Gin to Juiceboxes

Aug
2

Teacherly Advice on Naming your Newborn

The end of every Summer vacation brings two exciting events for me:
One, I finally catch up on unread facebook posts and realized that EVERYONE in the world (except me) is having a baby right now.
Two, I’m getting nervous and excited for a new year of my own freshly ready-for-school little ones and daily scanning the school website to see my growing list of kiddos. What do these two events have in common? Names.

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Mar
19

Happy Mardi Gras, Rainbow Punch!

So, it’s Spring! And the way Spring is visible in my classroom is that kids start bringing in Easter candy, Mardi Gras beads, and you know, a bunch of crap that takes their attention away from school. But, we are all ready for Spring break – the kids and me, so I sort of just tell them, you can wear that plastic necklace/ring you got from the top of a cupcake/shamrock pin/etc. as long as I don’t see you or someone else playing with it during lessons.
Now, for most kids, this becomes to difficult after about 10 seconds and I take it from them until the end of the day (or forever because half the time the kids don’t even remember they had this can’t-live-without-it treasure, and I certainly have other things on my mind at the end of the day rather than redistributing plastic junk).

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19

What do Saber Tooth Cats Eat?

I have a lot of really quick-learning kids in my class this year. Some of the kids came in at the beginning of the year already reading, and even more of them are just really good thinkers – really evaluating things they read and learn. Sometimes you just get a class one year that’s really low or really high as a group, and it has been kind of an exciting experience to work with these little geniuses this year. The funny thing is, some of the kids are reading really high level stuff (like 1st or 2nd grade reading level) but their opinions and interests are still normal 5-year-old ones, so some of their reading abilities sort of outstrip their level of world experience, which can be pretty funny.

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Mar
8

Weebles wobble, but they don’t laugh in your face. Meet Rainbow Punch.

I have a student with social/emotional issues. Lets just say she (Rainbow Punch) started the year unable to communicate her feelings with words. If she didn’t want to work, or didn’t want to sit by other kids, or just didn’t want to do whatever we were doing she would choose randomly from the following list: run away (man she is faster than she looks), scream (sometimes words, sometimes just scream), hit another kid, hide under the table, throw herself on the floor, put her head down and fake cry, laugh in a creepy not-happy way, or just plant herself in the nearest chair and not move for anything. There was never any telling what would set her off or which fun item from her repertoire she would choose.

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8

I am Sarcastic – Deal with it.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I am not the typical early elementary school teacher. I look down the hall in my own school and there are all varieties of “teacher types.” We have all the basics represented: the teacher who plays guitar as her students enter in the morning; the vegan-hippie-free spirit who wears hemp shoes and loves everyone, but especially kids; the new teacher who is always flitting from copier to lesson plans and back and forth – you can sometimes recognize the new teacher as the one still wearing heels; the veteran teacher who seems to breeze in 15 minutes before the kids but still seems relaxed; the cranky teacher who has no business being with children in general; and of course, the one whose room is so decorated with gingham and teddy bears that it looks like the build-a-bear workshop threw up in there.

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Apr
22

“Free” Time

We have a planning day coming up at our school! If you’re not a teacher, I’ll explain the chorus of angels that just started singing when I typed those words: A planning day is a golden opportunity to actually spend time in your classroom without your students during a regular school day and get some of that endless pile-up of work wittled down! When the words “Planning Day” are announced at our school, one can almost hear the collective cheers (silently of course – inside voices) among the teachers.

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Apr
20

Bathroom Breaks

So, teachers don’t get a lot of personal time throughout the day. We all know this. The most coveted time in my day (I can’t speak for all teachers, but I have a feeling some will agree with me) is my bathroom break. You see, it’s not like I get to leave my classroom anytime nature calls and just skip to the bathroom to take care of it. No, I am allowed to go during two 40 minute periods throughout the day. And those are the same 40 minute periods when I am allowed to make all my copies, do any planning, call parents, have meetings with colleagues, eat my lunch, get a drink, and oh yeah, breathe.

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Apr
18

You can wet your pants on your own time

The fact is clear that I have not written in months. It is not because I haven’t wanted to share what’s been going on in my classroom. Actually, after my breakthrough of deciding that I was going to let go of control just a little bit (a big first step for me) and allow the 5 year olds to just be 5, make some messes, have a cupcake on their birthdays, use 2 minutes of instructional time to cry because they miss their moms and dads – since that day, I have been really rocking in the classroom, I must say. I have planned integrated content lessons, I have taught math and reading in ways that are relevant to the students, “Let’s go to the playground and find 2- and 3-D shapes on the jungle gym everyone!”…”Let’s search for Non-fiction books in the library about real underwater animals and compare them to Spongebob, class!”

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Jan
30

You can’t always get what you want.

Alternate title: You can’t always choose the kids in your class…but sometimes they move!

Probably one of the hardest adjustments for me moving from teaching 2nd grade last year to teaching kindergarten this year is the amazing difference in the maturity levels and capabilities between 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds. It is quite amazing how mature 2nd graders can be both emotionally and academically. I mean, 2nd graders can understand how to do a project with minimum explanation, they can be trusted to do jobs for you around the classroom (my favorite was how excited they would get over wiping down transparencies or cleaning my old dirty coffee mugs, I mean seriously, it was the most chosen classroom job of all including line leader!). And, those kids produced some amazing writing, could read and understand REAL books (Captain Underpants is a real book, right?), and could understand complex social situations like being nice to the teacher when she’s sick (Yes, teachers go when they’re sick) and letting another kid go first in line to make him feel special after getting a bad grade on a test.

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Jan
15

Running on Empty

Alternate Title: Switching heels for running shoes

I got a new student who speaks no English at all. This poor kid not only doesn’t speak English, he apparently has no interest in being in school-I mean literally, we can’t keep him in the freakin’ room. Now, it’s not like this kid is the first one who has ever had the idea to leave. Kids have tried to leave the room all the time; this was especially common at the beginning of the year. For about the first month, when parents drop off their kids and actually leave, the kids’ eyes dart back and forth like a scared bunny (complete with wiggling nose). You can see the kids’ thought process on their scared little faces, “If I ran away, I would have to run faster than that teacher…if I can outrun her I’m free, but if I try to run and she catches me, she might eat me.” I imagine this is the relative scenario they are running in their minds.

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