Second Grade Life Expectations

Recently, I’ve let my second grade students down because they have some crazy life expectations for me. I thought their expectations were really funny, and it just shows what crazy ideas they have about adults.

When I first got to my classroom, some of the students were really disappointed that I wasn’t married. (Maybe because I couldn’t tell them funny stories about my husband like my teacher does?) After we returned from Spring Break, one of my students asked if I was married now. I told her that I was not married. She gave me a look like, “You were gone a whole week…why didn’t you get married,” before telling me, “You should at least get a boyfriend.”

Earlier this week, I was talking to one of my students about the day that I was leaving. She asked if I was coming back to the school next year. I told her that I was going home to Wisconsin. She said, “Oh, you’re going home to be a mom.” No, no I am not. I realized afterwards that a lot of her teachers leave the school and stay at home for a while when they have babies, so her comment made sense. However, I thought it was really funny that she expected me to have a baby in a month because I’m going home.

Senoritis

As the end of the semester approaches, I find myself off in LaLa land thinking about graduation, summer, Rites of Spring, Beach week, and all the other exciting things we have going on in the upcoming month.  When we started first placement, I felt like I was on my A game. I had all my lesson plans written during the weekends, worksheets ready to be copy, and really was ready for anything. I had my lunch packed and scheduled in time for the gym and even, if I was lucky, a nap. My schedule was so neat and everything had to get done. Now, I’ve hit a wall. I am flying by the seat of my pants when it comes to making lunch, getting dressed, planning my weeks. Lesson plans seem never ending. I am getting lesson plans in 24 hours in advance, but I feel like I’m always playing catch up between work, student teaching, and trying to live up my last month as a senior. Does anybody else feel like they got the dreaded senoritis? How are you handling it? Any words of advice on how to keep myself on task or reduce the extreme amounts of procrastinating I find myself doing? 

My Favorite Part of Teaching

I love bulletin boards. End of story. Since I’ve been in second placement, I have had the opportunity to create two “bulletin boards.” Funny thing is, neither of them are actually in a designated spot or actually on a board. During Read Across America week, I created a Dr. Seuss themed display on a door. I have zero idea were the door leads or what is behind it, but I put up the paper, picked out the boarder, and then put everything on. Today, I got to create a display for a unit on plants. I was able to create the dirt, grass, and sky out of bulletin board paper and then put up the “I can” statement. We then decided it would be cute to write “The best kind of garden is a Kindergarten” on a poster and put it up there too! Being in kindergarten is so great because we can put all those punny things around the room or outside without feeling like a fool!

I always was into arts and crafts as a child, but never thought that creating these boards would be my favorite thing to do as a teacher. I love coming up with crafts and creating unique ways for the students to keep showing off their hard work and knowledge. I also am finding that I really enjoy working in small groups. In the Struggling Readers practicum, I found that working one on one was difficult for me and I really questioned. However, now that I have had the chance to work with small groups during literacy centers, I am finding that I love it! Are you all finding particular parts of teaching more enjoyable? Are they what you thought you would be enjoying? Are you disliking anything that you thought you would love?

"Cry Babies"

Now that I am in Kindergarten, I have a lot of students who turn on the water works when they are caught doing something wrong or do not get their way. I have a particular student, who we will call Brian, who cried around four times a day. If he doesn't understand the work, he cries. If someone skips him in line, he cries. If he gets a problem wrong, he cries. If I don't call on him during morning meeting, he cries. I can honestly say that there has not been a day where this students has been completely dry.
Then, I have a little girl, who we shall call Mary, who throws these temper tantrums that make me want to pull my hair out. She puts on this nasty, mean mug and cries aggressively. She makes all these strange sounds and grunts while she cries. This student even goes as far as throwing herself on the ground, kicking other students, and kicking classroom objects. She knows what she does is wrong and does it anyway. Our resolution for this problem thus far is removing her from the classroom, making her walk the perimeter of the playground during recess, and we even had to give her a referral and send her to the office.
My question to ya'll is how would you handle these obscene behaviors? Anybody have any similar experiences?

Observations about First and Fourth Grade

Having had a sufficient amount of time in both fourth and first grade at this point, I have seen very interesting differences between teaching in different grades (and very different schools!). I had always pictured myself in a younger classroom, and I was surprised by how much I liked working in fourth grade. The departmentalized structure made it a more manageable day, and the students were old enough to follow directions. The challenges in fourth grade were mostly related to finding appropriately challenging tasks to incorporate into my lessons, and TCAP stuff. I was excited to work in a first grade room where those issues were less prevalent. However, there are other challenges in a first grade classroom that are hard to explain until you have the experience of working in a kindergarten or first grade classroom. I love teaching reading and I really love the content in the first grade curriculum, however, the management in the younger grades is a whole other ballgame. The students need explicit directions for every single thing they need to do, not just academic tasks, and they need directions repeated often. They can't all read, so written directions or written assessments are time-consuming and only helps some students. I am much more used to how to address these challenges now, but when I first got to my second placement, I struggled to adjust to this change and spoke to my MT often about designing appropriate tasks. What other differences have you all noticed between the older and younger grades? Does anyone have any helpful advice for adjusting to new grade levels?

The notorious first grade meltdown

Today, I had my first experience handling a student's meltdown on my own. My MT was not here and the substitute was helping with some management issues but essentially deferred to me to handle the class. I felt very prepared going in, but it is hard to manage the whole class especially during times like guided reading when I am working with a small group. One of the students in my class who has behavioral problems was having a difficult afternoon. I called him over to join his guided reading group at my table, and he literally responded "no." This is not typical at all and it is a very establish routine in the classroom when to move from centers and go to the guided reading group. Being on my own in the classroom, I calmly replied, "Ok, you need to make a choice. You can choose to come join your group, or you can choose to be clipped down" (on the behavior color spectrum hanging in the classroom). He still didn't come over, so I followed up with, "Ok, you have made your choice. I'll go move your clip down to yellow." Instantly, he began screaming and throwing a fit. I reminded him one more time that I gave him choices and he made his choice, and if he were to come join us I could move his clip back up. He then threw himself on the floor and curled up in a ball behind the garbage can and screamed and cried. Of course, being first graders, everyone needed to raise their hands and inform me that he was behind the garbage can. I responded to the class to worry about their own work and I did not give him attention. Eventually he calmed down and walked over to our group (halfway through the book), but it was crazy! He has had issues before, but it was an interesting challenge to deal with him on my own. 

Does anyone else have any crazy stories about kids throwing fits? Does anyone have any good ideas for how to handle situations like this?

Charter Schools

After the job fair on Tuesday, a recruiter from a charter school in Nashville (whom I'd talked to at the fair) called me and asked if I'd be interested in visiting their school. I know next to nothing about charter schools, and I was intrigued, so I went on Thursday morning. I was there for about an hour, from 7:45-8:45, so I saw students (or "scholars," as they are called at this school) coming in, going to the cafeteria for breakfast & morning work, and a school-wide morning meeting. Then, the students went to their homerooms, and the head of school walked me in and out of about 6 kindergarten & first grade classes to observe what they were doing.

I definitely saw some positive things while I was there. For example, I liked that each student was greeted personally by the principal when they walked in, and the morning meeting was full of energy, which seemed like an empowering way to start the morning. Also, in the hallways, there was a picture of each student and excerpts of their writing from the beginning of the year until now, and I have to say, their most recent work is pretty impressive for kinder and first-graders.

But honestly, what I saw reminded me more of the military than an elementary school. The students wore uniforms--which I have no problem with--but they also had to sit a certain way in the cafeteria and in class. All of the chanting during morning meeting struck me as a little cult-ish. And I couldn't help but notice that all 6 of the teachers I observed were teaching in the exact. same. way. Which was not a bad way, necessarily, but I got the impression that there was a very specific teaching method that all of the teachers had to adhere to. I saw a lot of energy from the teachers, but not a lot of warmth. Basically, everything felt a little...robotic. It was definitely not the "Peabody way" and I could never see myself teaching the way I think I would be expected to at this school, even if it seems to be working for them.

So... I'm wondering, are all charter schools like this? (I told my FM about it, and she said she's heard KIPP schools are the same way.) Has anyone else been to a charter school and had a similar (or different) experience?