
I also love my quick thinking aide who knew what she knew about him to turn a frustrating situation into a happy one.

Oh, the boogers I've seen

2012-01-09T18:50:00.001-08:00

I felt a light tap on my shoulder during reading workshop. I turned around slowly to find one of my sweet little girls standing behind me, holding out a tissue. A tissue filled with two of the largest boogers I've ever seen in my life. I don't understand how they came out of her nose since they were larger than her nostrils. She clearly didn't understand either because she looked at me in horror as she held out the tissue. As though showing someone
would make it less gross.
I don't know what's going around my room but everyone seems to be producing the same large, grey boogers. The joys of kindergarten.

Bad days

2012-01-03T17:11:00.001-08:00

There are bad teaching days when the kids are crazy and even your best lessons fall flat. Then there are bad teaching days when it's totally your fault- lack of planning, no energy to react to misbehavior, not paying enough attention. Today was one of those days, with no one to blame but myself. Well, maybe also my baby who still isn't sleeping through the night. But she's too cute to blame.

Hooray for the bathroom!

2011-12-22T14:03:00.001-08:00

When I graduated from college I didn't expect that my degree would lead me to be sitting in the floor of a classroom bathroom coaxing a five year to use the toilet. I certainly didn't expect to be excited about it. But today after a few silly rounds of peek-a-boo with one of my friends I decided to suggest that we just go into the bathroom. You know, just to chill. Learn that it's not a scary place. Hang out. (because isn't that what we all want to do- hang out in a bathroom used by five year olds).
My friend was in such a good mood that he did it although he'd previously refused to go anywhere near the place.
Not only did he go into the bathroom but he came very, very close to actually using the bathroom. And he did this three times.
There was lots of clapping and hugging. And maybe some candy.
I never thought that I'd connect the bathroom with a Christmas miracle.

sticky

2011-12-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

There are days I think I am earning an advanced degree in unsticking glue bottles. Today is one of those days.

Elf on a shelf

2011-12-18T11:49:00.001-08:00

Is anyone else a little bit horrified by Elf on a shelf? I'll admit- part of my horror is probably pure jealousy. My husband's aunt gave Little Lipstick a signed copy because the creator was a teacher at her school.
A teacher. I mean, it's exactly the type of thing one of us would create. Like my first year teaching when I convinced my first graders that the best April fool's day joke would be to whisper all day and if anyone asked why we'd say, "shhhh- don't wake the lion!" it made no sense but it gave me a very quiet, headache free day.

Elf on a shelf is brilliant from a marketing stand point. Once you've decided to try it as a parent you are stuck moving that elf every day in December until your little ones don't believe in Santa anymore. And if you're one of those creative parents whose elf gets involved in elaborate play scenes every night? You are stuck coming up with new elf shenanigans for years. But you can't not be an elf on a shelf family! What will your kids think? Santa loves the other kids more?
(we're going to tell baby lipstick that our family elf is a crotchety old elf who doesn't like to move a lot because of his hip replacement and just skypes with Santa instead of actually flying up there. The cold at the North Pole isn't good for his arthritis. I mean, in these modern times what elf actually needs to travel to the north pole?)

Baby L and I nestled in to read the book this morning as she grabbed at the red elf (which means our elf is already ruined. The book, in a very teacher like manner tells the kids that if they touch the elf he loses his magic. Brilliant.) and I was kind of horrified by the book. It's like the children's version of 1984. This large demanding boss makes his little worker drones fly around the world and spy on his subjects. He'll reward behavior he likes and punish those not acting appropriately. And that sneaky spy is hiding in your house. He's got friends in high places too, so don't mess up on the playground when you think the elf isn't around. Oh no. Big brother elf is all knowing. He's out there. Santa isn't limited by the constitution after all, and even if he was, the right to privacy is a sketchy one.
But don't think your elf is going to talk to you- Santa's laws don't allow for free speech. No, he's just going to talk about you behind your back like a middle school girl. Paranoid yet?

Of course, Mr Lipstick and I will do Elf on a Shelf and we'll probably even make the mistake of being those creative elf hiders the first year, sentencing ourselves to years of stressful December evenings. Because despite all the communist propaganda, as a kid I would have loved an elf and I bet little lipstick will too.

Three ring circus

2011-12-15T16:51:00.001-08:00

My classroom is very much a three ring circus in many ways. On good days it is a very smoothly run operation that would bore any circus goer to tears. In one corner children are quietly reading, in another a child might be transitioning from his wheel chair to his stander, on the rug a child might be quietly working on an assigned activity.
Today was not one of those days. Today I could have sold popcorn.
One girl was so wound up she kept running from the room, giggling manically and throwing books. Another child was in the hallway refusing to go anywhere. I caught another trying to feed the frog when no one was looking (and then he tried to tell me that Mrs Lipstick told him he could, looking shocked when I pointed out that I was Mrs Lipstick and knew very well that I'd told him no such thing)
And that was just in one five minute block. The rest of the day was like that. God bless the children who did their work as though flying books are normal. And Magical, who narrated the whole thing in case we didn't know what we were doing. (D just ran out of the room? Oh man. V won't come in? Oh boy. Mrs Lipstick is mad? Oh no!)

Independence

2011-12-15T16:39:00.001-08:00

Magical is working on being independent with his self help skills. Every time he leaves the bathroom he asks for someone to button him back up without attempting to do it first. Today I told him that I would only help him if he tried it himself first.
"Myself?" he asked, as though I was teaching him a new word.
"Yes, yourself."
He began waving his hands around his button while still staring wide-eyed at me.
"Magical, look down," I coached, modeling looking down for him.
He immediately dropped his eyes and his mouth fell open in disbelief as he watched his fingers almost close the button. Every time he came close to snapping it he'd look up at me in excitement, causing his hands to fall away from the button.
"I'm doing it myself!" he cheered every time right before he lost it. He was giddy with the power of closing his own snaps, yet too giddy to actually close the deal. Baby steps. Today was the idea of looking at what we do. Maybe tomorrow we'll tackle looking the whole time.

Reason #327 I love my class

2011-12-10T09:11:00.001-08:00

I was chatting with our librarian the other day and she mentioned that one of the reasons she loves my class is because it gives them a peer group. It's so true. Although we want them to be with their typical peers, no one can deny the power of being around people that truly 'get' you.
Yesterday while they were suppose to be decorating paper gingerbread men so we could count and graph the circles, triangles, and squares they each used, Magical and another friend were busy giggling with one another. From an outsider's perspective (outsider being anyone but the two of them) they were not making any sense at all. But they were having an intense back and forth conversation- something they are both working on. Without any adult prompts they were listening and responding to each other without changing the silly topic, and were having a ball doing it. Not all children "get" Magical. They may be nice, share and talk to him, but what I witnessed yesterday was true friendship. The kind of friendship where you get in trouble with the teacher because you both are so invested in the conversation that you forget to do your work.
At the end of the day I was walking one of my almost non-verbal students out to kiss and ride when we ran into another of my almost non-verbal students. Their eyes lit up when they spotted each other. There were hugs, cheers, hellos and more hugs even though they'd just seen each other forty minutes before.
I love my class.

Brown Bear

2011-12-08T16:46:00.001-08:00

One of the things I am loving about my new position is how much I get to learn. I am working with children with some significant needs and hopefully by the end of this year I will have a whole new skill set.
One of my students, Brown Bear (named after his favorite book) is a little boy with an intellectual disability. He is the younger brother of the Story Teller (if we had favorites the Story Teller would be one of mine, but of course we don't have favorites). Although I have worked with students with intellectual disabilities before I have never worked with anyone quite like him. His behavior is nothing like PJ's violent tantrums last year, but with PJ I felt like I knew what to do. I could see patterns in PJ's behavior and also knew how bright PJ was. His intelligence made his behavior somewhat predictable because we could anticipate what how he perceived the world. My new friend is different than that. We are not sure exactly what he understands and what he is confused about. When he breaks down in tears it is hard to figure out why. Is he over stimulated? Frustrated by a change in routine? Tired? Angry that he can't express his needs?
Sometimes we can put a finger on what motivates him and sometimes we are at a loss. It can be totally different motivators each time. What worked five minutes ago no longer works.

When he is happy his smile melts your heart. He has an uncanny ability to remember names and truly cares about the people in his environment. He loves physical touch and will cuddle up with you when given the chance. He can tell you all of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, exclaiming with glee on each page when a new animal appears.
I wish I knew more now to make a difference with him but I'm looking forward to learning more about how to reach him.
If anyone knows of any good books to read to learn about working with students with intellectual disabilities please let me know the titles!

No baby love

2011-12-07T18:51:00.001-08:00

During writing workshop Magical mentioned that he had a new couch and told me I would see it when (note not if, but when) I come to his house. I responded by telling him that I'd promised his mom that I would bring the baby over.
"Or maybe you don't bring her" he replied. "Don't bring the baby to my house. It will touch my things. You can come visit but you just leave the baby outside. By the door. But you can come in. Just show the baby to my mom and then leave it outside."
Nothing we said could change his mind- no baby is coming into his house.

It's the little things

2011-12-05T18:23:00.001-08:00

In the midst of trying to figure out what time which students were suppose to go where (it is going to take me awhile to get my head on straight) one of my little ones loudly announced,
"I am going to do it all by myself!"

I looked up, confused to what he was talking about, before I understood he meant the bathroom. He was going to go to the bathroom all by himself. This, I learned from my sub, was something they'd been working on.
We cheered to encourage him and watched as he strutted into the bathroom and shut the door- a sure sign that he fully intended to do this all by himself.
Moments later we heard the toilet flush and he proudly strutted out of the bathroom and announced to the class, "I did it!"

We cheered.

I love my job.

Survived!

2011-12-02T16:33:00.001-08:00

I survived my first day back from maternity leave, lack of sleep and all. It helps that my class is awesome and that they've made huge strides since I was last with them in August. Magical in particular is absolutely blossoming. There is a lot I've missed and a lot for me to catch up on, but I'm trying not to let it overwhelm me. A little bit each day...
It was odd, though, being in my classroom trying to figure out someone else's routines. What normally happens after snack? How do they transition to recess- sit on the carpet or just line up? It sounds like such small things but for children who are extremely sensitive to change these little routines are very important. I'll slowly start changing them to make them go the way I want them to, but I worry that too much too early on will cause a lot of unneeded distress and acting out.

The best part is having my own classroom again. I missed it so much the last 4 years- its so nice to be forming the community and routines again.

No matter how great a day it was.', however, I am utterly exhausted. I'll be lucky if I make it to 8:30 tonight.

Hidden treasures

2011-11-29T16:30:00.001-08:00

In getting ready to go back to school (two more days... I can't handle this!) I've been going through my wardrobe to figure out what fits and what doesn't. It appears that every time I put on a pair of pants I pull out not a $20 like one hopes but a piece of a game or center from last year. Two sided counters, a candy land person, two zingo tiles, a toy bone (?), and some counting bears. Some pieces have clearly been laundered but managed to stay in the pockets throughout the winter. I'm sure if I got creative I could develop my own math game with all the random pieces.

Comfort

2011-11-22T15:44:00.001-08:00

My daycare provider asked me to bring Baby L in everyday two weeks before I would officially leave her. The first day I sat and watched the program. The second day she sent me on a walk around the block, leaving Baby L behind. The third day she sent me twice around the block. The fourth day she sent me to Starbucks. She's very slowly getting me prepared to leave her, and slowly getting Baby L use to her daycare.
When we went on Monday I could watch Baby L visibly relax there. She was giggly and happy in everyone's arms. A huge wave of relief flooded over me- I might actually be able to leave her after all. (Still wishing I could just take her to work with me...)

The daycare provider has been so adamant about the importance of a slow transition. By the time I drop Baby L off the first day she wants her extremely comfortable with the other children, the care givers and the environment. She wants to make sure I am comfortable because that will send a message to my baby.
Obviously this is above and beyond what we can do in school for our kinders, but I think some of the principals behind it are the same.
We can make sure the parents feel comfortable with us because that their children will pick up on any anxieties they have.
We can try to introduce the environment to children with their parents beside them to help them feel safe. If their initial experience is safe and warm with their parent they are more likely to associate positive feelings and trust with the new environment. And obviously, when they feel safe and secure they are more likely to be open for learning.
It's hard to fully prepare our kinders for school, especially those who have never been away from their parents for this long. There is obviously a lot out of our hands- the parents have to bring them to open house and orientation for us to get a chance to try to make them comfortable. But we have control of how we set up those experienced, the patience we have with parents, and how we interact to send a message of security in the new environment.

Two more weeks...

2011-11-18T06:48:00.001-08:00

Two weeks from today I will be back at work. I can't believe my leave is almost up.
I've been going in once a week to get to know the kids and watch their routines. It's odd to be a stranger in my own classroom, observing as an outsider. Although the kids are all excited when we talk about me coming back I don't think they really understand what a significant change it will be. I don't think they realize that the teacher they have gotten to know over the last 12 weeks will be gone and I will take her place. For children with special needs who thrive on routines and structure this is going to be especially hard.
I won't respond to their behaviors the way their substitute did, simply because we are different people. I have a feeling we are going to have a period of testing and restlessness as we all get to know each other.
There is so much I've missed in these first 12 weeks. Developments in their behaviors, their diagnosis, the relationships with their parents and the school, their use of equipment, what works and what doesn't. I feel like I am going to have a steep learning curve of where each child is, right when I am not on my a game myself from lack of sleep and the emotional adjustment of leaving my little one.
This whole 12 week maternity leave thing is for the birds! No wonder women make less than men in the work place! When we come back from leave we are not the with-it workers we once were with our sleepless nights. I use to be able to throw myself into my job, now I'm going to have to make some serious readjustments in my expectations of myself.
I'm excited to go back and work with the kids. I miss them like crazy. But the whole getting up early, being productive, trying to problem solve, write IEPs, and be on top of the game... Not sure I'm ready for all of that.

Hopes and Dreams

2011-11-15T06:07:00.001-08:00

Last week I was at school for parent conferences and was catching up with our fabulous speech-language pathologist when I noticed the bulletin board in her office. She'd taken the idea of Responsive Classroom's hopes and dreams that most classrooms at our school use. Not letting the fact that she wasn't in a classroom stop her, she had given each child a paper t-shirt where they each wrote their individual goal for speech. They ranged from broad categories like "social skills" to specific goals like "r sounds".
Above the bulletin board was a sign that read Hopes and Dreams, with each child's signature.

I love that she adapted the idea of hopes and dreams to the speech room. One of the greatest things you can teach children with special needs is how to set goals and work toward reaching them. They also benefit from having a good understanding of their disabilities and how they can work toward progress. It empowers them by letting them know they have control of their environment and themselves. And of course, a sense of community is essential to them as well.
I love that she tweaked the idea to work for our kids.

Shameful uses of a baby

2011-11-12T04:53:00.001-08:00

I've continued to go to school to visit my class to get to know them better. I've been loving stopping in to read to them, watch them work at their centers, and chat with them. Of course, every time I've been there it has been with the baby.

There are so many ways you can use a baby in a classroom-
"Everyone sit quietly, don't wake the baby!"
"Why aren't you working? The baby wants to hear you read!"
"Show the baby the first letter in your name?"
"Oh! Go sit down, the baby needs to see everyone sitting down!"

Really, it's been kind of shameful. And I am absolutely screwed when I come back to work without the baby. Those kids will have no incentive to do anything I say once it is just me,

Education horror story

2011-11-01T16:00:00.001-07:00

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/charting_my_own_course/2011/10/a_tale_of_two_teacher_evaluations.html

This horrified me. Maybe because I've heard too many stories like this. This story is why merit pay makes me nervous, why I tend not to trust new administrators until they have proven themselves, and why I feel like you never can put too much stock in teacher evaluations.

Teacher pay tied to parent involvement?

2011-10-25T18:44:00.001-07:00

I just settled down to catch up on my google reader and I read this paragraph from The Quick and the Ed's Quick Hits for today:

Teacher pay dependent on parents. Rural districts in Idaho have decided to tie teacher merit pay to parental involvement, specifically their attendance at parent-teacher conferences. State officials required districts to decide the factors from which to base performance bonuses. Up to 70 percent of that pay in these rural districts will rest on the parents. (Associated Press)
http://www.quickanded.com/2011/10/quick-hits-10-25-11.html

Not wanting to jump to hasty conclusions I went ahead and followed the link. It had to be a joke, right? Rewarding teachers lucky enough to already teach the kids who have involved parents? Those teachers already benefit from having a home/school connection, and from teaching children who are growing up in a house that values education.
I really, really hoped the quick paragraph was only a tiny piece of the story.

But it seems to sum it up pretty well-.
High school teachers can earn bonuses if at least 40% of parents come to conferences.
I'm sure looking at this from one side makes it sound like a great idea. Build in an incentive to make teachers get creative and reach out to parents. And it might actually get impressive results from some teachers.
On the other hand, it rewards teachers who teach classes full of students who come from involved house holds and punishes the teachers who work with students whose parents are busy with multiple jobs, or who just don't make education a priority. In many of these cases I am willing to bet that the teachers dealing with the least motivated students and the greatest discipline problems are the same as the teachers who have more no shows at conferences.
I always think you can predict how a teacher's year will go based on the turn out at open house. The class where very few parents show up is likely to be the class with students behind academically, students who act out, and students who just don't care about school. It is not a one to one correlation- not every no-show parent signals a long year, but there is a trend.

The past two years my partner in crime and I did home visits for our students. Too busy to come to conference days? We will come to your house at a time that works for you. No problem.

Do you know what it is like to be stood up at someone's house? Especially when you are pretty sure they are inside- just hiding from you. Knocking on a door, listening to footsteps inside that never answer the door?
There are parents who just do not want to be involved.
I've gone to great lengths to talk to parents who seem to have gone to equal great lengths to not talk to me. I've picked up their baby when they come to pick their child up from kiss and ride- they can't avoid me when I'm holding their 6 month old baby. I've shown up uninvited to birthday parties. I shamelessly snap pictures of their children and give them to them so they see me as someone who loves their kid and is safe to talk to. I've gotten my oil changed at the gas station where they work so we can have our conference while I wait.
And even with all that I can still be unsuccessful. There are parents who just are not interested, or who are just too busy to come to school.
Tying merit pay to whether or not these parents show up is like telling the dog he'll get a treat when he herds the cat.

I like that the school district wants to address parent involvement and I like that they want to encourage teachers to reach out to parents, I just don't think merit pay is the way to do it.

2011-10-20T06:45:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I hauled little L into school to meet my kiddos. I needed to get out of the house and be around five year olds again. I've found myself chatting up five year olds in the grocery store aisles much to the dismay of their parents. I'm asking kids in the drs office waiting room to read to me and then I correct their one to one finger pointing. I need to teach again.
I'm also feeling anxious about going back even though it is still six weeks away. I know I'll still be sleep deprived and not in my best state. I'm worried that my emotional stress that week will interfere with my ability to be a good teacher. I want to start building a relationship with the kids now so that I'll be prepared that week. My plan now is to go in once a week to do a read aloud. Just brief visits but long enough so that I get to know the feel of the classroom and they get to know me.
It was wonderful being back. I know I love my job when it was hard for me to leave the classroom to go home. I just wanted to jump into reading groups and settle in.
In a totally shameful moment I decided I couldn't be I'm the building and not see Pixie. So despite the fact her first grade classroom was humming awayat reading workshop I peeped in so that I could get my dose of Pixie.
"I didn't know you had a baby!" she squealed. Which isn't true. "and you dyed your hair." also not true.
And with that she scampered back to her table as one of her classmates asked me where the baby came from. With that I slipped back out the door apologizing profusely for totally causing an explosion on the midst of reading workshop.

I am surprised at how good it was to be back and see all the children. It makes my December deadline seem more like something to look forward to and less like a curse.

Teacher prep

2011-10-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

Although I haven't found much time to blog lately I have been keeping up on my google reader. I was thrilled last week to read from The Quick and the Ed's blog that Arne Duncan is putting a priority on teacher prep. Too many of us are sent into classrooms unprepared. And although your first year teaching is going to have a high learning curve no matter what, there are ways we can make it less steep.
One of the unintended consequences from Teach for America was that it somehow made people believe that teachers didn't need training- anyone could do it. I know it wasn't TFA's intention, but I think the assumption that anyone could go in and teach with virtually no background became a huge catalyst for the anti-teacher movement. Who would respect someone whose job is so easy anyone could walk in and do it?
Of course one of the problems is that although teacher training should be rigorous and should fully prepare students to enter classrooms, many programs are ridiculous. Mine certainly was. It pains me how unprepared I was, and it should not have been a surprise to me- my Ed classes were absurdly easy. This was a huge waste of my time- what I would have given to be challenged in those classes.
Because the classes were notoriously easy the teacher prep program was seen almost as a joke by outsiders. Potentially excellent teachers turned their noses up at the profession because they felt they were smarter than those classes. And they were- but that doesn't mean they were too smart for the profession.
Improving teacher prep can do what TFA wanted to do- bring intelligent people into the profession. But it can also do more- it can change the perspective people have for the education field by making it a more respectable major. Who in college wants to major in something that is a running joke throughout the school? Let me tell you- it takes a firm backbone to be able to stay in a major that makes people assume you couldn't cut it in anything else in the school. People start to talk slower around you, and explain their jokes as though you don't get them. Who would suffer through that?

However, I don't think we can improve the outcomes of teacher prep coursework simply by modifying the coursework alone. It has to go hand in hand with giving teachers ample time in the classroom as interns, or student teachers, working alongside expert teachers who know how to think out loud and explain best practices throughout the intern's time in the classroom.

My school works closely with one university in the area. We have at least 4, if not more, interns every year who stay with us throughout the entire year. Because they spend so much time in the classroom learning alongside the teacher before they take on the responsibility of running a classroom alone they usually end the year extremely prepared. We love when our interns are hired as teachers the following year because we know they are fully prepared and well trained.

I'm excited that the ed conversation has turned toward teacher prep and I hope it will be a positive turn. There has been criticism of teacher prep for awhile with the answer seeming to be that it should be eliminated. Instead let's make it more rigorous and fully prepare teachers for the huge amount of responsibility they will have in their first year teacher.

Thank you Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T06:41:00.000-07:00

I have to admit I thought I would hate maternity leave. I'm an introvert by nature but the idea of spending 12 weeks by myself day in and day out filled me with dread. I love teaching and knew I would miss the energy I get from being around kids in the classroom. Reading click, clack, moo to little L just isn't the same- she doesn't do the voices along with me and it's like she doesn't even understand why cows with heated blankets are funny! (she is only a month old)
Before little L was born Mr Lipstick had us get iPhones. He somehow felt they were essential to the new baby process. I thought this was silly but I went along anyway. He was right- they are essential.
Without the iPhone I think I would be going crazy. Instead I have everything I need in one hand. My book, movies, email, my google reader to keep me connected to the education world, baby apps to track what I can't remember in my sleep deprived state, and the list goes on and on. Suddenly I'm not trapped by myself but I am still a part of the world. The iPhone is like God's gift to women with newborns. Or anyone that suddenly needs to do everything one handed.
In my sleep deprived state I can't help but feel eternally grateful to the innovation and creativity of Steve Jobs and the iPhone team. Thank you for helping me remember I am a human being with the ability to think and connect with others. Thank you for helping my poor memory, for making life easier, for entertaining me during late night feedings. Thank you for knowing what I would need before I ever did.
with others.

looking beyond behaviors

2011-09-29T06:40:00.000-07:00

When I was doing preschool transition IEPs last spring the preschool teachers warned me that one little girl I'd be getting had a bit of a stubborn streak in her behavior. They said that she seemed cute and sweet but that she would use that to not be independent, avoid adult requests, and just generally ignore adults. They warned us that her developmental difficulties were from this behavior, and once her behavior was in check her academics would follow.

The speech language pathologist and I thought this seemed odd after meeting the girl because what we saw in her behavior did not line up with what the preschool teachers told us. Still, we'd only met her a few times and they were with her everyday- so what did we know? We promised ourselves that we'd keep an open mind when the year started.

She didn't come to our summer program so I was not able to get to know her at all before I left on maternity leave. My co-workers have kept me informed of what's been happening in my classroom and it turns out that her developmental difficulties were not from behavior at all, but in fact from a medical reason. The amazing team that is working in my classroom right now quickly figured out that something was very wrong- this was not a stubborn little girl just refusing to do her work. They asked the right questions, got the right people involved, brought her parents in, and soon had it sorted out. This was a little girl who could not hear- it had nothing to do with her ignoring her teachers just to avoid work. She literally could not hear what they were saying- she wasn't pretending to try to get out of work.

Every time someone tells me another piece of this story to update me on what is happening with her case I am so thankful for the team at school. This little one was so lucky to have a strong team who looked past what seemed to be non-compliant behavior and instead asked what was wrong. Without their questions and concern she could have had yet another year of teachers becoming frustrated because they misinterpreted her behaviors as intentional.

How often do we see the behaviors in the classroom as though the child has a vendetta against us personally? How often do we as teachers get lost in the frustrating surface behavior and forget to look beyond to the true cause?

first years

2011-09-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness. I don't even know where to start- my sleepless brain keeps knitting together blog posts that I never have time to write, which is good because if put down on paper I'd probably learn that they don't make any sense. The last blog post I manged to hit publish on had a broken link, which I never did get around to fixing. Life has changed a bit.

I'm loving life as a new mommy, but at times I start to have the feeling that I've been here before. Finally I realized that this whole experience reminds me a lot of my first year teaching. I hadn't thought about those first year emotions in a long time- I've just relished in loving my job. Until now I'd forgotten exactly how hard it was starting out.

Before my daughter was born, and before I started my first year I certainly felt like I had all the answers. I'd read the books, knew the theories, and felt ready for the new experience. Then it hit and I realized that nothing could begin to prepare me for the actual experience. Theory is one thing- but actual practice is totally another.

The thing that's hard in both situations is that just weeks before I'd been confident and set in my life. Then suddenly everything is turned upside down and that confidence is turned upside down. I think that's the scariest part- not knowing for sure when you'll get the confidence back. There are no books that can tell you when you'll start to feel like yourself again.

The learning curve is huge. As a first year teacher and a new mommy I'd look at my charges and feel overwhelmed with emotion- I love them so much and think they are such great kids. Why do they have to suffer through my learning curve? They deserve a better first grade/new beginning to life than suffering through me learning what to do.

And the judgement- so many different theories out there. No matter what you do you'll never make everyone happy and someone will be there with a raised eyebrow and a "really? That's the choice you're going to make?" It can drive a person to drink. (Which was an option first year teaching- not so much now.)

Luckily people have been far more supportive of new mommy-ness than my first year teaching (I didn't work at the think-tank yet). Right now I'm feeling good and starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of this- sleeplessness and all. It certainly took much, much longer for me to feel that way about my first year teaching.

There was so little support then- and what came being called "support" really was judgmental teammates who had little patience for a new learning curve. There was a lot of "I can't BELIEVE you're not doing guided reading correctly!" when no one had ever told me how to do guided reading. The closest I got to thinking that life would be better was buying an LSAT book and starting to study. But slowly it got better- I found my groove, managed to close my ears to negative attitudes and realized that I could do it.

I'm thankful that my new mommy learning curve has not been nearly as painful as that first year, but it has made me think a lot about those first year teachers. We've got to do more to support them, if not for the teachers themselves for their students and the future students they'll teach in years to come. Not all new teachers have painful first years, but many do. The learning curve is ridiculously steep and those of us who have been around a long time tend to forget how difficult it is to keep all the balls in the air those first few months. The sink or swim belief that teachers are born and not made leaves a lot of students behind, along with a lot of would-be-great teachers.

Now if you'll excuse me- someone is crying and I have yet to figure out why. One of these days I'll learn how to write, proofread, and be a mommy, but for now the proofreading is what is going out the window- forgive me!

finally!

2011-09-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

I rant enough about how no one asks for teachers opinions when they are looking at education policy. Last week (yes, it's taken me this long to blog about it because I've had difficulty speaking and/or writing in complete sentences) Education Sector let me know that they launched a Teacher Sector project on Facebook.

Here's what they say:

"Today, lots of people are talking about teachers. But many fewer are actually talking to them. We at Education Sector (an independent policy think tank –www.educationsector.org) know that the teacher’s voice is invaluable—that their experiences can enrich and enhance any policy discussions. That's why we created Teacher Sector— a Facebook community page designed to find out what teachers think about education and share their good ideas.

We want to know what teachers are thinking and facing every time they step in front of a class. How are budget cuts affecting class size? Is discipline big issue in their classrooms? What's the best way to evaluate their performance as a teacher? And what do they think about teachers and students being Facebook friends? You'll see these questions and more on Teacher Sector, and we'll be paying close attention and using the ideas to inform our work and get messages to policymakers.

We’re offering one teacher a year of school supplies ($450, which statistics tell us is the average that teachers spend). All we need to do is get 500 teachers to “like” our page and then answer a question."

~~ ~~ ~~
LOVE this.

It's ridiculously refreshing to know they are taking time to reach out to teachers and find time to ask about our opinion. I'd say it made my week, but, well, in my sleepless state every time my daughter opens her eyes it makes my week.

Go check it out and answer a question to get that $450 for school supplies!!

First day

2011-09-09T15:15:00.000-07:00

For the first time in nine years the first day of school came and went without me. I usually love the first day of school, despite the tears, difficulties figuring out schedules, and adjusting to new routines. My goal had been for the first day to be my last before maternity leave but of course my plans were nothing compared to the plans of my newborn daughter who decided to make her appearance on Saturday. My Tuesday was still filled with tears, difficulty with scheduling, getting to know a new face, and adjusting to new routines- just a little different than I'd expected.
So my maternity leave has started. I know I'll have lots of ideas to blog about when I'm home, I just might not find the time to get it written down.

brotherly love

2011-09-01T17:23:00.000-07:00

Not that we ever have favorites, but since I taught The Story Teller for 3 years in a row, he has a special place in my heart. Just reading over all my posts on him puts me in a better mood- his sincere honesty mixed with his vivid imagination and his good intentions can't help you do anything but adore him. This year I have one of his little brothers in my non-cat class. The Story Teller is the oldest of 4 children, and all four of them showed up this afternoon to check out the youngest brother's classrooms during our open house.

The boys seemed excited to see me and my Partner-in-Crime. They quickly told us that they'd moved and in their new home they'd had both an earthquake and a hurricane. "Good thing that earthquake wasn't too big" the Story Teller told me, "All of Japan would have been gone." When I mentioned we'd had an earthquake as well (he didn't really move that far away) he looked shocked. "You had one too? Wow, what a big earthquake!"

He then picked his two year old sister up and introduced us to her as "The princess of the family".

Although his mother told me that he talked about me non-stop for years, he didn't seem convinced that his little brother was going to be in good hands. As he pushed his brother toward me to introduce us he said, "Mrs. Lipstick, you're going to know, he doesn't talk. He needs a lot of help." He seemed skeptical that I already understood this and was prepared.

He took his brother into my room and found his name around the classroom, making sure his brother understood how comfortable he would be in the room. He was especially excited that his brother had two classrooms- one with me and one with my Partner-in-Crime. "No way! So lucky!" he repeated.

Later in the visit he told me, "I'm going to ask my teacher to let me come take care of my brother during recess. I'll make sure he's doing his job and I'll play with him the whole time."

"You know what, Story Teller," I said, "I am going to take good care of your brother. You work hard in third grade and I'll work hard at taking care of your brother."

He gave me a skeptical look that only said, "Listen, woman, this is my brother we're talking about." Clearly no one is good enough for his little brother.

I already loved My Story Teller, but now I love him even more. I love that he is so kind, thoughtful, and concerned for his little brother who needs extra help. I love that he wanted to give up his recess time to come help him out. I love the honesty that showed in his face with his concerns for his little brother. He showed far more concern for his brother starting kindergarten than many of the kindergarten parents I met today. Perhaps because I was also a child was mistakenly thought I was my younger brothers' parent, I hold a special place in my heart for siblings who truly take on a care-giver role (in a non-bossy manner). My new student is lucky to have such caring siblings. We'll just have to make sure they begin to understand how to help him become independent...
I'm excited for another year with the story telling family.

measuring success

2011-08-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

Over dinner one night this summer my husband, with his practical MBA thinking, asked me how I'd know whether or not my non-categorical class was successful. Perhaps if I had been sipping a glass of wine at the time I would have been able to laugh it off, but since I've been sans wine due to the upcoming baby, I was momentarily frustrated with his question. What is his MBA thinking doing questioning my class?
Not picking up on my frustration he went on to ask if I had clear ways to measure whether or not the class was successful. How would I be able to go to the administration and say "look how well this worked, we should do it again." I knew he meant well by his question, but for a moment I was taken aback.

I immediately went on a spiel about how in special ed every child has their own set of goals written into their Individual Education Program (IEP) so that how I measure success is easily laid out for me. Did my students meet their goals? I of course made this sound much longer and more drawn out than that to keep him from getting a word in edgewise and questioning me again. He nodded and sipped his wine (the nerve).

But I kept thinking about his question. How will I measure the success of my class? Part of it will be in my students' progress in their IEP goals, but that is how I measure success every year. Are they able to meet the goals we set out for them? To be honest, in my head I always tend to aim higher than those goals. The goals I write are the realistic goals I want the child to accomplish. They are goals I have a clear plan of accomplishing. But in my head, no matter who the child is, I always overshoot them. My goals for my students always go above and beyond what is written on that paper. We don't always meet the goals in my head. Sometimes we don't meet the goals on the IEP. It's not for lack of trying. I feel that we get as far as we do because I am always working on my unspoken "shoot for the moon" goals.

The IEP goals themselves do not seem to be enough to measure whether or not my class structure was successful. How will we know whether or not they would have met those goals in the general education classroom?

So how can I measure success?

After mulling over the question I realized that for most of the students my goal- my measurement of success, will be that the child will be able to transition into the general education classroom smoothly the following year.

For a few it will mean they will have a better handle on their language skills and will be able to communicate with peers and teachers in a way that does not require the support they currently require. They will be able to advocate for their own needs, no longer needing prompts to go to the bathroom, get a tissue, or to ask a friend to share a block.

For others that will mean they will be able to follow the routines in a general education classroom in a way that will allow them to access the material. Their general education teachers will not have to spend time agonizing over their behaviors, but instead will spend time working on their academics.

For a few others whose disabilities make it unlikely that they will transition to a general education classroom, my goal will be that they can stay at our school. We will give them the skills they need to be able to continue attending their neighborhood school, and will not need to be bused to a center that specializes in students with their disabilities.

For all of them success will be measured with their academic progress, of course. Whether or not it is that they learn their colors, their alphabet, or the word wall words, I will want to measure success by what they have learned from their baseline data, regardless if that academic goal is in their IEP or not.

So there is my overall goal for the year. To transition quite a few of them to general education classes. If the class is successful then maybe we wont need the class next year. I kind of feel like I'm setting myself up to put myself out of a job.

Feel that? Earthquake randomness....

2011-08-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

So where do teachers go when they have one week of vacation left? Apparently we head to Target to stock up on supplies.

I happened to be in Target when the earthquake hit yesterday. After we'd been asked to leave the store (actually only Target team members were asked to evacuate the store, the rest of us just figured that we should follow) I ended up standing in the parking lot with a random group of people. As time went on and we continued to try to confirm what had just happened (Earthquake? Not possible, we don't have those in Virginia!) and we got to talking we realized that all of us were teachers. I suppose it makes sense- we have supplies to buy for our classrooms and not much time left to do it. We also all had stories about the last time an earthquake hit in the area and we'd all refused to stop teaching to acknowledge the event (it was a much, much smaller quake).

My mother's school started on Monday, which meant she was well into her second day with her second graders when the earthquake hit. I cannot imagine being with a brand new class on the second day of school and trying to keep them calm during and after earthquake. They say that experiencing trauma can bring a community of people together, but there are other ways to build community in the classroom. Can you imagine those new kindergartners, not yet speaking English, scared to death because their school is shaking, with no way for their teachers to communicate what had just happened? I imagine not many would want to come back for day 3...

My morning meeting conundrum

2011-08-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

As I'm getting to start the school year with my non-categorical special education class I'm finding myself completely stuck about what to do about morning meeting.
I LOVE morning meeting. I love morning meeting so much that when Michelle Rhee was quoted in Time as saying that teachers needed to stop wasting time with cute things like morning meeting I immediately lost all respect for her. To me, she clearly was far removed from education if she didn't understand the significance of the "cute" morning meeting.

If you are unfamiliar with this teaching method I'd recommend checking out Responsive Classroom's Morning Meeting book. The idea behind morning meeting is to start each day by building a community in your classroom. It gives the beginning of your day structure, allows you time to teach social skills, helps children feel safe in your classroom and gets your students ready to start the day. There is always a clear daily structure. My partner-in-crime holds some of the best morning meetings I have ever seen. Her class is practically perfectly behaved during the entire meeting because her structure is so clear. Her games are creative and fun, and her calming voice during morning meeting seems to completely set the tone for the entire day.

We start each morning meeting by sitting in a circle and greeting one another- on most days each child takes a turn to greet the child on each side of him/her (there are tons of fun greetings you can switch in once the children are comfortable with traditional greeting).

For my children with special needs this beginning of morning meeting is essential. They need to know how to shake hands, look someone in the eyes, and speak the 3 word phrase "good morning ______". It helps them remember each other's names and sets the expectation that we talk with one another during the day.

After the greeting portion of morning meeting we read the morning message together. Again, for my children with special needs this is critical. I keep the same structure to the message everyday so they can all "read" along- they all know exactly what it is going to say minus some routine changes like the day of the week and who is line leader. It gives them a common text they feel they can read, as well as helps reinforce known words.

Inside morning meeting most of us at the Think-Tank embed our calendar routine, which is again the same simple routine everyday, giving the children repetitive math practice outside of math time. Then there is time for share and an activity- usually a silly song and dance that gets everyone up and moving and on their toes so they are ready to start the day.

Did I mention I LOVE morning meeting. It's when you get to see who is having a rough day and who is overly excited about something special happening at home. It's where the classroom community is built. It's where I see my children with special needs find their comfort in the classroom.

So, back to my problem. My children will all have home-room classes they'll start and end their days with. Some will only come to me for 3 hours a day, while others will be with me for almost the entire day minus music, art, and PE. I am torn on where I want my children to attend morning meeting. I see three huge benefits from morning meeting- the community building, the social skills training and the academic repetition.

I want my children to be comfortable in their home-room classes. I want them to have friends there so when they go into the classroom for specials, lunch, and recess that they wont be looked at as "those weird kids who aren't with us all day". Being a part of their classroom's morning meeting will be essential in making them a part of their classroom community. They will feel more comfortable in their home-rooms and their peers will see them as a part of the class.

Of course, on the other hand, the amount of social skills and academics I can get done during my own morning meeting with my children is huge. In just the two weeks of jump start I saw a huge improvement in their social skills, confidence, and even in their counting. We counted the calendar numbers everyday, and by the end they were all counting loudly and (almost) correctly. In my own room I can slow down the academics to meet their needs, give longer wait-time for them to answer the question, and ask questions they will know the answers to in order to build their confidence (without the other children wildly waving their hands with the answer to the most simple question). The small environment allows them to come out of their shells when practicing social skills, and gives us more time to encourage participation. When you have 20 other children starting at one child who refuses to use eye contact it's much easier to move on than to simply wait and repeat the eye-contact expectation.

So I am completely and utterly torn. I want them to be a part of their home-room classes, but I also do not want to miss out on opportunities to build language, academic, and social skills. Morning meeting is essential in so many ways- any choice I make is taking away one benefit of morning meeting. Perhaps it will need to be done on a child-by-child basis, but even so, when I think of the individual children there are some I am stuck on. I have another two weeks to figure it out, so any advice you have I welcome with open arms.

life experiences

2011-08-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

Magical joined us about an hour late yesterday, just in time for snack. We quickly made a place for him at our snack table where he could join the conversation. (We've been having snack all together and asking everyone to sit at the table until everyone is finished with snack so that we can "chat". We're working on our oral language skills at every moment of the day.)

As soon as Magical pulled up his chair one of my friends mentioned that we'd missed him the day before when he was at the hospital receiving his treatment. He nodded, "You missed me," because, when you're 5 and 6, you have no reason to be humble.

"But I was at the clinic. I got an IV. See, right here?" and he went on and on, mentioning the nurses, the procedures, how he's fallen when he got up, and how he still felt sick.

A boy sitting at the table began pounding on his own chest and nodding. "Have you been to the hospital?" I asked, and he nodded very furiously. This little one is confined to a wheelchair and although he has probably not spent as much time in the hospital as Magical, I am sure he's spent more time there than I have.

"You've been to the hospital?" Magical asked with delight. "Me too!"

The other friends shared stories of going to the doctor's, but my boys suddenly seemed to grow a special connection between their hospital visits. Both boys must feel so different and alone in large groups of children where they are the only one with their experiences. There was something special about being able to watch them connect. If they were adults I'm sure the conversation would have been greater than, "you too?" with the response of "Me", but their little exchange seemed to be enough for them. Somehow they knew the other girls at the table were not talking about the same type of doctors they were. At five their life experiences have been so different than the typical childhood, and yet, I wonder how often they actually get to talk about it with a peer.

Of course, ever wanting to get in on the action at a lull in the conversation I shared that I would be going to the hospital soon when the baby was ready to come out.

Magical eyed me and my stomach.

"Oh, your baby is STUCK in you," he diagnosed. "The hospital will have to get it out."

Yes, stuck. Let's hope not.

Maybe the public doesn't hate us...

2011-08-18T16:18:00.000-07:00

The 2011 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll came out this week and it turns out that while the media has portrayed us public school teachers as public enemy number 1, the actual public doesn't see it that way.

You can read the highlights here

Or more details here

Most people still believe that teaching is an important career. In fact, 76% of people felt that high achieving high school students should go into teaching. 71% trust us as teachers.

73% believe teachers should have flexibility when planning their curriculum as opposed to using a prescribed curriculum.

Surprise, surprise, most people have seem more negative portrayals of schools in the media than positive portrayals. I'm starting to think that the media is our children's biggest enemy. I guess portraying teachers as lazy and dumb sells, but I'm glad the public hasn't totally bought it.

Easiest retelling center ever

2011-08-17T03:46:00.000-07:00

3 guesses on what that is- Maybe the spots help a bit- it's a cow. We drew it together as a class after reading the book, Mrs. Wishy Washy. (I LOVE crazy old Mrs. Wishy Washy and her poor animals who just want to stay in the mud).

Last year when I was co-teaching with Splatypus and our literacy coach we began doing interactive drawing. Normally we do interactive writing where the teacher and students share the pen to write one message. Kids come up to take turns writing the letters they hear in words, or writing words they know. But after observing that some of our kids just could not draw, or when they drew they drew stick people with minimal details, Splattypus decided to take a step back and draw something as a class.

The point of writing is to communicate a message on paper, which of course, starts with the act of drawing. Some children need to be taught that their drawings can communicate a message or a story before they are ready to start putting words on paper. After all, if you do not understand that your drawings can tell a story how are you ready to tell a story in those squiggly things we call letters?

Last week my kiddos and I read and re-read one of the Mrs. Wishy Washy big books. Then we began drawing "with teamwork" as one of the girls says, the characters. You have to give up a lot to be able to share the pen while drawing. Nothing is going to turn out remotely perfectly. But that's ok. The kids LOVE the finish product. We made all the characters and cut them out so we could use them to act out the story.

They can't get enough of it. If I leave the characters out I'll find them acting out the story by themselves. They want their cow, pig, and duck to go everywhere. I need to get off my lazy pregnant rear end and laminate them so I can let them play with them during free choice.

The best part about this was that it was an absolutely no-teacher prep lesson that lasted over the course of two weeks, and as covered multiple lessons- we've done 1) Communicating through drawing with our interactive drawing 2) Identifying characters in a book 3) Reading with expression and 4) Retelling a story in sequence. And the only thing I had to do was get the book and have the construction paper ready.

It's been so much more powerful than if I'd made the animals myself, or if I'd photo copied the pictures from the book (which I was going to do before it occurred to me we could draw them together first).

Looking at poverty in education: an excuse or a way to find solutions?

2011-08-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

My class size was pretty small last week for Jump Start. We’ve been calling home to talk to parents, reminding them to get their children to the bus stops, and listening to everything that is going on in their lives that is keeping them from getting their children to school. We’ve had some pretty heartbreaking conversations. It is never that our parents do not want to bring their children to school, but incidents happen in their lives that are currently keeping them from getting them to our summer program. Things like sudden homelessness, the lack of a car to get to the bus stop, the threat of a lost job if they take off to meet the bus at noon, or simply no way to get their child to school after an important doctor’s appointment. Most of what is keeping the children from school is due to their parents’ financial limitations. And I can’t start doing my job until the children are inside the door.

Right now the poverty debate is being portrayed in the media as though it is a black or white issue. One side believes that teachers end up using poverty as an excuse to not teach, and that these teachers are actively holding children back by having low expectations. The other side seems to claim that policy makers who do not consider poverty are hurting our children by holding them to unrealistic standards and are overlooking the larger social problems in our society. Both sides are valid, yet at this point the debate isn’t achieving anything except making everyone angry at each other. Caught in the middle are the families- parents with a limitation of resources and children who deserve to learn to read, write, and do math as well as their middle to upper-class counterparts.

I’ve never wrapped my head around how we are supposed to ignore poverty and the home situations of our students. I understand that a child’s background should not make us hold them to lower expectations, but ignoring what they are struggling with seems to do a disservice to them and leaves us frustrated. When teachers constantly meet road blocks due to poverty they get frustrated. Especially when those roadblocks seem to stand between the job we know we can do and the job we are able to do. Telling us to not use poverty as an excuse seems to send the message that poverty should be ignored and that we need to fight head-on with the track we were on, without acknowledging the roadblocks along the way. Have you ever driven your car into a road block? If it is a cement road block, one that has been there for years, your car would be destroyed and the road block wouldn’t really be changed. Maybe a crack here and there, but you still wouldn’t get through.

The only way I can see that we need to deal with the poverty debate is to acknowledge what is happening in the lives of our students and identify realistic solutions. Our kindergarten Jump Start program is a great example of this. For years we’ve lamented about the number of children we get who have never had any sort of preschool or daycare experience before they enter kindergarten. Those poor children spend the first few weeks of school shell-shocked and behind their peers. They never seem to catch up to their peers because while they are trying to figure out who the crazy adult is in the front of the room, their friends are diving into their academics. So when the money came in for us to have summer school our brilliant assistant principal, who had listened to the teachers, decided to not just use the money for the students we already knew were at risk, but to also use the money for the students we hadn’t met yet but who fit into a pattern. Any child who registered for kindergarten with no preschool experience was invited to Jump Start. In these two weeks they are working hard at writing their names, learning their alphabet, and getting accustomed to the social ways of school. If we hadn’t acknowledged the problem of a lack of preschool experience we never would have found a solution.

Another example is our school’s parent center. Parent involvement can be a huge problem at my school, as I am sure it can be at my Title 1 schools around the country. We didn’t just complain about lack of parent involvement, but we didn’t ignore the problem either and try to education the children alone. Instead our school has a parent center where parents can go to get documents translated, take English classes, use the computers, learn how to navigate the American school system, meet other parents, and attend weekly sessions on how to help their child succeed in school. Our parent center is always adding new programs or trying new ideas to incorporate parents. They find these ideas by identifying the problems, look at the causes, and then finding workable solutions. Without acknowledging poverty none of this would have happened. Of course, using poverty as an excuse wouldn’t have gotten us far either.

As teachers we don’t have time to complain about the need for an increase of government agencies. Sure it would be nice if social services wasn’t so booked up, or if our families got their welfare checks on time, but we don’t have control of any of that. We have to look at what we do have control of and make changes there, even if it is just within our own classroom walls.

I tense up anytime I hear or read something complaining that teachers who use poverty as an excuse. I worry that taking poverty out of the equation in school reform means that we’ll never find those solutions that reach out to parents as well as our students. Sometimes we have to acknowledge a child’s background in order to dig into the big picture and find a solution. We know that trauma impacts working memory. If a child has just been through trauma and isn’t being successful we can’t say “well, trauma is no excuse.” We have to look at the big picture and change our approach. We don’t change our long-term expectations, but maybe we alter instruction, get in touch with a guidance counselor, make time to listen to the student, or find a way to help the child focus on school.

I just wish both sides would stop yelling at each other and start thinking about the kids. Let’s be honest about problems in education and then work to find solutions. Being honest does not mean we lower expectations, it just means we prepare to work harder to get to that final goal.

I LOVE my job

2011-08-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

It's Friday afternoon after our first week of jump start. Grant it, it was only 3 hours a day with the kids, and not all of my class came, but I had an amazing week. The kids are bonding with each other, giggling and becoming friends. A community is starting to form and I'm loving how it is turning out. They are already looking out for each other. I'm also loving having my own classroom after 4 years of working in other rooms. I love singing silly songs, doing read alouds, and planning the day. I'm especially loving being able to slow the pace down to meet the needs of my kiddos. Most importantly, I am already in love with the kids.

I've been nervous all summer about taking these children away from their general education classes and limiting their social interactions. I've been struggling with wondering whether or not my classroom is the best idea for them. I don't want to limit them in any way.

After two days, I knew that it is going to be a great thing. After a week I'm really excited about the potential progress we can make this year.

One of the little girls is Rock Star, who I have worked with for the past two years. She has an intellectual disability and I've enjoyed watching her grow and develop since she first came to us. I don't think I've ever heard her utter so many spontaneous words in those two years combined as she's said this past week. Her confidence level seems to have sky rocketed. She's constantly commenting on read alouds, telling her friends what a great job their doing, and is seriously working on her academic skills because our classsroom focus is able to be at exactly her level.

In fact, yesterday she pulled the letter M out of a box and yelled "M" to show Magical. I've never heard her spontaneously identify any letters, and M is not even in her name. I've also never heard her raise her voice above a horse whisper. And there she was yelling across the room, trying to show Magical that she'd found his first letter. I didn't know if I was going to cry from happiness or pass out from shock.

Another friend is able to get the repetition and structure she needs when she needs it (which is immediately and frequently). We're quickly pulling her back into her academic work when she gets off task. I worked with her last year as well and I've already seen that the frequent reinforcement we can give her in the smaller class size is paying off with her behavior.

Magical is back with his huge smile, and I have other new students who are also adjusting well to our environment. It's not going to be an easy year by any means, but I think it's going to be a great year in a lot of ways. I am sure my behavior management will improve out of necessity, and I am sure I will have some little ones that will give me a run for my money. Managing the high levels of individual needs has already been tricky, and it will constantly keep me on my toes. But I think it will be good. Really good.

It's been four days, a total of 12 hours, and like I said, not all of my kids have been able to come. So I am sure my high will quickly change, but at the moment I'm excited by what this week may mean for my kiddos. The possibilities of what we may be able to do academically are racing through my head constantly. I'm ridiculously excited for this school year, even if I only get one more week of them until I come back to them in December.

Ouch

2011-08-11T03:35:00.000-07:00

During our jump start program I have a middle school volunteer helping out in the classroom. She’s been a great help and seems to enjoy working with the children so I asked her if she wanted to be a teacher. She looked up at me, bit her lip, and very politely said, “Well, you know, my parents don’t want that. Like everybody else’s parents they want me to be a doctor.”

And there we were. Me, the teacher, and her the middle schooler with the bright medical future. For a moment I felt like a second class citizen. The one who’d made it through college and had come out as a teacher. I suddenly felt the desire to explain to her that I didn’t have to be a teacher- it wasn’t a career I settled into- it was something I chose because I thought it was important. I didn’t, but I’ve played the imaginary conversation in my head the rest of the day, imagining me saying brilliant and inspiring things about choosing to be a teacher, and how important it is to choose what you love to do and to do it well. And part of me wanted to drop in my SAT scores, my college grades, the fact that I strongly considered law school, or the fact that I started working on my doctorate. But I let it go. She is in middle school after all.

She went on to talk about how her parents are pushing her to study for the test coming up in December that could gain her admittance into one of the better high schools in our district. She talked about all her extracurricular activities and how hard she works in school. As I listened to her talk I realized I was that kid- in middle school. I was already thinking about college, doing volunteer work, making grades important. So she has time to find her grove and go after what she loves. I just hope that by the time she’s in college choosing to be a teacher will be a highly respectable and admirable job that will make her parents proud. Can we change that in ten years?

first day, take 1

2011-08-09T03:41:00.000-07:00

The alarm went off this morning and I practically sprinted out of bed in excitement and nervous energy. This morning is my first day with my class (kind of) and I absolutely cannot wait to meet them and to start getting routines in place.

This summer my school is running a "Jump Start" program. Students in grades 1st-5th were invited to come to school for 3 weeks this summer to get extra help in reading, writing, and math. Since the county no longer has summer school it's our way of meeting the needs for kids who would otherwise qualify for summer school (which is actually even more fabulous because typically you send kids off to summer school and don't know what happens to them. Now our teachers are working with these kids in summer school and are able to provide exactly what we know they need and track their progress from the summer to the school year).

Our lucky kinders are only invited to attend for 2 weeks instead of 3. We've invited as many children as we could who registered for kindergarten with no preschool experience. These two weeks will give them a chance to learn to walk in the hallways, how to sit quietly on the rug and listen to a story, how to use playground equipment safetly with other children, and all those other school social norms that are difficult for children who have never had to participate in large group activities without their parents before.

One of the classes coming in, however, is my class. All ten of my future lovelies were invited, and today I think I could have as many as 8. This gives my students a chance to get to know routines and adjust to school before school actually starts. The days are only 3 hours long, which is probably the right amount of time for all of us (including me) to begin to warm up to each other. My long-term sub is co-teaching with me this week so that she gets to know the kids too. Once I'm gone she'll be a familiar face, and when I come back hopefully they'll still remember who I am.

So this morning is the first day of school, but only kind of. Only for 3 hours. I can make it. My entire lesson plans surround Responsive Classroom's the First Six Weeks of School, which normally goes well in a general education classroom. I hope I'm able to adapt quickly enough on the go to make it work for all the different needs in my classroom. I have no idea how these little ones will be able to sit on the rug and listen to me talk, or even how many of them will be able to use the materials I'll be introducing to them. If we do a guided discovery with crayons, but some of them cannot use crayons, hows that going to go.

Adapt, adapt, adapt, is going to be the name of the game.

Fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly and that we do not have any screamers, runners, throwers, or hitters. Hopefully I'll have the energy to blog tonight to let you know how it goes...

Reason #1,274 why I love my job

2011-08-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

Today while I was working in my classroom the literacy coach came and found me. She had just finished working with the big sister of a girl we had in our class last year.
The sister had shared with her that the three girls in the family (all in elementary school) hold book clubs at their house on Mondays and Fridays. When our literacy coach asked them what they did during these book clubs the child explained that since it is very important for everyone to read just-right books that they meet to discuss the different books they are reading.
I've been smiling about this all day. I love that these sisters have formed their own book club without any adult support. I love that even the rising first grader is included in their club. She will never doubt the importance of reading.

moment of panic

2011-07-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I plopped my preggo self down on a bench in a shoe store while Mr. Lipstick shopped for shoes. While I sat I there trying to imagine myself in the coldness of a snowstorm in hopes of cooling off, I watched many different children beg their parents for the perfect back to school shoes.

One girl, probably about 4 or 5, ran up to her mother with a box of barbie princess shoes. Throwing the box open the girl threw herself on the floor and wailed, "I HAVE TO HAVE THESE SHOES!!" Her mother looked at them skeptically. I smiled with sympathy until I realized that when the girl picked up the shoes they started playing music. Not just a little music- a full music-box sympathy for the little girl to dance to in her new shoes.

For a moment I panicked. Is this what is in store for us in the fall? Are musical shoes the newest craze? Would we be faced with multiple girls wearing shoes that sang every time they stomped their feet? Does the entire world hate teachers? There would be no way to get anything done. I immediately imagined myself justifying to my principal why my classroom is shoe-less.

Deciding to take a stand for kindergarten teachers everywhere I leaned over, "Are those shoes making all that noise?" I asked, sweetly, because my next statement was going to be, "Your teacher will hate that!" The girl just smiled and showed me how the box was rigged to sing- not the shoes.

Thank You shoe designers. This Fall we will not be inundated with musical shoes. For the moment we are safe. However, I don't put it past shoe/backpack/clothes designers to come up with something else that will soon drive us batty.

teacher whine. Ignore me, please.

2011-07-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

I have spent the day in laminating hell.

If you teach special ed you are probably familiar with Board Maker, which is fabulous in many, many ways. It lets you create all sorts of picture icons for your students- all you need to do is type in the word you want to say and it gives you a simple picture that corresponds with that word. It is great for creating reminder cards for the rules, making schedules for students, and creating individual behavior plans. It gives you lots of possibilities- however, many of these involve a lot of painful, tedious prep.

Last spring I observed a special ed teacher in a self-contained classroom who had individual schedules for each child. As the children moved through their day they took the laminated board maker icon off their schedule and placed it where they were moving to in the room. So if it was time for morning meeting there was a morning meeting icon on their schedule. When they went to morning meeting they took off the morning meeting picture and placed it on a board in the meeting area. I'd also seen this done in other special education classes and every teacher I knew that used it said it made it huge difference for their children. I decided it was exactly what I needed to do next year.

I just wasn't thinking about all the prep. Creating the icons in board maker was no big deal, then printing and cutting them out still wasn't so bad (I used a paper cutter, they are not perfectly cut, but since we're talking about 20+ pictures per child, for 10 children, I'm not worrying about perfection). Then I had to stand over the hot laminator feeding those small stupid squares into it. No matter how efficient you are at laminating, trying to feed 200 1 1/2 inch square pieces of paper is not something you can do overly quickly. Then, once everything has finally been laminated, you have to actually cut out each tiny little square.

And the worst part? After everything is cut out I need to go through and cut out 200 pieces of velco and then smack those onto the back of each little square. Have you ever worked with sticky-backed velcro? Peeling the adhesive off the velco isn't fun after 3 or 4 pieces- 200 is going to take me forever.

If you teach you know what I'm talking about. You're rolling your eyes and thinking, "Don't even complain, it's part of the job."

I actually have moved into the camp of "nothing needs to be laminated". Most things aren't worth the time. But for pieces of paper that will be handled everyday by kindergartners? There is no choice. Or there was, but the choice was to not create these schedules. Trust me, even at halfway through I'm weighing the options of just tossing in the towel on this project. But is it best for the kids? I think about my students' needs and how I've seen this work in other classrooms... and it's back to cutting.

The picture at the top does not do it justice- my basement is covered in a large roll of laminating sheet along with lots of tiny little pictures. After 2 hours of cutting I'm not even halfway through. And I can't think of a faster way to do it. At least it is a good excuse to watch trashy tv during the day. I'm not wasting away watching junk- I'm WORKING.

A masters degree and one year into my doctorate, and I'm spending my time cutting small squares and peeling paper off sticky-back velcro. I swear I love my job. I really do. There is just something slightly demeaning about having my husband come home dressed professionally from his respectable office job to find me on the floor in the basement, surrounded to laminate and pictures of toilets, going cross-eyed from cutting out small pictures.

"Aren't you suppose to be on summer break?" he asked.

No response. This is summer break.

Early Childhood & Education Policies

2011-07-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

Although I was disappointed last Thursday at the New America Foundation's discussion on Race to the Top's Early Learning Challenge, I found myself thinking that the answers to the broader education debates may be found within good early childhood policy.

The areas that need to be addressed to create policy that will positively impact early childhood are policies that are true for the rest of education as well, but have been ignored for easier solutions in the broader debate. The mere nature of early childhood makes it impossible to give standardized tests in order to hold teachers and schools accountable.

1) The development of quality rating standards-
States are currently encouraged to develop quality rating and improvement standards in order to determine what is considered high quality childcare. I am not very familiar with these standards, but my understanding is that they take into consideration caregiver interactions with the children, the developmental needs of the children, and kindergarten readiness. They do not judge a childcare facility based on the outcome of test results, but instead look at the needs of the whole child. They do not sound as though they have been easy to create, nor to assess, but they are being put into place. Thought is going into developing these standards and people are being trained in how to evaluate the interactions of childcare providers and the children. From what I understand it seems to be working. It is certainly not as easy as getting a spreadsheet of test scores at the end of the year, but these are our children- it does not need to be easy, it needs to be done correctly.
In developing these standards states are looking at how to support the professionals delivering the care, how their support can help improve the quality of care, and how to reach out to parents to educate them on what to look for in a quality care facility.

I can't help but think how nice it would be to apply this same type of assessment to school evaluations. Test taking would of course be a part of the equation, but the broader assessment of our schools should be done while considering the developmental nature of children, looking at the quality of interactions with students, and thinking about how to support teachers in order to improve teaching, all the while working toward reaching out to parents to help them understand what to look for in their child's classroom. These standards cannot just be made by a group of politicians or policy makers in a room one month before they roll out their newest education initiative. They need to be developed as a team in combination with educators, child psychologists, cognitive psychologists, along side policy makers. They need to be beta-tested and then piloted, tweaked, revised, and retested.

2. An understanding that we are focused on a long-term investment.
Putting down the time and energy to develop quality early childhood experiences is not something that will immediately provide amazing results. We are looking at supporting and developing children's long-term growth. It is not about what they learn at the end of the year, but at the end of the road. We're looking at their social and emotional development and how supporting that will lead to an increased ability to learn down the road. We need to have patience to develop needed policies and criteria, as well as patience to determine what is working. There is no short-term fix. To do this we must first understand what we want to see results in. What will success look like for a child in a year? Two years? Three years? What do we need to put in place to get there?

3. Understanding that to meet the needs of the children we need to look at the needs of the family.
Early childhood programs realize they are a two generational program. They cannot solely look at the needs of the little ones walking into their doors, they must consider the nature of where those children are coming from, how they are getting to their childcare facility, and whether or not the children's ability to access the childcare facility will be impacted by the parents' loss of a job, health insurance, or loss of housing. As a part of that, educating the parents as a part of the equation is essential as well. Only so much can be done in schools, but promoting quality interactions between parents and children will go far to benefit the needs of the students.

By its very nature early childhood presents us with a complex situation that cannot be easily remedied. Yet people are actively working on creating these quality scales, promoting parent participation, and focusing on long-term goals. I have hope that if early childhood proves it can be done it may be able to be carried over to education as a whole, meeting the needs of the whole student.

Saying goodbye to a bookstore

2011-07-25T19:34:00.000-07:00

I wandered into Borders today, sadly walking past the once comfy and inviting furniture piled into the corner with for sale signs on each shelf and chair, and through the shelves of books no longer housing neat and orderly paperbacks, but instead revealing the bookstore equivalent of a disaster relief-center where now homeless books from different categories have come to be dumped on top of each other while they wait for new homes.

I have to admit I'm a bit sad about Borders closing. I know I contributed to the closure- I've been reading books on the Kindle App since the day it was released for the itouch. I rarely buy books from Borders anymore, and to make it worse, I have been guilty of going into Borders just to peruse the new titles and to surround myself with the smell and feel of real books, only to write down titles to download from Kindle later. And frankly, even now, the sales at Borders are not good enough to actually purchase the books- you will still find cheaper deals either through getting an ebook or by ordering from Amazon.

Still, I find the closure a bit ominous, as though it is foreshadowing a paperless future. When I read on my iphone my daughter will never know whether I am reading or checking facebook. She'll never have the opportunity to sneak one of my books into her own room to see what was so good about a book I couldn't put down (I read books on subjects I really shouldn't have when I was young because I was quite the book-thief when it came to my parents' bookshelves). She'll never see the stack of books I am finished with, or the stack I am waiting to read. Sure our children's books will still be on paper, but will she think reading is something only children do? I will have to make an effort to read real books to be a good model.

I don't know why I'm so saddened by the closing. Maybe because when a Borders was built 30 minutes outside of the small town where I grew up my high school friends and I spent many Friday nights there, suddenly amazed that we had so many book options at our finger tips. (Listen, there was little to do in the town where I grew up, and the Borders was right beside a movie theater- so our Friday nights included a movie with a bookstore trip either before or after the show). Maybe because I've always lived closer to a Borders than a Barnes & Noble. Maybe because when I first moved to the DC area after college was I was trying to adjust to no longer living in the beautiful, mountainous town I'd just spent the last four years, the only good thing I could say about my new neighborhood was that I was 5 minutes from a Borders. (That first year of teaching Borders was my therapy- bad days in the classroom could be washed away by wandering through the stacks, flipping through new titles, and finally purchasing a new reality to escape into).

Yes, yes, I know Borders was the big box store that killed the local bookstores. I've seen You've Got Mail, I know. And while I am very loyal to my favorite independent bookstores, Borders brought us books those stores did not.

So, I'm sad. But not sad enough to take advantage of the sales.

I bee-lined to the children's section, hoping to find good deals on books for either my daughter or my classroom. I found myself flipping through my favorite children's lit, quietly taking in the happy book-loving atmosphere in the children's section. In one corner a preschooler nestled into her mother's lap and was helping her read a large stack of books they had in front of them. As the mother read the daughter chimed in with the most significant words to her favorite story, her voice changing into the melody one uses when reading a familiar children's book, mimicking her teachers and her mother. With each book the daughter seemed to sigh deeper with happiness and cuddle even more into her mother's lap. They sat like that for at least 30 minutes, and were still plowing through books when I wandered away. I love watching parents read to their children. Perhaps because it is something I want so much for my students- that exact experience- a moment when nothing exists beyond a mother, a child, and a good book. It's magic we can never recreate in the classroom.

In another corner a little boy found a pretend wand. As his parents debated what to buy he very seriously flicked his wand at the stuffed animals in front of him. "Asceio!" he announced, in a stage whisper, as though he was pretty sure he merely a Muggle, but just in case he should check to see if he had power. "Asceio!" he said again, spinning around this time to attempt to beckon a stuffed animal from another shelf.

A father called to his daughter that it was time to go and she moaned, "I'm not finished yet! I'm reading!" I heard the father catch his voice- about to tell her to put the book down but he stopped himself for a moment. "Alright, 10 more minutes" he agreed, and his daughter didn't even look up from her book.

These moments can happen anywhere, I know they will continue to happen in public libraries, independent bookstores, and at Barnes & Noble. Wherever they happen I can't help but smile- I love knowing the book-love that exists out there as kids are growing up to be readers.

Early Learning Challenge

2011-07-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took advantage of my summer break and decided to pretend I work in DC in education policy. I headed downtown to attend a forum held by the New America Foundation on Race to the Top's new early childhood focus grant. I wanted to hear what those in the policy world were thinking about this, and what it may mean in the long run for our kids.

Originally I was thrilled when I heard that Race to the Top was adding an early childhood piece. Not that I've had really any hope that RttT is working (grant it, I do not work in a state that has benefited from it), but the mere fact that it was going to specifically address early childhood issues seemed promising. At last- has someone been listening to us?

Although I found the discussion fascinating, overall I came away disenchanted with RttT's Early Learning Challenge (RttT ELC). As one of the other audience members asked in her question, is this just the Administration's way of giving a nod toward early childhood, without making any true and meaningful inroads?

Providing quality early childhood services is a multi-step process. One step needs to ensure that the childcare currently available is quality childcare, and is providing children with the appropriate developmental support they need to be ready for kindergarten. The next step is increasing access to more affordable early childhood education to more families. This is where the largest challenge is found- making sure quality early childhood programs are available in low-income neighborhoods while also making sure the quality programs do not interfere with the parents' work schedule (if they do the parents are more likely to choose another option that provides better hours for their schedule). As someone who teachers kindergarten in a low-income neighborhood, my largest concern is increasing the childcare opportunities available in our community. However, both of these pieces must be addressed to increase the opportunities for early childhood in our country. And sadly, it seems that RttT ELC will primarily provide for working toward improving the quality of the care and not additional access to care. While improving the quality is wonderful, it is difficult to know so many children who come to kindergarten with no daycare or preschool experience. They've never been in a large group of children away from their parents, and many have never listened to read alouds, been exposed to print in their environment, exposed to early number concepts, or even played with blocks, puzzles, or worked on sorting.

Unfortunately, RttT ELC will most likely only provide funding for 5-8 states for 4 years. While it is hopeful that these states may become leaders in the field of early childhood education other states can follow, it is not a promise that early childhood programs will be improved for all of our children.

The great inclusion debate (part 1)

2011-07-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

This past winter something interesting happened. Normally in January we receive a list of the 12 or so upcoming preschoolers who will be attending the Think-Tank for the next school year. I get to work observing them, meeting with their teachers and families, and making sure that everything at the Think-Tank will be ready for them the following September. It is a process I love. This year, however, we began hearing rumors in November that one preschool would be sending us a total of 14 children. 14 from one preschool. That doesn't include any of the many other preschools we usually receive children from...

In January, when I got the total list of upcoming kinders I stared at a multi-page booklet containing information on 22 children who would need special education services from the Think-Tank in kindergarten. 22... As the winter and spring went on that number continued to grow. And grow. I believe we transitioned a total of 27 students, some will not be coming to The Think-Tank, but most will.

I really enjoy the transition process (although this year took much, much longer than years' past), and I love getting to know the children in their preschool classes. As the winter went on and I met the children, their teachers and parents, it became clear we would need to be meeting the very different needs of all of these children next year. We needed to begin thinking about how we were going to meet all of their needs, what we may need to change or adapt in our own program to make sure we give the best education to each of these little ones. We had a lot of reflection to do.

For years The Think-Tank has been a full inclusion school. Our children with special needs have always been included in general education classes at almost all times. It is very, very rate to pull out a child or a group for any reason. In fact, in some ways any sort of pull out was discouraged. In many ways this is a good thing, but at times it can have its downfall. There are some children who have the complete ability to perform on grade level if they are given differentiated instruction in another environment. At times (certainly not at all times or for all students) it has been frustrating to work with a child, knowing they have the potential to perform on grade level, but are not yet achieving at that level because of the restraints within the gen ed classroom. Again, most children with special needs do wonderfully in the gen ed classroom, but there are times a child may benefit from instruction delivered outside the traditional classroom.

As we got to know the upcoming kindergartners and talk to their preschool teachers we realized that some of their needs would be best met in a smaller environment. Not all 20 something children, but some. Just a few. Their preschool teachers expressed concern that they would be placed in a full inclusion setting it made us step back and look at the incoming students and our program. What would meet the needs of the children in what is truly the least restrictive environment? Some of the preschool teachers would prefer for the students to be sent to another school, yet it didn't seem fair to send so many children to another school simply because we have a policy that we are a full inclusion school. In special education the school must make the program meet the needs of the student, not expect the student to meet the needs of the program. In other words, sending so many children to another school simply because their needs did not fit into our model would not really be fitting within IDEA. Like so many policies in education, it's important to look at the child in question and not just the overarching policy.

So we began looking closely at each of these children. What are their needs? Could we meet their needs at our school if we had a classroom just for them? Would that let them stay at their neighborhood school and be in an environment that meets their needs? What would we need to put in place to change our full inclusion model into one that includes what is known as a non-categorical room (or non-cat)?

It wasn't an easy decision. There is a lot to be said about inclusion, and starting a new room for children with special needs could be a slippery slope to shifting backwards toward having more children in pull out programs than in full inclusion. Whenever I talked to my principal about it I could hear her hesitation, and her very valid reasons behind it. Our school is very collaborative- every teacher has a co-teacher, which helps ensure that children are receiving the absolute best, research-based, reflective instruction. There would not be a co-teacher in the special ed room. Would there be a risk of lowering expectations for these children? Would teaching practices slide? Would these children be seen by others as "those kids" instead of a part of our general community?

But the more we looked at the children's needs the more we realized that what these children needed was a smaller environment. And we could provide that for them.

For a few of them this class will give them an opportunity to be in our neighborhood school longer than they would otherwise. Some of their disabilities are so severe and demand such significant adaptations in curriculum that they will one day, most likely, attend one of our county's centers for children with severe disabilities or intellectual disabilities. But right now, before the gap in their performance is too far away from their peers, they can have the opportunity to be at their neighborhood school, and spend time in a general education classroom. These children will spend about 3 hours a day in their special education room, and the remainder of the day will be in with their general education peers, giving them those important opportunities for social interactions.

Other children I have high hopes for transitioning them back to a full time general education placement in a year or two. Right now a small classroom for kindergarten will be best where they can complete their potty training, get a firm, direct language foundation, build up early literacy skills using teaching methods that may not be easily accomplished in the gen ed classroom, in a small, safe environment. If all goes well and we can build those strong foundation skills early on, I hope we will be including them in their general education classrooms more and more by the end of the year. This will give us time to slowly scaffold them into the larger setting.

For each child it has not been an easy decision. At times I have listened to the parents and the preschool teachers discuss the child's strengths and needs at the IEP and truly wondered what placement would be best. Would this child benefit from the language models in the general education room, or is the smaller placement more beneficial? It became a weighty responsibility- deciding what would be best for each child. I also had to carefully examine my own motives. Do I want this child in a non-cat class because I want to work with them? I was pushing for Pixie to be included for a week or so before I realized that there was no reason for Pixie to be in the class- it would only be for my needs and not for hers.

In the end the class will have 10 children. 7 rising kinders who I transitioned over the past year, 2 rising first graders I worked with last year and will equally benefit from the small environment, and then Magical, who will be repeating kindergarten because of all he missed due to his illness.

I cannot wait. Of course, I am disappointed that this class overlaps with another huge change in my life. If only it was a year earlier or a year later. I hate that I will be out on maternity leave at the very beginning of this new adventure. But sometimes we can't control timing and I have an amazing long-term sub. I will also be starting with my class in August, and will have them 2 weeks, 3 hours a day, to get us use to our routines and to one another before I abandon them for Baby Lipstick.

interesting article from NPR

2011-07-18T19:29:00.000-07:00

One of my doctorate classes this winter was Atypical Development 0-8, which basically translated to, "Everything that can go wrong to cause a child to have special needs from conception to early elementary school." We ended up spending 3/4 of the class on prenatal, preterm babies, and newborns. All while I was pregnant, yet before I'd told anyone I was pregnant. I sat through class after class biting my nails, listening to everything that might be going wrong in my uterus at that VERY MOMENT to be causing my child to have special need.

I was doing alright with it all until the guest speaker on Autism noted that her current research was showing that there most likely are environmental factors that cause Autism while the child is in the womb. I'd been able to sit through the class sessions on every other topic, but perhaps because this was news to me I about passed out at the table. One more thing to worry about? I immediately decided that the woman was wrong and blocked out the rest of her discussion.

One thing we focused on quite a lot was the new research on late-term preemies, or those born at 37 weeks. Until recently, 37 weeks wasn't considered premature, and doctors were even scheduling deliveries around 37 weeks if they were going out of town so they could deliver babies before they headed out on vacation. The research was fascinating, and much we heard was from researchers still writing up their results, or in the process of publishing, so their work hasn't been published yet. Some of what we read was published, and if I wasn't feeling lazy (I am 33 weeks pregnant after all) I would get off my couch and look up the articles so that I could cite them for you).

This afternoon I read this article today from NPR on how Drs are encouraging women to not induce labor before the baby is ready. The article fits in with all of the research we heard about and read this past semester. What it does not mention however, that some of the studies we heard about did, was that babies born at 37 weeks all seem to show cognitive delays in the same visual/motor integration areas as they grow older. The similarity in delays in children born at 37 weeks seemed to suggest to researchers that those specific regions of the brain are developing while the child is in the womb at 37 weeks.

This was new research not yet written up, and it may be proven false after the data is looked at again. But at the time the guest speakers met with us this was the pattern they had found in their data. They are continuing to follow these children to see how they fare in elementary school.
I found the implications fascinating, particularly for what it tells us about brain development and how early brain development can impact performance in the early years of development and into elementary school.

I found the NPR article interesting- worth the read- and thought it was nice to know that doctors are beginning to switch their practices.

truth in old wives tales?

2011-07-18T19:05:00.000-07:00

Toward the end of the school year I found myself constantly fielding questions from the mothers at my school- specifically the ones who recently came to the US. They saw my growing belly and whether they knew me or not, immediately pointed their finger toward my stomach and announced, "Girl, right?" Going out to kiss and ride to help kids find their parents was the equivalent to throwing myself into the lion's den. Every mother and grandmother wanted to share their village's secret for predicting gender.

One day my daughter must have been in a particularly boyish position because at least two, if not three mothers predicted that I was having a boy. When I told them this wasn't the case they argued with me and told me to go back to my doctors. "Those machines can't tell" they told me, "Look at how you are carrying."
*At my next appointment I insisted they check again. The technician sighed, checked, confirmed that it is a girl, and then gave me her credentials. "My job is to make sure your baby's heart, kidneys, and amniotic fluid are healthy. If I messed up gender I should be fired."

Got it.
I didn't bother to explain that a woman from Afghanistan had told me that she was wrong.

Now that I'm at 8 months strangers' predictions have shifted from gender to my due date. Again, it has only been people who seemed to recently enter the US. On the metro, or just out in downtown DC, people with thick-accents from around the world pop up in my face with predictions of "two months", "one month and two weeks", paired large grins, waiting for me to confirm that they are correct. I happily confirm or correct their predictions, ask how they know, and listen to their explanations from their home-towns, secretly thanking God that they have kept their hands to themselves and have not rubbed my belly.

I love living and teaching in such a diverse area. I just wish I'd been writing all of the different prediction methods down along with the country. I can't remember who said what, or where what prediction came from.

boundary debates

2011-07-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

I was thrilled to stumble upon Jay Mathew's article in the Washington Post about parents protesting the changing boundary lines because they want their children in a more diverse school, not the school with higher test scores. It's nice to know that there are parents out there looking beyond school ratings based on test scores and thinking about the education their child is actually getting. I know students who attend both high schools mentioned in the article, and I must say, there is a special place in my heart for the students who attend Annandale High. Maybe it's that their motto is the atoms (who does that?), or that attending their homecoming parade reveals a high school not reflected in any movie I've ever seen-it is a true a snapshot of the amazingly diverse, passionate, and active student body.

I wonder about where my own daughter will go to school (years and years from now)- I hope we will be living in an area that will provide her with a diverse yet academically rich school. I'm so glad to know there are parents there that appreciate what the non-test-perfect schools have to offer.

One of the speakers we heard at ISTE discussed the importance of global awareness and how to use technology to expand your students outlook on the world. Jenny and I appreciated the passion the speaker used to discuss global awareness, but we couldn't help but feel that his ideas of using technology to connect with another part of the world was somewhat a waste of our time- because of the diverse make up of our students, even in first grade, have a global awareness that goes beyond that of many adults. Understanding other cultures and our roles within the larger global community is an essential skill for our students to have in the work force. It is one thing the think-tank is able to offer all of our students- right within our classroom walls. These are lessons that cannot be taught during a set social studies block.

(I also appreciate that Jay Mathews notes that his own rating scale can cause parents to want their children at the more high-performing, less diverse school. I have my own problems with that rating scale and I'm glad to see that he acknowledged its role in the boundary debate. As he states in his article, both schools have excellent programs, both are in a county that provides strong teaching and a good education, and both are rated high when compared to the national average. One is just more diverse than the other, and one has a higher poverty rate than the other. A higher poverty rate or lower test scores does not automatically translate into poor teaching or a bad school. One must consider the whole picture)

different perspectives

2011-07-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

At the end of the year one of my classrooms put on plays based on familiar stories they had heard all year. They were adorable- the children really got excited about acting out the stories and rarely needed prompts to remember their lines. The students knew the stories so well that during practice the teacher would only need to say "Next we are going to do Caps for Sale. Who wants to be the salesman? Who wants to be a monkey?" She'd chose the parts and then pretty much let the kids free- they'd act out the story without much adult interaction- it was like we were simply giving an audience to their play schemes.
It was pure play of the best kind- when children are acting out what they've learned, using their oral language, problem solving with one another, and interacting with one another appropriately without adult interaction. It reinforced so much learning that went on during the year- sequencing of stories, language development, distinct character traits, elements of story... the list could go on. Watching the initial rehearsals when they were trying to figure out what to do was very powerful.

One of my kiddos suddenly became a shining star during these sessions. We've been extremely worried about this little one since she walked into the room on the first day of school. She is highly dis-regulated, has difficulty staying on task long enough to draw a picture of a person, has difficulty remembering names, faces, and where she is in the building. Having a conversation with her reflects our academic concerns- her difficulty of staying on topic leads her conversations to jump around from subject to subject, frequently giving the impression that she is simply stating sentences out of mid air that do not connect with reality. Needless to say, encouraging her to retell a story from beginning to end is difficult- getting her to sequence even the most basic steps is hard to do. During independent play time she plays alone- rarely interacting with the other children in their play schemes.

Yet the minute her teacher began preparing the plays we met a different child. On stage this little one became a shinning star. She never needed a prompt to tell her what to do next- she knew the exact sequence of the stories- knew what should happen when, and even understood the differences in the characters' moods so that she would change her voice or add little extra lines in to reinforce what was occurring on stage. She was a rock star. She tried every part possible- and rocked every part. She was a brilliant troll under the bridge, but also a perfect Mamma Bear in Goldilocks, and an angry salesman in caps for sale. It didn't matter what the part was- she was on top of it.

Watching her perform in those last weeks gave us a whole different perspective on this little one who struggled so much throughout the year. Her stage performances showed us that she has skills we didn't know she had- and that she has understanding of academic work we didn't know she had. All our regular assignments somehow failed to pull out her knowledge, until now. She needed a different way to interact with the material, and finally, in June, we gave it to her.

Next year she will be in my non-cat class and I cannot wait to put my new knowledge of her to good use. Obviously our long-term goal is for her to be able to retell a story without acting it out, and to answer questions on topic without being involved in a play. But now we have a glimmer of one of the building blocks needed to get her there. She's not as far back as she seemed before, we just need to tailor our assignments and then scaffold them in a way to get her from where she is to grade-level expectations.

I love the moments where we get to see our children in a new light- we realize that what we've seen so far all year isn't always the whole picture, and it's a reminder that as much as we love routines, it's good to change up instruction and activities inside of those routines so that we give our students otherwise of showing who they are and what they know.

Slippery Slope

2011-07-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

Joanne Jacobs notes two recent articles that question whether or not all children need the same things from schools. The articles suggest that students from suburban backgrounds do not need the same things from public schools that children from at-risk backgrounds need. They note that suburban parents are not pushing for school reform because they are happy with the state of their schools. Therefore, the articles suggest, education reform policies need to focus on schools serving at-risk populations and should tactfully ignore schools serving middle and upper class students. Then they may earn the support of the suburban parents who are currently hesitant to push for reform because they are happy with their current schools.

There is a sad truth here because, yes, children from suburban backgrounds have different needs than children from at-risk backgrounds. My kindergartners enter the classroom without knowing the alphabet, some, not even able to recognize their own name in print. I have a feeling many suburban children enter kindergarten all about to write their own name, and read some words. It's true- instruction itself needs to vary from child to child based on the children's individual needs.

But this can be done in the classroom through differentiation or good teaching. It doesn't mean we need different policies for different schools. In the field of special education we've done a lot to make sure all children are given the same experiences and are held to the same expectations. Federal laws dictate that children with special needs receive a Free & Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). Every classroom in American should be meeting the needs of all the children within its walls- creating shared experiences and shared expectations regardless while differentiating to meet the students' individual needs.

It seems to me that policies that would differentiate between whole schools based on the income of the neighborhood would be just as discriminating and segregating as our special ed environment before FAPE and LRE were put into place. We would be creating a cultural expectation that children from poor neighborhoods deserve to be given one set of schools while children from more privileged neighborhoods deserve another. This may help close the achievement gap that is measured by standardized tests, but I suspect we would find that the achievement gap between those ready for the college and the workplace and those not prepared would expand.

Our children going to schools untouched by policy would likely be pushed toward using creativity and critical thinking skills in their daily lives. Those children would enter college and the work place prepared to examine difficult questions from all sides, think outside the box, and would have a better understanding of how to work toward a larger goal. Children from at-risk neighborhoods whose teachers were pushed to teach only to the test will have factual knowledge and will be able to write a clear 5 paragraph essay, but will not have the skills to apply that knowledge to their world. Freshman college classes will be filled with two different schools of thought- and one of those sets will quickly become very, very frustrated as their peers adapt to the new environment due to their academic preparation.

Every child, regardless of their neighborhood, deserves to be exposed to critical thinking skills and creativity. Every child deserves to have the same experiences that truly prepare them for the real world and not just to take a test that measures their teacher's ability. Good teaching will meet the needs of all students in the classroom, finding ways to teach the facts needed for the test through larger projects that also teach creativity and critical thinking.

The system is far from perfect now. We need better teaching that will focus on giving all children both sets of skills. We need administrators and policy makers that understand child development, how children learn, and the importance of teaching students how to take factual knowledge and apply it to a greater problem. We do not need different policies for different schools. We do not need to discriminate against or track our students based on their neighborhoods.

planning ahead...

2011-07-08T09:38:00.001-07:00

I thought I would be following up on my last post all week but I've found myself lost in the world of making my long-term sub plans instead. So far I've spent 3-4 hours a day trying to capture everything that my sub may need to know when she takes over for me in the fall, and I'm not even halfway done. Next year I'm moving from pushing into all my classrooms (a full inclusion model) to having a non-categorical classroom. I'll have 10 children throughout the day, 5 will be with me most of the day and then 5 will come and go depending on their IEP hours. They will all be in kindergarten or first grade and have a wide range of abilities. A few are non-verbal, some have experienced trauma in their early childhood which seems to have impacted their development, some may have autism (it is rare to get an official autism label this early), some have physical disabilities along with intellectual disabilities. Some are still being toilet trained and some need to be monitored while eating. All of them are awesome kids and I can't wait to work with them.

I am SO excited.

I got to meet all of the children in one way or another this year through doing preschool transitions. I've met their parents, consulted with their preschool teachers, and hung out with them during the school day for a bit. Three of them I worked with at the think-tank this past year (yes, Magical is one of them!). I absolutely cannot wait to start this class and get to know them even better.

It's ironic, of course, that the year I get a non-cat class is the same year I will be out for a few months on maternity leave. I can't help but feel guilty- these are kids who need consistency and I'm throwing them for a loop. I have an awesome long-term sub and I want to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible for her.

So I've started my maternity leave plans, wanting them to be as absolutely as helpful as possible. It's the beginning of the year, which is my favorite time of year, but also the time of year I think that is most important. I'm trying to be as detailed as possible with how to open the classroom, how to do guided discoveries, when to do them, how to create a community, how to step up rules, routines, etc. It helps that Responsive Classroom has so many great resources and that I can include The First Six Weeks of School as a reference, but it's still a lot to create. (If you aren't familiar with The First Six Weeks of School check it out- it is a life savor not only in the beginning of the year but also in how it helps you set up a community that will remain all year).

Then there is the curriculum itself, the sequence of what to teach when, how to set up centers, what types of centers to use, when to start guided reading, etc. That of course is similar to the gen ed curriculum. Then I have to go through and adapt it to meet the needs of my kiddos- how to support each one of them with their particular needs in particular subjects.

And of course, there is the data collection. Each child has a long IEP with data that needs to be collected on how they are meeting their goals. I'm trying to make charts, anecdotal note sheets, and anything else that will make it easy for my sub & aid to track their progress. Not to mention leaving special notes on each of the 10 children- who needs to go to the bathroom when, who cannot eat anything in the classroom, who needs assistance on the bus, etc.

So far the task has been all-consuming and after I finish 4 hours of trying to predict what is best for the sub to know and all contingency plans.

The worst part is, the more time I spend with their IEPs and getting everything ready for their beginning of the year the more I just cannot wait to dive into the school year and get to know them all. So far it seems like it is going to be an amazing classroom and I can't wait to work in it! Of course, the time that Baby Lipstick appears I'm sure I'll be busy enough with other amazing tasks that will keep my mind off wanting to be in school.

when will we realize we're all on the same team?

2011-07-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

A good friend mentioned a piece in the NY Daily News about the polarization of the education debate. The article presents education reform as the new abortion- two sides completely at odds with one another- with little respect for one another's opinions, theories, and beliefs. That's certainly what it feels like as a teacher- that the entire world has turned against us- and I was curious to read the article.

I think the article has a lot of truths to it, but I also think it in itself is very telling of the debate as a whole. It seems to state that the two sides are Reform vs Teachers- those who want to improve the education of our children and close the achievement gap, and those who want to live with the status quo.

For an article attempting to point out the differences between the two platforms I could easily tell you what side the author of the article falls on- and it's not pro-teacher.

When I first moved to DC out of college and told people I was a teacher I got the "oh, cute" responses when I was out and about. I found myself trying to prove my intellect to these strangers and somehow show that I had made a better choice than my peers when I decided to go into teaching and not law school. I could live with the condescension- I knew what I was doing day to day was extremely important. But now when I tell people I'm a teacher I almost watch then recoil in horror. "Not one of them... those creatures trying to hold our kids down?" I feel they want to ask. "Why don't you do real work that will make a difference, like work at a non-profit? You didn't do Teach for America? You must have only gotten into teaching for the summers, not to improve the lives of children in underprivileged areas"

This new condescension is worse- before I was ok with my intellect being questioned, but now it is my intellect AND my motives. My passions. Why I get out of bed in the morning.
When I talk about the amazing things my school does people immediately ask, "Oh, you work at a charter school?"
NO! I want to scream. A public school! And surprise, we are not the devil! We work our a**s off for our kids- we want the BEST for them. Yes, at a public school!
But now I'm letting my emotions get in the way of my argument and I no longer sound reasonable. I'm only proving their point- that I am a hot-headed teacher.

When did we become public enemy number one?

I think my biggest problem with the debate is the assumption that teachers are against reform. We absolutely want the best for our kids. Do we want more testing? No, but not because we are lazy, we are scared for our jobs, or because we have low expectations for our kids. We don't believe testing, as it has been implemented, improves the students' education. In fact, in many ways, when working in the trenches, we watch how it is a determinate to actual student learning. We watch how children lose out on essential instructional time because of the amount of classroom time dedicated to test prep. We struggle knowing what best practices are and knowing they are out of our reach as we drill and kill for the test.

We want reform, but we'd like to have a straightforward conversation about how that is best done. Yet anytime one of us opens our mouth we're immediately told that we have low expectations for our students- after that our arguments are cut off at the knees. We mention what we know are best practices- research-based practices that will give success but no one wants to hear it. We're told that where we learned those best practices and theories- in graduate school- was a waste of time. The general public tells us that we only went back to school to get a raise in pay, that our masters degrees are worthless, and that we are simply working the system.

I'd love to have a real conversation on reform with someone from the other side- when just once 'high expectations' and 'what's best for kids' are not phrases used as shields to protect themselves from having to acknowledge what they do not know about teaching, but instead as phrases that will truly let us find the right answer.
The author of the article writes:
"From the perspective of most teachers, poverty explains education problems. A valid point. Reformers insist that school quality, especially effective teaching, can make a sizable dent in the learning inequities we see across the lines of race and income. Also a valid point."

I don't think we, as teachers, are standing around saying, "Our kids can't learn because they are poor, therefore we wont try." We'd like to find exactly how to make a change in teaching to reach ALL children. Sometimes we have to acknowledge that children come from different backgrounds in order to make sure they will be successful. My kindergartners do not come in knowing the alphabet. Therefore I cannot start teaching them to read as though they all went to preschool. I need to back up and make sure they know the alphabet. This doesn't mean I have low expectations- I still expect them to learn to read by the end of the year- but I first have to acknowledge that the road to get there will be different than at another school. We're not using poverty as an excuse, but we do need to acknlowedge it in order to match the curriculum with our children.

YES- we want to have great schools and effective teaching- we WANT to make a sizable dent in learning inequities. We just want to do it the right way. Yet frequently what is brought to us as reform is just additional testing- it's not how to improve instruction. (But remember, if we go back to grad school to learn to improve instruction we're clearly wasting our time). Too many reformers do not have a background in education, do not understand how children learn, and do not have a grasp on recent break throughs in best practices. When someone comes to us with a true, improved teaching idea we celebrate. We sit through afternoon workshops we don't get paid for in order to learn how to improve our teaching. We are always seeking how to improve our teaching. Yet what is brought to us by "reformers" is not helping our teaching. We'd love it if it was different.

Amanda Ripley, who writes for Time was quoted in the article saying:

"You're either with us or against us. What bothered me was that some of these people, who have significant influence on the lives of our kids, seem to have lost all curiosity about this complex subject. That's ironic, given they work in a field that should value curiosity."

Teachers are some of the most curious people I know. We want to learn- in fact, we'd like to have some genuine discussions about this with those in ed reform. When was the last time we were asked? When was the last time someone in ed reform brought us along in a discussion instead of merely criticizing us?

I'm going to stop there because, well, I'm not sure anyone is still reading. I'm usually a calm person, but anytime my motives, passion, and intellect are challenged I get a bit hot. In the next few days I'll try to write calmer, more intelligent pieces on education that actually flow. I promise. Don't delete me from your reader yet.

insights into cultural expectations of schools

2011-06-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

Joanne Jacob's blogged yesterday about how high school students in New York City view their teachers and the teaching profession.She quotes Hilary Lustick's description of one student who would make a promising teacher:

"Because she doesn’t see strong teacher role models like herself, Alissa dismisses the entire profession as one unworthy of respect, one undeserving of her intelligence and effort."

The blog post as well as that quote itself gives me insight into the parents I worked with last year (see previous post) and their views on our school. It's a lot to think about- how does that perspective on teachers and the profession impact how these students will interact with schools when they are parents? How will they view efforts of teachers and school officials who truly want to improve the schools?

I think it is the background behind what I was addressing yesterday- the cultural divide between what is encouraged and promoted in suburban schools vs urban schools.

technology, culture and creativity

2011-06-29T17:35:00.000-07:00

At ISTE (for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about ISTE is the International Socieity for Technology in Education who just held a conference in Philly), my awesome think-tank co-workers Clairvoy, Jenny, and I gave a presentation on our school's on-line student newspaper. The paper was Clairvoy's brainchild and Jenny and I were along to represent the work the rest of the school has done in getting students involved and published on the site.

Throughout the presentation countless parents told me "I wish my child's school was doing this", or "I hope when my children are in elementary school they'll have this sort of instruction instead of worksheets". Me too, I agreed, rubbing my growing stomach. Will my daughter end up at a think-tank school with innovation and student-focused learning, or a school falling back into the traditional worksheet model because it's safer and easier for teachers, administrators, and policy makers?

The newspaper was something Clairvoy started this year and it's been exciting to watch it grow as students and teachers turn it into exactly what they want it to be. Numerous people at the poster sessions walked away wide-eyed telling us, "Wow, this is really the forefront of education." It was nice to hear, but at the think-tank it's almost old hat. We forget how lucky we are to work with so many other motivated teachers.

As I chatted with attendees about the benefits of our online paper I found myself thinking about some of the parents I worked with this year. They were parents who wanted their children to have the best, yet their perception of the best and ours was widely different. They themselves had attended urban elementary schools and had parents who fought for them at every step of the way in order to help them be successful. One even mentioned to me that in her eyes that is what good parents do- fight the teachers in order to get the best for their child. These parents seemed to bring an innate lack of trust of school officials and teachers because of their background. Most likely if you'd grown up in those schools you wouldn't trust school officials either.

Yet these parents wanted an old school approach for their children. They would prefer to see worksheets and round robin reading as opposed to age-appropriate learning centers and research-based guided reading. They were unfamiliar with our methods and no amount of explaining current research in education would calm them. What they experienced in schools was worksheets and what they wanted for their children were worksheets. Each of these parents had worked hard to be where they are today- they had faced adversity and had overcome. It makes sense then that what they want for their children is the same thing- and since they were successful with their experience they want their children to be successful by following the same path.

To them the on-line newspaper was nothing impressive, nor was any of the other technology we used in the classroom. Promoting creativity was not something they wanted to hear about during parent-teacher conferences. They wanted rote memorization in order to know whether or not their children were learning the material at hand. These parents certainly made me reflect on what we each want to get out of the education of our students- much of our expectations are built from our past experiences and reference points.

As I chatted with Angela Watson in the bloggers cafe on Tuesday she noted that little was mentioned about using technology in urban schools at ISTE. True, I started to realize, many of the schools engaged in the most creative uses of technology were not from highly urban areas. There were exceptions, the think-tank included, but urban schools and the culture and environment they bring with them were not a focus.

Many urban schools do not have the resources for some of the technology available, and if they have purchased the technology they do not have the staff to support the teachers in learning to maximize the use of the technology. These schools come with their own sort of issues and technology demands. Do the children have access to the technology at home? How do they interact with technology outside of school? Do their parents use technology to communicate with school?

These are certainly questions that need to be discussed, yet the more I thought about it the more I realized that the culture of urban schools inspires a different use of technology as well. Friends who teach in inner-city DC tell me that they are frequently faced with parents who bring similar concerns as my parents this year. They don't want to hear about their child expressing themselves or writing a book for fun, they want to know how their child is performing based on assessments that measure rote memorization. There is technology out there that facilitates rote memorization and skill and drill learning. And that's not a bad thing- sometimes it is exactly what students need. But it is certainly not the only thing it can be used for.

Is there a culture that does not expect or promote creativity in urban schools? With our current education policies are we promoting that culture even further, pushing our most at-risk schools to put aside teaching problem solving and creativity in order to learn rote facts? Why are our middle and upper-class schools able to participate in creativity within their lessons but our inner city children are not?

How do we bridge the gap between teaching the problem solving, free thinking, and creativity children need to succeed in life in our urban schools while still meeting the cultural expectations of old-school teaching methods?

ISTE impressions- facilitating problem solving in the classroom

2011-06-29T07:41:00.000-07:00

I'm back from ISTE and still have so much swimming in my brain. By far my favorite part of the conference was meeting so many great educators. I loved listening to their passion, ideas, and enthusiasm that radiated from them even though everyone is still a bit weary from end-of-year exhaustion. I got to put faces to some ed bloggers I'd been following for awhile and added lots of ed blogs to my Google reader that I'm excited to dive into. I have all sorts of ideas of ways to play once back in the classroom in August, or when I return from maternity leave.

My favorite session above all was Peter Reynolds, the author of Ish and The Dot. Like the message in his books he talked about how important it is for us to teach our children to embrace their mistakes and to give permission to them to not be perfect. This was a topic that frequently came up at EduCon as well. So often we are focused on perfection with our students- perhaps because we're focused on perfection with ourselves as well (2014 isn't far away... anyone at a title 1 school making that 100% pass rate yet? No? Keep pushing...) Rarely do we teach our children how to embrace failure, how to move on when something is not perfect, or how to try even when unsure. In special education this might actually be taught more than most- so many of our struggling friends are unable to move on when they are stuck on a task- if we are going to get anywhere with them we have to teach them how to fail.

Teaching problem solving is essential to learning. The more our children learn to problem solve on their own the more they drive their own learning. Without failure there are less problems to solve and one never learns how to try hard at something, fail, assess the situation, build steps to fix it, sequence those steps, and then begin to build onward toward success. These are life skills that are difficult to be successful without. Of course, success in life often looks different than success in school.

Walking through the vendor hall at ISTE one is practically beaten over the head with all the tools and devices out there to embed technology into the classroom. All of these seem amazing, top-of-the-field and impressive until you start to ask, what will my children learn from these practices? Why are these better than my current practices? Other than impressing others and being able to talk the ed- tech-talk, what is the benefit? Down in the poster session hallway there is another story. Many of the poster sessions focused on ways real teachers use technology in their classrooms and they are readily able to discuss their success, failures, and learning curve with their projects. From booth to booth I kept noticing a similar pattern- technology was being used to problem solve. No one was using it to teach children rote memorization or to become better test takers. Instead technology was being used to push children beyond their traditional roles in the classroom. Students were taking ownership of their learning, trying new things, interacting with the curriculum in a personalized way, and problem solving in order to be successful. And most importantly, while most was teacher facilitated, it was predominately student-led work. Once the students were engaged the teachers stepped back and allowed the students to drive their own projects.

Research has shown us that children who are the most successful are the ones who are able to create a mental image in their mind of what they would like to create and then set out to be able to achieve that image, despite any failures or difficulties they run into along the way. Teachers can facilitate the creation, but children must be able to create their own images and their own plans of getting to the end goal. It's what we all do to be successful in life- whether it is knowing we want a masters degree, to lose five pounds, create a new video game, write a novel, or start a company- it is the process that makes us successful. It's the "secret" behind that book Oprah was pushing a few years ago (No, I didn't read it, but that's my impression)- make a vision of what you want and work to get it. We can have students who are able to spout off facts, read for understanding, and fill in the blanks well, but without knowing how to set a goal and achieve it they are lost in the real world.

We certainly do not need technology to help us teach this in the classrooms, but after visiting the poster sessions it is clear that it is one way to help give children this opportunity.

It was perfect that my first session at ISTE was Peter Reynold's talk- he reminded us to focus on facilitating creativity in the classroom, give children permission to not be perfect, and most importantly, to let every child know they matter and that they exist. Perfect lessons to carry with us throughout the conference- it's not about the newest and greatest technology in the classroom, it's about the individual children who come to us each year. How will we reach them? What ways will we let them know they are important? How will we give them the tools to succeed?

After his talk I was ready rejuvenated and inspired enough to dive into next school year. Luckily I have more than a month to make my ideas and plans concrete.

Headed to ISTE!

2011-06-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

I'm off to ISTE! It's the first time I've gotten a chance to attend and I'm thrilled to be a part of the conference. Who else is coming? Look for me- I'll be the one waddling. :)

kindergarten book club

2011-06-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

Toward the end of May we realized we'd covered pretty much all of the content in two of the kindergarten classrooms I work in. We had about a month left of reading mini-lessons to fill, and realized this was the perfect time to simply dive into enjoying good, meaningful read alouds. The literacy coach came up with a fabulous forum for these. The children sat in a circle to listen to the book to take the focus off the teacher but make it seem more like a book-club setting. She'd read a few pages, stop and ask questions, and allow the children to talk to their talking partner about the answer. When she called them back and asked them to share out she had them call on one another.
When Johnny finished giving his opinion she'd prompt him to ask the next friend "Sally, what did YOU think?" again taking the focus off the teacher and putting it onto the students themselves.

It was amazing. We started this in Splattypus's class and I carried it over to my partner-in-crime's classroom. The kids loved it. Since partner-in-crime and I took turns leading the discussions we each got a chance to sit back and listen to the discussions happening during the 'turn-and-talk' time. It was beautiful. Even the shyest students who never seem to want to participate- to the point you wonder if they are paying attention- animatedly talked with their talking partner about their thoughts. Lots of excited predictions would be made, lots of connections, lots of speculation on how characters must feel. Many of them shared far more with their talking-partner than they ever would have shared whole group.

I loved listening to them ask one another "Sally, what did you think?" or, "Sally, what did your partner think?" (The ultimate kindergarten question... sure you know what you want to share, but did you really listen to your partner, can you tell us what your partner said?) They truly took on the discussion format and rose to the experience of being equal members in a book club. Sure there were some who had trouble with it. Pixie, for instance, was always able to answer the question "What did your partner think" yet as she spoke her partner's face would twist into confusion and then disagreement. Every time she made up what her partner had said, yet included such details that it sounded real. Sometimes kids would argue, "But I don't think I said that..." seemingly wondering if in the span of 2 minutes they'd forgotten the very articulate answer Pixie was contributing to them.

In my class with my partner-in-crime it came to be that whenever I got up front to teach a lesson the kids would whisper, "oh good, book club!" I hated to disappoint them sometimes to remind them that it was math workshop, or morning meeting. But I loved how much they clearly enjoyed the experience. I think it showed all of us that kindergarten book clubs are something we can start much earlier in the school year.

the beautiful beginnings of summer

2011-06-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

It's finally here. It's 11:30 on a Friday morning and I just managed to start a productive day after a long morning of lounging around reading a book for fun. Pure bliss.

The last day went smoothly. We had one girl in tears who ended up getting one of our most boyish boys in tears as well. Other than that everyone was focused on their afternoon pool dates. There was one last game of duck, duck, goose, letters written to next year's kinders, one last morning meeting.

At the end of the day we gave the children a laminated poster we'd made of their kindergarten year. On one side was a picture of the whole class- taken on the day Magical had come to visit. He's sitting in the front and center, king of the class, grinning happily with his hair beginning to grow back in. At the moment the camera clicked Pixie leaped in front of the group like a jack-in-the-box, her arms flung out as if to say "Ta da! We're the best class ever!" Despite the fact at the time we gave her a lecture on ruining the picture her sudden antics made it a classic kindergarten picture and it truly captures the nature of the class.

Under the class picture is a picture of each child with the teachers and on the back is a self-portrait the students did in the beginning of the year and one they did at the end of the year. These are my favorite. One glance at the two pictures captures the year's growth. Pixie's beginning of the year self-portrait is a mix of colors and circles in toddler-style drawing. No discernible hands, body, feet, or legs. Her end of year portrait is clearly a kindergarten drawing of her happy self- all the right body parts are there. The two portraits side by side almost take your breath away with her growth this year. It reminds us of who she was when she came in- she didn't know her colors, her numbers, or the letters, and the closest she got to writing her name was two lines that almost crossed into the correct letter if you squinted your eyes and held the paper at an angle. Now she only confuses 8 and 10, knows quite a few letters, and can certainly write her name. She's a rock star.

The other's pictures are not quite so dramatic, but do indicate a level of developmental growth in their fine motor skills, as well as what they now find important. Many of the boys depicted themselves with hulk-like arm muscles, insinuating that in kindergarten they went from little weaklings to champion weightlifters. In some ways they did- just more mentally than physically.
It was fun to watch their faces as we pointed out the differences in their portraits. "Look at how much you grew!" we'd say and they'd try to hide little smiles, desperately wanting to simply nod solemnly like the first graders they were becoming but bursting with kindergarten pride.

And then the day was over- a rush to the bus, to the cars, to moms and dads waiting to walk home. Tears, hugs, and lots of smiles of a successful year.

I love my job.

finding the end

2011-06-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that we only have one more day of school and then this year is over. Between focusing on getting ready for my new role next year, trying to wrap my head around being gone for maternity leave, and just finishing up paper work from this year I haven't actually sat down to process that this year is over. My year of Pixie, PJ, and Magical has ran its course. I have to say goodbye.

It's almost hard to remember that this fall was a part of this year. As much as we loved PJ our school wasn't the best place for him, and it was a long 9 weeks of keeping him safe. We lived on such a different schedule then- everyday we came in on edge ready to react to anything that could come while trying to be as proactive as we could. Then he left and our classroom suddenly felt empty. We still see him in the hallways because he comes to our school for after-school care, and we love getting hugs from him and seeing his bright smile. He's doing really well at his new school.

A few weeks after PJ left we found out Magical was sick. I remember slowly crumpling onto the floor as I talked to his mother on the phone when she first gave us the news- I just could not understand how such a little person could be so, so sick. We walked around in a daze for the next few days feeling powerless and small. In our classroom we get to be the queens, but outside in the world it is scary to realize how little control we had. Lots of hospital visits calmed us down and let us know that Magical was going to be OK, although he had a long road ahead of him. In February, once he was home from the hospital we became his home-bound teachers and Mrs. Partner-in-Crime and I took turns going to his house everyday after school to read, write, draw pictures, and cram whatever part of the kindergarten curriculum we could into the hour he had the stamina for. Magical's doing well now and we're excited for him to join us again in the Fall.

Pixie of course remained a steady part of the year- everyday with her made us laugh. Even today, when she arrived in a candy-corn style salsa dress and desperately tried to jump in the rain puddles during the fire drill we couldn't help but absolutely love her. At one point we tried to retain her, but eventually realized that she would be fine in first grade, we really just wanted to keep her for ourselves.

The other children have been amazing and memorable as well. My kindergarten boyfriend who flirted with me until he found out I was pregnant and he ditched me to flirt with the unborn baby. My amazing morning group that became a tight friendship circle and brought out the best in one another. My readers who begged me for new books anytime they saw me, even if it was on the playground. It's been such an incredible year.

Tomorrow I'll say goodbye to my kinders but also to the graduating 5th graders as well. The last class of first graders I taught as a classroom teacher are moving on. It's hard to believe that after next year there will not be any students at our school that remember me as their main teacher. Watching them become fifth graders has been empowering as well. They were actually my class when I first started this blog back in May 2007. They were an amazing class- there was never a dull moment. That was the year I was "poisoned" by hand sanitizer by a student, had a student bring in a raw egg and break it on the table during math workshop, I got married, a child threw chairs at me numerous times, and of course when I fell in love with my smart cookie. Ironically looking back at my blog posts from then apparently when I was engaged they all assumed I was also pregnant, so to throw a little mental math at them I told them I would be pregnant when I was 30 and asked them how many years they would have to wait before I had a baby. Apparently I kept to that promise. I just can't believe it has been 4 years since they left my classroom as small, budding readers. Now they walk confidently around our school was rock-star fifth graders.

Don't get me wrong- I'm ready for summer. I'm ready for relaxing by the pool and sleeping in (it may be my last chance to sleep in for a long, long time) but I'm going to miss this year. I had great kids, great co-workers, and a supportive administration. What more could a girl ask for?

How did it get in there anyway?

2011-06-16T19:24:00.000-07:00

Now that I am at the stage in my pregnancy that I can stop conversation when I walk into a room ("wow, you are, like, really, really pregnant" is a phrase I hear frequently) I am peppered daily with questions from the kids about the growing baby.

Some are sweet and come with kisses on my tummy or "I'll miss you baby" on Friday afternoons when they are leaving for the weekend. Others are not so sweet.

Here are some from today:
How did that baby get in you?
How did you get a baby?
Why did you get a baby?
Are you fat or having a baby?
Will you please stop eating, your stomach is getting too big!
Your tummy keeps getting bigger!
How will the baby get out? From your mouth or from your bottom?

I've taken to answering most of these questions with the same answer, "the baby will come in September." I am being a terrible language model for my friends who all have IEP goals to answer questions on topic, but I figure I spend all day asking questions and getting slightly off topic answers, I might as well try the strategy for myself. So far it has worked... Which may be worrisome when we consider their conversation skills, but I won't question my luck.

Golden Boy & the 3 immigrants...

2011-06-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

One of my classes put on plays for the end of the year. They were adorable fabulous plays including Goldilocks, Golden Boy (no one minds a male Goldilocks, do they?), Caps for Sale, and Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Goldilocks was in English but Golden Boy was intended to be in Spanish. The four Spanish-speaking actors did an amazing job with their lines during practice but when it came time to do the show this morning Golden Boy froze. An understudy was quickly designated to take his place, however the understudy missed the memo to speak in Spanish. He did an excellent job with his lines and was a very aggressive Golden Boy- stomping around the 3 Bears house helping himself to their porridge, chairs, and bed.
The Bear family returned and in Spanish expressed horror and remorse that their house had been broken into. Then suddenly they discovered an English speaking "Golden Boy" in their bed.

The bi-lingual play was great, although I couldn't help but feel there was something disturbing about the immigrant family so nicely going for an evening stroll while they wait for their supper to cool down when suddenly their house is broken into by a male who doesn't even speak their language, is known as Golden Boy, and feels he was the right to help himself to everything in the house. They returned to the house to find it ransacked with the culprit still inside, but didn't even call the police. I don't think we were sending the message we wanted to send, but none of the parents seemed concerned so I think we're OK.

why we teach

2011-06-15T18:53:00.000-07:00

Every year before fifth grade graduation I get together old pictures of my former first graders who are now getting ready to graduate from fifth grade. There is something both amusing and humbling about bringing a too-cool-for-school fifth grade boy a stack of pictures from when he was in first grade. Remember when I worried over his reading progress and his inability to sit on the carpet for more than five minutes? Now he's a star reader and an excellent citizen. I want to whisper to them all, I remember when you couldn't read, couldn't tie your shoe, and had no problem picking your nose in public. Good job with the growing up thing! Of course, I write them each a letter and I try to make it a bit more elequent than that. I want them to know that I'm proud of them, and that they are important enough that teachers still think of them years later. They should know that they are loved and worthy of others paying attention to them in a way that encourages them to live up to that worthiness.

I grew up in a small town and my mother was always coming back from the grocery store to inform me that she'd run into some former teacher I'd had who'd asked about me. In her next breath she'd tell me about the gossip she'd learned about one of my former peers who was finally out of rehab. It was a helpful message- people care about you enough to still think about you, but by the way, good thing you're making them proud because it would be a shame for the whole town to realize you've turned to drugs...
My kids don't live in a small town so I sometimes feel like we have to recreate that community in our school.

This year when I dropped off my letters and pictures in one class I mentioned to the teacher and the student that I remembered the student's first day of school when he didn't speak any English. The teacher smiled and said, "You know he wrote a story about that." I said I would love to see it while inwardly panicking. Please don't let me have had some terrible teacher moment that day that so traumatized the boy he needed to write about it years later...

It was nothing of the sort. I had to try not to tear up while I read his amazingly well-written piece about his experience starting at a new school where he didn't speak the language. With a tone and author's voice beyond most fifth graders he takes the reader into his nervous thoughts that first morning when he was wondering how he would survive. In a mixture of English and well-placed Spanish words he describes his thoughts throughout the rest of the day, his fear at each new subject and his relief when he made it through each one before he began to panic about the next step. He writes about being saved by a basket of Spanish libros he could read, the relief of being able to write in Spanish, and how he appreciated having a peer translator in math to help him explain his thinking when he knew the right answer.

I'd love to print the story here for you but it's not my story to tell. It's so well crafted that I hope he'll submit it to some journals that publish student work. If he wants it on-line he'll share it himself. You'll have to take my word for it on how he perfectly describes the experience of an ESOL student's first day.

I made a copy of the story for myself. I want to be able to re-read it when I'm thinking of how to integrate students into the classroom, how to make the room welcoming, and more importantly, how small moments in a day can stay with a child forever. How little things we do, things we don't even think about because we're so busy trying to stay on top of paperwork and meetings, are truly significant to each child. So significant that the child will remember them years later. Our small actions, good or bad, can stay with our students forever. In kindergarten and first grade it's easy to think that they are so little that they'll recover from a bad day in school, or that they'll be flexible and simply jump into the routines easily. Realizing that five years later they will no longer be small children but fifth grade authors who are capable of looking back and articulating their experiences clearly is important. We're not just teaching children, we're teaching future adults who just happen to be children right now.*

To be honest I do not have much memory from his first day. I'm sure I was told about 20 minutes before the school day started that I was getting a new student, and it probably was not until I met him that I learned he did not speak English. This is common at our school and we usually expect that new students transferring in will be English-language learners. My class that year was an interesting bunch that kept me on my toes and I'm thankful that something went well enough that day that this little boy felt like he could survive the year. I'm more thankful and in awe that 5 years later he shared his story with me, a story that will stay with me forever, reminding me of the future adult inside each five year old while giving me insight into what it is like to start school when you do not speak the language.

*This is what my husband keeps reminding me of when I think of baby names. Whenever I propose something fabulous like Bunny he simply replies that we're not naming a baby, we're naming an adult who will happen to use the name as a baby. Then he makes me say the name like I'm answering the phone as president of a company. "Hello, Bunny Lipstick speaking" doesn't instill much confidence...

shameless

2011-06-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

The school year has come to the point where while we are all still teaching our lovely hearts out we are also very focused on everything we need to do in the next week before we can start summer break. My to-do list is filled with end of year paperwork. Most of my co-teachers to-do lists are filled with packing. Packing up the books, crayon holders, math supplies, computers, reading book, files, games, posters, calendar, etc. Anything that we've used to do our job in the past year must be put into a box for storage over the summer. Is there any other profession that is required to pack up every pen, pencil, and important job-related tool every 9 months only to unpack it again a month or two later?
We're at the point in the year when we all want boxes. We don't just want boxes- we NEED boxes. Boxes are what can keep us from starting summer break when we want to. We can't leave until we're packed and we can't pack until we have... boxes. It's every man for himself at this point- sharing a box with a neighbor just puts you an hour off of leaving. Or a day later if you don't get a box to pack in until after the kids leave. It's not a pretty scene.
As we were walking the kids to lunch I noticed a man grunting over the water fountain as he tried to fix it. He was clearly frustrated and hard at work, but beside him as a large, beautiful box. Inside it was another water fountain, but that could be taken out, couldn't it? How important is it to him to have a box to carry his water fountain back to his truck? I mean, he could probably carry it all by himself if he just gave me the box.
He didn't see it that way.
The kids stared at me oddly, wondering why my voice had gone so pleading and desperate when only moments before I'd been in full teacher-mode.
I am still boxless. Boxless and apparently shameless.

Is a masters worth it?

2011-06-10T03:59:00.000-07:00

I've read a lot in the education policy blogs out there about how teachers shouldn't be given pay raises just because they have a masters because data shows that teachers with masters degrees aren't any more effective than teachers without masters degrees. I suppose I understand the beginning of that argument- why should ineffective teachers with masters degrees get paid more than effective teachers without the degree? What we're being paid for is what happens in the classroom with the kids.
The thing is, every time I hear that argument I cringe. My masters degree made me a much more effective teacher. I learned important background on child development, how children learn, and how to intervene when some children do not learn. I gained a new perspective, learned strategies I could immediately apply in the classroom, and understood the difference between a teaching strategy that looks like it should work and one that is actually research based and does work. My masters degree turned me into the data-obsessed freak I am today. (I try to hide this most of the time, but I have to admit, I love my data).
Maybe it's where I got my masters, or that I happened to have excellent professors who had both their phd and for the most part continued to teach in the school system, but I have a hard time understanding how people end up walking away from their masters without being more effective teachers. I believe it can happen, but does it really happen as often some education policy people argue?

I worry that the "masters degree isn't worth it" argument encourages teachers to not get their masters degree, assuming there is nothing more for them to learn. And no one in life should assume they have already learned all there is to know.

It also sends a message to everyone that education degrees are simply a waste of time and that you don't need quality training to be a good teacher. This terrifies me the most. I thought I knew a lot about education and how teaching should work before I took any education classes, but both my undergrad classes and my masters classes (and now my doctorate classes) continue to show me better, more effective ways to teach. What I thought I knew before is so far off from the reality of what is good teaching.

interview questions

2011-06-07T04:06:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I wrote about interview questions I'd want to ask if I ever needed to interview at another school. Some were real questions and some were the questions I'd want to ask but would obviously need to be phrased differently...
One was a question about how an administration deals with an angry parent. Do they support the teacher or do they support the parent? How do they mediate the situation? In my post from 2008 I'd written about a scenario as a joke, but in actual practice it's not so funny. I recently had a friend who teaches at another school get called into the Principal's office only so a parent could yell at her. The principal sat there calmly while the parent just attacked the teacher for various reasons. As the parent ended his rant, stood up and walked out the principal looked at the teacher and shrugged. "Just let it roll off your back, he needed to get that out. Don't worry about it, we know you were in the right."

Having a principal say that you are in the right doesn't really do much to make up for the fact the principal set up a scenario that allowed you to be attacked. Who wants to go to work everyday knowing that at anytime they could be yelled at for doing the right thing? I personally would lose a lot of trust in my principal if I was set up in a meeting like that.

Recently the administration at the think-tank passed my interview question with flying colors. An upset parent, a busy time of year, students with spring fever, the final days of state testing- all cumulating together to create the perfect storm, and yet I have never felt more supported by my administration. I was proud to work at the think-tank where administrators take the time to listen to parent concerns along with teacher concerns and mediate the best they can. I walked out of what could have been a meeting that drove me straight out of teaching knowing that I was teaching in a place where the children come first above all else. No administrator decided the quickest and easiest way to get the situation out of the way was to just let the parent yell, or to ignore the parent and let the teachers deal with the situation on our own. Instead our administration took the time to thoughtfully consider where everyone was coming from, but more importantly, kept the needs of the child in mind.

Being an administrator is difficult work, and I frequently hear from teachers at other schools about how their administrators decide to handle problems by not supporting the people in the school who have the most contact and make the most impact with students. Recent media seems to encourage this "get the teachers" philosophy- administrators need to straighten up those bad teachers, get them to shape up and ship out. It's easy after watching movies like Waiting for Superman to jump on the bad teacher bandwagon and immediately assume teachers are in the wrong whenever you hear of a conflict within a school. It takes a thoughtful, conscientious administrator to take the time to consider all aspects of the situation and act not on what is the easiest solution, but on what is the best solution. From stories I hear there are not many of those administrators out there.

Katie loves the kittens (and Pixie loves Katie)

2011-06-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

One of my new favorite books is Katie Loves the Kittens by John Himmelman. When my partner-in-crime first read it she began giggling and handed me the book saying, "This describes Pixie perfectly". And it does.

Pixie must recognize this on some level because she also LOVES Katie and the kittens. She is dying to have it read and re-read to her and frequently wants to talk about Katie and how Katie can't control herself because the kittens are so cute.

You see, Katie is a dog whose owner Sara Ann just got three little kittens. Katie is SO excited by the kittens she runs around the house howling (scaring the kittens). She gets sad because she scares the kittens and tries so hard not to, but then after trying and trying to control herself she breaks down and howls again. Your heart goes out to Katie who really, really wants to do the right thing- but it's just so hard. In the end she wakes up with the kittens on top of her, and then has to try her hardest to stay still so the kittens will keep cuddling with her. She succeeds and everyone is a happy cuddling pile of pets.

If you are familiar with a very caring but impulsive five year old I highly recommend that you read the book. It's a good reminder of how well-meaning our little friends are despite their impulsive actions.

outside of the public schools...

2011-05-31T03:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend Mr. Lipstick and I had friends from out of town visit. One is an English professor at a school in New England. As he talked about his love of teaching his freshmen he mentioned how those in his department have seen the writing skills of the incoming freshmen go down hill despite the fact that college admissions is becoming more rigorous. He talked about how colleges across the country are being forced to increase their freshmen composition classes and change their syllabuses in non-composition classes in order to teach incoming freshmen how to write. Not to mention the lack of critical-thinking skills incoming freshmen bring with them.

What do the professors blame? No Child Left Behind. They noticed the decrease in skills after the law was in place for a few years.

How can a law that was meant to improve our academic rigor actually be decreasing it? Have we really managed to create a system that is leaving high school students less prepared for college than before?

(don't answer those questions- I know the answer to them and it only makes me sad.)

heart break

2011-05-26T12:16:00.000-07:00

During our end of year reading assessment we ask each kid who they read with at home and what they like better- reading to someone or listening to someone read them a story.

Today the little boy I was reading with replied he likes to read to someone. That seems like a pretty typical kindergarten response- they like using their new reading skills.

When I asked why he liked to read to someone he answered very honestly,

"Well, my mom can't read so when I read to her I can teach her how to read"

Pop

2011-05-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

A kinder friend came up to me today and gave me a very tight squeeze.

"OH, gentle hugs!" I responded, rubbing my large baby belly.

"But I just want the baby to pop out!" she protested.

I took a moment of silence to gather myself. Apparently my friend was under the belief that if she squeezed me hard enough she could cause the baby to come popping out. Like I'm a bag of chips kids just have to pop open to get to the good stuff.

And not only did she believe this could happen, she acted on it, thinking she could make it come true.

"The baby wont come out until you are in first grade" I explained.

"BUT I WANT TO SEE THE BABY NOW!" she whined.

I backed away. No more hugs from her for awhile.

the day the magical reading fairy visits...

2011-05-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

All year Pixie's been reading books with one line of text on each page that stick to a pattern. Books like, "Look at the tiger. Look at the elephant. Look at the monkey. Look at me."
For beginning readers there is a lot to work on in these texts, but for the most part they can read them without actually knowing the words. Once they get the pattern down it's no problem. Really what we're teaching that early is that print contains a message, we read books from left to right, each word on the page corresponds to one word said out loud, and if you don't know what a word is you can check the picture. The basic building blocks of literacy.
Of course in whole group lessons we're adding high frequency words to the word wall, reading big books with more text, writing stories together through interactive writing, learning chunks like 'at', 'an', 'it' and 'ing' and directly teaching reading strategies. Still, Pixie's been plugging away on those simple texts.

The other day she was mid-book when she gasped. "OH MY GOD!" she exclaimed, "LOOK! This book has the word LOOK!! JUST LIKE ON THE WORD WALL."
I nodded. I did not point out that she'd been reading books with 'look' in them all year, or that the 3 pages she'd just read in the book also had the word look.
"MRS. LIPSTICK," she gasped again, "AND HERE'S THE WORD 'AT'" pointing to another word wall word. "They are the SAME as the word wall!"
Light switch on.
As soon as she finished her book she wanted to run around the classroom and show all of her friends that the word 'look' didn't just belong in the word wall, but was also in her book. Today she repeated the performance. Excited again that 'look' on the word wall was the same as 'look' in her book.

This is why I love my job. After months and months of laying down the basic building blocks of literacy, months and months of carefully planned guided reading lessons to help her be secure in those early literacy stages, the light suddenly flipped on. Things are starting to come together. You can practically see the gears turning. And on top of it all, I get to watch her be ridiculously excited about it.
I love teaching kids to read.

um, I hate to point it out, but in case you haven't noticed, you're getting large...

2011-05-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

For the first time in weeks I ran into my bff from two years ago. (If you're new to this blog I recommend clicking on the bff label and reading up on my former student with autism. I miss him so much. What a great kid.)

He's doing really well in third grade. I happened to walk past him while he was working one on one with his current special ed teacher.

"Hi Mrs. Lipstick" he said and looked back down at his work like the diligent student he is. Then slowly he picked his head back up as he took in the new, pregnant me.
He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. Finally he got out, "Mrs. Lipstick, are you feeling different?"

Frankly, "are you feeling different" is far more polite than what some grownups say. However, not knowing that I was pregnant I wonder what he was thinking. Was he worried that I would say "Funny you should ask, you know my stomach kind of hurts" and he would have to be the one to inform me that my stomach had suddenly swollen and that I should get that looked into asap.

Two years later I still wish I knew what was going on inside his head...

watch where you sit...

2011-05-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

This week I spent the majority of my time testing my kinders, pulling each child into the hallway for 2-3 minutes to conduct one of the 11 tasks included in our end of year assessments. I don't think of the experience as overly stressful for the kids (for me, on the other hand, who has to read the stupid story about a cat over and over again, well, that's another story). For the kids I try to keep it upbeat, high fives the whole time, moving quickly through each task so they don't even know they are being tested.

I called one little girl into the hallway to do a task she'd done quite well on in the beginning of the year. She came out smiling, and completed the task correctly although she looked distracted and distant the entire time. I wondered what was wrong but was so into testing I went ahead and called the next kiddo.

My next testing subject sat down in his chair and immediately gave me a look of confusion mixed with fear. He began squirming in his seat, looking extremely uncomfortable. He has trouble staying focused and I thought he was just trying to avoid the task. Halfway through the test (which he wasn't doing well on) the aid came running out of the room. She yanked my testing victim out of the seat to reveal a puddle. A puddle that did not belong to the current tester, but belonged to the friend before him. My poor friend had been sitting there in someone else's pee trying desperately to concentrate on the task at hand, trying not to complain to me that he was sitting in something wet.

And the poor pee-er? Her life is topsy turvy with drama day in and day out. We never know (and neither does she) if and when her father will be deported, if and when the family will move into another neighbor's house, which parent will be responsible for the children that night, or where she will sleep. The stress in her life is far greater than a simple 8 question task. Did she not know she needed to use the bathroom? Was she scared to ask? Do these kids secretly know how important these little tasks are despite how much we try to make it seem like they are fun and exciting? Scared to ask to go to the bathroom and scared to tell me they are sitting in something wet... what have I done to these kids?

Magical!

2011-05-13T17:15:00.000-07:00

Magical came to visit the classroom today. It was the first time the class had seen him since he left us in the beginning of December when he was diagnosed with cancer. Partner-in-crime has done an amazing job of sending the message to the class that he is still a big part of the class and they frequently ask about him and what to know how he is doing. We tried to prep them yesterday for the visit, warning them that he would look different and asking them to do what is so hard for any five year- keep their shock and thoughts about how he looks to themselves. We practiced saying the phrase, "looking good!" if we feel like we need to comment on how he has changed. Still. Partner-in-crime and I were a bit worried about how it would go. Magical was excited to come visit, but if anyone made him feel bad it might make him hesitant to come back to school in the fall.

We were at a meeting when he arrived so by the time we made it to the classroom he was already sitting in his old seat eating snack with the class like he belonged there. He was beaming with happiness as his friends bounced around him, asking him questions and showing off new additions to the classroom. He remembered all our rules and may have been the only one who froze with the quiet signal when he heard the bell. He went straight back to his old seat on the rug and giggled through singing silly songs and reading Gerald and Piggy books. It was so, so good to have him back, if only for an hour. We have been going to his house for about an hour a day for home-bound instruction. We have watched him have a long, hard winter. It was amazing to watch him happily interacting with friends again in age appropriate ways. No five year old should have to suffer like he has.

Of course, leave it to Pixie to give the defining moment of the visit. She popped over to him, touched his arm and looked in his eyes. "Magical," she said in her most serious voice, "you fight those bad germs. Fight them!" Magical just grinned. It's what he's been doing all along.

If only we could all move to Australia...

2011-05-13T16:59:00.000-07:00

Spring fever has unmistakably hit the think tank. There is not a child inside who does not seem to be infected by the wiggles. Even the shiest rule followers seem to be forgetting themselves and are being caught calling out in class or even, gasp, skipping down the hallway. It has been a long week.

Pixie was holding it together fairly well for herself, all things considering, until yesterday. When presented with a guided reading book about a frog playing in the mud she lost it. "I don't want to read that book!" she declared, slamming the book on the table. "I won't read it! This is a terrible, horrible day!" (we recently read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.) She managed to read all but one page when she became overcome with emotion again. Her eyes filled with tears and her lower lip wobbled as she again announced how much she hated the book, how much she hated school, what a horrible day it was, and how she wished she had missed the bus. I ignored most of this and in the end she read the last page with long, dramatic sighs. She finished just in time to head to lunch with her class where she announced on the way that she was moving to Australia.

Thirty minutes before the day ended the office called to ask if we could send Pixie down for an early dismissal. The minute she heard this she wailed, "but I don't want to go home! I'll miss all the fun, I hate missing all the fun!" It took me twenty minutes to get her to walk down the hallway to the office. I am sure anyone that passed us thought I was forcing her to march to her one death.

That afternoon I went to see Magical. Our hour of work wrapped up and when I told him I had to leave he looked hurt. "But I still need you!" he announced. Then catching himself he quickly changed his tune. "you have to go now," he said, "I am very busy. I have a very busy schedule this afternoon. I have to shower and eat dinner and watch tv and cuddle with my mom and talk to my brother and play on the iPad and go to sleep. I do not have time for you."

In the upper grades I think spring fever shows up in the way of general misbehavior. In kindergarten it comes out through a lack of all logic and reasoning. Which may be why I love my job so much.

things we say

2011-05-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

When dealing with complainers I tend to try to pull little phrases out to acknowledge that I hear the complainer, but deflecting any action on my part. Sayings like, "Wow, you must have been brave", or "It's ok that your pants are covered in mud! That's how we know you're a kid! Kids are suppose to have fun and get dirty outside." It's enough to confuse them and let them know that they are not going to get anywhere with sympathy from me.

Yesterday I was trying to run a reading group when a little boy kept trying to show me his scrapes from the day before. He'd been climbing a tree and had really scraped himself up and was suddenly overcome with the amount of scrapes on his hand right when he was suppose to be listening to my book introduction. The "wow, brave you" comment didn't work and I was a bit frustrated. The next thing I knew I heard myself saying, "AWESOME! Really? Those scrapes are from climbing a tree? So COOL."

There was nothing he could say to that. He quickly became quiet and read his book. Now I'm just worried about angry letters from parents complaining that their children went out to climb trees and get scraped up because their teacher told them that was the cool thing to do.

It could have been worse. I could have told his blood shot eyes from playing video games all night was cool. At least I was encouraging an outdoor activity. Still, something seems wrong about telling a kid that their scrapes are "cool".

kick kick

2011-05-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

One of my little ones hugged me yesterday and then loudly announced to the class that she heard the baby kick. This is not true. The baby did not kick when she hugged me. I don't think she heard anything. But after her announcement, now all the little girls are convinced that if they keep their hands on my belly they will feel (or hear?) a kick. None of them believe the "baby's sleeping" story anymore since I'd just given it to the little one who claimed the kick.

I've never been so close to outright calling a child a liar in my life. I can't walk through the classroom without a little hand reaching up and grabbing my belly.

Signs of Spring

2011-05-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, the trees have filled out with bright green leaves, and the kindergarten/first grade hallway looks like this:

Note the small desks/tables outside of each classroom so that we can pull children for one on one testing.

It must be May.

The testing window opens in May and so it's time to start pulling our children aside one by one to assess how far they've come this year. In kindergarten for reading alone we pull each child aside 12 individual times to assess how they've come with their concepts of print, their letter knowledge, their phonemic awareness, and their ability to read. It's lovely, lovely fun as you can only imagine.

Since we use the same scoring sheet throughout the year for each child you get to see the progress they've made. To be honest, I completely forgot how low the little ones were when they came in. The majority of the kiddos in one of my classes knew almost no letters of the alphabet, and in fact, when asked to identify a letter, even a letter in their name, responded with "8", "29" or, "Hey, it looks like sponge bob!"

As I'm giving the spring version of the assessment and trying not to grind my teeth as a child confuses the lowercase f and t (arggghhhhhh..... ) I find myself glancing at the fall version of the test. Suddenly knowing all the letters but confusing b, d, p, and f and t doesn't seem like that bit a deal. In the fall they could not identify the first letter in their name, and in fact, had never recognized that those squiggly things on paper had names.

Of course, I'd prefer that they'd gone from not knowing anything to knowing all of their letters and letter sounds perfectly, so there is still a bit of sadness and teeth grinding when I realize we're not quite there yet. But that frustration is more with myself and what I've taught than with the child. When I realize how far the child came from September to May I'm suddenly filled with pride at how the little one changed from a timid, unsure 5 year old into a scholarly letter-identifying 6 year old. They did it. They worked hard in kindergarten.

In fact, so far I've only give 3 tasks of the 11 they took in September. But in those 3 tasks most of them have already out scored what they got in September when they were given the full 11 tasks.

In the same class the majority of our friends were unable to rhyme at all in September. Most of them got none of the rhyming questions correct. Yesterday when I gave the rhyming test they didn't even let me finish the question before they identified the rhyming words.

It's still not perfect. Like I said before, I wish they were doing better. There is still the feeling of sadness and frustration that I've missed teaching them important pieces- like the difference between t and f. That they should be even further along than they are and really that's my fault as their teacher. But it's nice to mix high expectations with the reality of how far they've come.

Hello baby

2011-05-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

Last week I explained the reason for my growing belly to one of my kindergarten classes. No one had asked about it yet, but I figured that for my ego a preemptive strike was necessary. They are thrilled, fascinated, and a bit confused on timelines.

I told them on Thursday and on Friday they all asked me if I remembered I was having a baby, or if I'd had the baby the night before. It's funny how many of them were worried that I may have forgotten the baby... some seemed truly concerned. I liked the shy little boy who whispered, "hey, don't forget your baby" as he came into the classroom in the morning, and the one with limited English who drew me a picture of me and the baby, brought it to me and repeatedly pointed to my belly and then back to the picture as though he was explaining to me what was going on inside me. His mother had a baby earlier this year so I suppose he felt that he was sharing some expert advice with me.

Today though the kids hit a whole new level. After not seeing me for the whole weekend they were thrilled to see my belly Monday morning. Not me, my belly. They each asked to hug my baby, or didn't ask and just patted my belly, said hello baby, and talked directly into my stomach. One little boy nestled his face against my belly to get closer to the baby. I suppose I should get use to having people address the baby and not me when I enter a room, I just expected it would start once the baby was actually out of my belly.

"I love you, but I can't talk to you right now"

2011-05-01T10:45:00.001-07:00

My first year teaching a little friend made me a "puppet" at the art center during free choice time. He'd used a purple foam flower, attached a close pin to the bottom, and drew two eyes with angry eyebrows and an angry mouth. He said it was me when I used my mad face.

It was my first year and I'd taken a lot to get to the point where my mad face was extremely effective, so I attached the puppet to my badge. The class loved it. Instead of me having to use my actual mad face at them I could just flash the puppet. They'd immediately know I was giving them the evil eye (even those who had difficulty reading my actual facial cues knew it meant they were on thin ice) and would stop their behavior.

The next year I overheard one of the most amazing teachers in my building say she writes the phrase "I love you but I can't talk to you right now" on her writing workshop conference hat so that children knew not to bother her when she was conferencing. I kept playing that phrase over and over in my mind. I love it- it acknowledges the person and that you still care about the person, but also sets a limit.

I told my class that my angry purple flower meant just that "I love you, but I can't talk to you right now." Just like the year before I wore it all the time, not just during conferencing. It was relatively small and just lived on my ID badge but was easy to flash when a child came to interrupt me when I was chatting with another teacher, another student, or just trying to organize myself for the next lesson. I did not have to turn and make eye contact with the child, I simply just picked up the flower and held it up so they could see it.
"Oh yeah," many of them would say, "You love me but you can't talk to me right now" and they'd go back to work.
For whatever reason they loved the saying too. I loved that they repeated it to themselves "You love me but you can't talk to me right now" as though they were reassuring themselves that I did in fact love them.

For me it worked better than a designated hat for writing or reading workshop because I was able to acknowledge their presence with an action (holding up the flower) without making eye contact. When I used a hat for reading/writing workshop I'd find myself stopping and talking to the child to remind them what the hat meant. Tapping the hat didn't get their attention, while holding up the purple flower did. Plus the purple flower was around all day so they saw it all the time and were less likely to forget what it meant.

I also paired it with a "notes for Ms. L" box so they could go and leave me a note about what they needed. For first graders I wanted them to write anyway, so writing their notes to me was meaningful writing. They had even more incentive really listen to the sounds in those words because they knew I'd be reading them when they were not around to translate for me. By the middle of the year most of them were leaving notes without me having to give them the "I love you" reminder.

Now that I work in 3 different classrooms it's hard to do something that consistently. I don't have the luxury of having those moments of whole group lessons where I explain procedures. And since I'm not in their rooms all the time it's not as consistent. As the kinders are getting more and more bouncy with spring fever- and more likely to leave their seats to "need to tell me something so, so, so important" I need to find a way to make it work... my end of year survival may depend on it.

Something new everyday

2011-04-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

In the midst of a whole group interactive writing lesson I looked out to see Pixie holding the top of her skirt out in front of her with one hand while she dropped a handfull of crayons into the opening. Since they didn't fall out I assume she had decided to hide them in her underwear.

In astonishment I asked her to remove them using the vaguest language I could. I didn't want the rest of the class to fall into giggles over the incident, or embarrass Pixie. It took about 3 minutes to communicate to her that I knew she'd put crayons down her pants and that she needed to remove them, all while trying to keep a straight face..3 more minutes for her to comply.

I have no idea what she was thinking. It couldn't have been comfortable to keep them there all day. Did she have a special reason to hide crayons? And why during whole group instruction? She could probably get away with sneaking crayons into her pants during independent worktime, but on the carpet? When she's sitting right up front?

I love my job. It's never, ever boring and you never know what to expect.

motivation

2011-04-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

This year we have to teach counting by 5s in kindergarten. This was something I was use to teaching in the beginning of first grade, but it is new to our K curriculum (along with fractions...). We taught it, practiced it, played games with it, and chanted it. But to be honest, we didn't spend the quality time on it we normally do on math lessons. It wasn't one of our best units and we knew the kids weren't quite getting it. Still, we needed to move on- (to teaching fractions) . One of those 'bad teacher' moments where we slap ourselves on the wrist, sigh at the situation, and proceed through the curriculum.

To assess their skills even after we'd moved on we put up a poster that said, "Hey Mrs. Lipstick, I can count by 5's!" and told them that when they felt ready to by 5s independently they could write their name on the poster. Then when I got a chance I would call them over to listen to them count.

Simple stuff. Looking back at it now we were basically taking the ownership off of us from teaching the material and putting it on to them to learn it. We weren't really sure how it would go, but hey, it was worth a try seeing that we had to move on anyway.

Somehow the motivation of signing up on a poster has been everything. They've all taken it very seriously. They went home and practiced their counting, coming in the next day and heading straight for the board to sign up for a chance with me. When I've called them over many of them have counted correctly and quickly, clearly showing off their practicing from home. Some just miss one number and some start with 25, but regardless those that miss are up for trying again the next day. No one has gotten upset or discouraged. There is something about it that has become a game. They go home and practice to try again. When they come in the next day they KNOW they'll get it that time. (Some do and some don't, but that hasn't seemed to change their motivation- the ones on their 3rd or 4th chance are still coming in to try it- and they're getting closer every time. They even practice with one another and although they only have to count by 5's to 30 many of them can now count to 100.

We were surprised at how much it motivated them. Funny how something as simple as signing up on a poster has made them go home and independently practice school work. We never assigned it as official homework, we never said they absolutely had to sign up. We just presented it as a possibility. What I like about it is that it doesn't discriminate against kids who are having difficulty. Anyone can sign the poster. It hasn't become a list of the smartest kids in the class, silently mocking those who are working hard but still having trouble. Instead it shows who is working hard. It's a cross section of the class that is motivated to test themselves and take a risk. Some of the ones working the hardest on learning to count by 5s are the ones who struggle the most. Yet their names are still on the poster and they still proudly come over to my table to show off their skill.

Hopefully it's teaching them some self-study skills and independence. Hopefully they are learning to set a goal and then to work toward that goal. And if not, well, at least we know they're still practicing counting by 5s when we shamelessly pushed on to the next sequence in the curriculum...

Ahhhh, spring!

2011-04-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm slowly coming back to life. Grad classes ended last week and although I have one more paper to finish life is still feeling pretty good. Between pregnancy, working and classes I've been exhausted this semester (in case you haven't noticed that I've been MIA from here- composing simple sentences has been way too much work for my tired brain).

This morning we returned from spring break. Being accustomed to the year-round schedule we were on previously it was hard to come back after only a week off, but we survived. I woke up this morning in a cold sweat from a dream where I received a memo where I had a meeting at 8:30 PM... Despite the dream I dragged myself into school, excited to see the kids but dreading the mounds of paperwork and meetings I have ahead of me this week.

The first child I saw waltzed into our room with a huge grin. "Hey, Mrs. Lipstick!" he smiled, "I had a dream last night that I got to come to school and see you and Mrs. Partner-in-crime! And now it's true!" His smile and excitement said it all. This is why I deal with the paperwork and meetings- it's nice to be back with the kids.

~~ ~~ ~~
On the bus on the way to the field trip one of my little ones asked me where I work. When I replied that I work at school he looked shocked, and then hurt. "You work here?" he asked, "This is your job?" as though all year he'd assumed I'd been hanging out at school for fun.
I tried to back track and explain that although school is my job I do love my job. He nodded slowly, still not buying it. Luckily we drove past a construction scene and I could distract him for a moment.

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo, How about you, you, you...

2011-04-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

I. am. exhausted. I'm not sure I can type my way through a whole post with coherent sentences. Please forgive me if I leave out words, phrases, or just change topics half way through a sentence because I can't remember what I originally started writing about.

We spent today at the National Zoo, which is always an exciting adventure. After Pixie had announced a few weeks ago that she was planning on petting the lions I made myself her buddy. My only job was to stay with Pixie and prevent her ending up somewhere she didn't belong.

One adult. One kid. You'd think it would be simple.

I could barely keep my eyes open on the bus ride back, despite Pixie's singing of every animal song she knew.

The girl is fast. Wicked fast. One minute her little hand would be clasped in mine and the next she'd be gone, having darted through the tight spaces in the crowd only her tiny body could access. Thank goodness Partner-in-crime requires all the children to wear red for field trips. I could usually spot her red shirt amid other school groups wandering by. She had no problem talking to strangers, pushing three year olds out of the way, or climbing on the fences to get closer to the animals. At one point I caught her with a stranger's binoculars. When I reminded her we don't take other people's things she said, "I asked first." Which the stranger laughingly agreed that she had. She just hadn't waited for an answer before she took them. When redirected and reminded of good zoo behavior she was remorseful, but she'd quickly become so overcome with excitement that she'd be off across the path in no time.

She did, however, remember the rule about not petting the animals. Which didn't mean she didn't really, really want to, or that she ever stopped hoping that I would changed my mind and let her go catch an animal just one time
.
"Can I play with them?" she asked at the prairie dog exhibit- whose low fence would have allowed her easy access to the dogs if she'd chosen to dive in without asking.
"Thank you for asking first, but no, you may not go in there."
I heard a mother behind me laugh. "Thank you for asking" she repeated. Look- I needed to reinforce the positive behavior. At least she asked. If she'd repeated her behavior from the farm the zoo would have some very traumatized prairie dogs and I'd probably be on the local news right now...

"Can I climb in there?" she asked, pointing to the area housing the lion and his cubs.
"No. But thank you for asking."
"Why? Will he eat me? I'm a nice little girl. I'll just pet him a little bit."

"Can I go there?" she'd ask five minutes later at the Tiger's grassy area.
"No."
"Not even just on these bushes right here? I'll just climb on them for a little bit."
Nice try.

Nothing stopped her from climbing onto anything in front of her to get a better view. I spent more time pulling her off walls, fences, and barriers than I spent looking at the animals. We need to get her into gymnastics. She has no fear, loves to climb, and is certainly built for it.

At the moment, however, since pregnancy has left me sans wine, I am recovering with a large bowl of ice cream and planning on going to bed early. One more day until spring break.

Something to write about

2011-04-12T03:56:00.000-07:00

On Friday my school held Dance Night, a yearly event where the grade levels perform the dances they've been practicing in PE and Music. They come with their families, all dressed up, to show off their moves.

On Saturday 7 school buses of families met at our school and traveled into DC to go to a museum. We're so close to downtown DC, yet for busy families with no personal transportation it's hard to make it downtown. Sadly I was chained to my desk writing papers or I would have gone with them.

On Monday our students were non-stop chatterboxes. They wanted to share about dance night, the museum, anecdotal stories about their families, the dinosaurs they say, the view from the bus- anything that struck their five year old eyes as important. I wasn't in the room for writing workshop, but Mrs. Partner-in-crime was ecstatic about their great stories. Children who'd never really written a meaningful story with a beginning, middle, and end suddenly did. Pixie, who never really likes writing workshop, wrote PAGES. (For Pixie by write we mean draw, but the ability for her to tell a story in sequential order is huge).

At first we patted ourselves on the back for our great sequencing and retelling unit in reading workshop. And then we realized that wasn't it. The little ones finally had something to write about. Something besides going to kmart, playing wii, or eating dinner. It's amazing how writing flows when they are inspired and excited. I just wish we could give them more opportunities with their families. There are so many things our children need, and so much that can be bought and donated to them- winter coats, hats, tooth brushes, etc, but what they'll appreciate and remember more than anything else are the opportunities to be with their families and experience the world outside their apartment complexes.

at a loss

2011-04-11T03:52:00.000-07:00

On Friday I worked with Magical after school. At the end of our session his mom mentioned that they had something they wanted to talk to me about. Magical's been angry, she explained, and when he gets angry he is very mean to his family. She wanted us all to talk about it so that we could help Magical work on using nice words and controlling his anger. She mentioned that the doctors call it "chemo brain" when he and other patients like him become unreasonably or illogically angry. I've seen his outbursts myself and can only imagine what it would be like to watch a child struggle with chemo day in and day out while overflowing with anger. Anyone would be angry. Some days I look at Magical and get angry too- not at him but at the situation and the world. How it it fair?

Helping children manage their anger is something I do (or at least try to do) frequently. But I've never been in a situation quite like this before. I've worked with children who had very, very good reasons to be angry, but somehow even those situations seem different. Those children still had moments of childhood during their day. They had friends and could run on the playground, and their bodies were not being pumped full of chemicals.

I'm also use to giving discipline advice to parents. Yet that's usually for strong willed active children or impulsive little ones. One, Two, Three Magic isn't quite what this situation calls for. I can think of ideas and suggestions, but are they even appropriate? I have no idea what Magical and his family are going through. Part of me is scared to make assumptions. Tell them to give him choices? He gets a lot of choices during the day. Insist on him using a gentle voice? I've seen him become some unreasonably angry I'm not sure how he'll respond to redirection when he's upset. He stops seeing logic at a certain point. Ignore it and not react? Can you ignore a cancer patient screaming for food? When I'm there he responds to my redirection or my reminders telling him to use a gentle voice. But I'm there for two hours a week. I'm a change in his day, a friend stopping by. I don't think it has to do with me, but simply that I am a break from the mundane.

I've been thinking about the family all weekend, wracking my brain for resources and recommendations to bring over. Do any of you have any advice? Any experience working with children cancer patients and how they emotionally react to chemo?