Last Week was: Short, and OK

Short week, last week, what with Thanksgiving [Thursday and Friday off] and all.

I had another Solo Day on Monday. Miles was there for it, so maybe that's why things went more smoothly than Thursday. That guy just can't keep his paws off the room. There were a couple of times where he yelled at kids and then got this look on his face like he knew that he should've let me handle it. I talked to a friend who teaches in Marin this weekend about my Solo WEEK coming up [December 1-5], she stressed that Miles should not be in the room AT ALL during that week [NEXT week!]. So I went into school this morning and told him this and he said, "Yeah, I talked to some of the other teachers and they said the same thing..." Whew. That didn't, however, keep him from getting involved on Monday...

At the end of the day [Monday], I walked past a table and saw Miles' clipboard sitting there [he was taking notes ALL DAY - it made me nervous ALL DAY] with the word "disaster" written in the "-" column. Ugh. We sat down, and, for the most part, it was positive comments. He liked that I attempted to do a lesson [making "at" family words - i.e. cat, bat, hat, etc.] where everyone got their own little chalkboards to practice writing the words on. Sure, it took FOREVER to pass the boards out, and half the kids got a piece of chalk that, for some reason, wouldn't write very well on their chalkboard. But, all in all, it went off without too much trouble. And, Miles thought it helpful to find out that the kids could do it without spending TOO much time on it, or without it getting to crazy and out of hand.

Teaching is difficult - REALLY difficult. One of the things that I'm having trouble with is balancing getting the curriculum across while trying to handle classroom management. There are times where I don't see kids goofing off [Miles lets me know...] because I am SO focused on saying exactly what I want to say so that the point of the lesson gets across. I want to make sense while I'm teaching, and make it so that the kids actually learn something, and sometimes that means that I'm not paying attention to what each and every kid is doing.

After school on Wednesday, I hung around and tried to get some planning in for the big Solo Week. With each word I wrote in my Teacher's Planning Book, I got more and more confident. By the time I left for home that afternoon, I was feeling like I could handle ANYTHING. Now, as the week quickly approaches, the confidence is waning a bit. However, I keep reminding myself to remind myself to Just Have Fun. It occasionally works.

I barely wrote anything this week - I apologize. It just gets harder and harder to make time to write as the semester is coming to a close. Even now, I must go and spend some time with Teachers' Editions and a planning book. I just want next week to be fun and have as much of me in it as possible.

Thursday was: Eventful

I walked into the room feeling perfectly fine. Then, within 5 minutes, I started to freak out. I had stuff that I really wanted to get prepared, and the Sub just kept gabbing. Maybe this Solo Day wasn't going to be a walk in the park.

Sure enough, as the kids were filing into the room for the day, a mother approached me. She was concerned that the girl with autism was getting rough with her son. Her son is one of the sweetest, kindest, most friendly kids in class, and he tries to help get the girl with autism on task, but, often, he ends up getting hit or pushed - AND, because he is so nice, he doesn't really do anything about it. The boy's mom told me that she has tried to talk to the girl with autism, and mother of the girl with autism, but nothing seems to be helping. I told her that I would keep an eye on them both and, if one should arrise, try to cut a situation off at the pass before it escalates into something physical. A few minutes later, the mom went over and spoke to the para of the girl in the wheelchair [the para is also supposed to look after the girl with autism, when the girl in the wheelchair doesn't need assistance], and then STARTED CRYING. Oh, great, 10 minutes into the day, Miles isn't in the building, and I've got a parent IN TEARS. I walked over to her, put an arm around her, told her again that I understood her concern and that I would keep a sharp eye out. What more could I do?

Miles had said that I didn't have to take the kids up to the computer lab after lunch [in place of Math time]. I thought "Oh, let's be daring" and said that I would love the experience. Well, 4 of the computers wouldn't log on properly, half of them didn't have any sound capabilities, I forgot to tell the kids not to touch the computer screens with their greasy fingers, and I didn't show them how to log out. As I was dismissing students to line up at the door ["You don't remember how to log out? Just leave it..."] I overheard some students saying that one of the boys in class had wet his pants. AND, I looked over and saw that a SECOND boy in class had wet his pants. THAT'S TWO KIDS. I immediately felt kind of bad, like, maybe they were too afraid to ask to go to the bathroom [?]. Then, as I was telling one student that I REALLY meant it when I said "Please line up" I looked over at the door and saw the line of students making their way out the door and into the hallway. Yet, I saw that the Substitute, and the para of the girl in the wheelchair, were both still i the Computer Lab with me. Who was leading the kids back downstair to our classroom? I ran out in the hall and around the corner - the kids were walking down the stair by themselves! "Alright! EVERYONE BACK IN THE LAB! I did NOT tell anyone to start walking back to the room!" Eventually, I got everyone outside to recess, and went to the office to have the secretary [who speaks Spanish] call the mother of one of the boys [I had already called the mother of the other boy] so that she could bring a change of clothing. At one point in the phonecall between the secretary and the mom, the secretary turned to me and said, "Did he ask to use the bathroom?" To which I exclaimed, "His mom doesn't think that he asked to go to the bathroom and I wouldn't let him?!?! Does she!?!?" Sure enough, the Principal walked by just then and asked if everything was alright. "Well, no." [Look of horror on the Principal's face] "I mean... everything's OK. There's really no need for you to worry. It isn't anything horrible."

During Science time we talked about THE PRESENT and I sent the students off to draw a picture of something they did that day. "When you are seated at your tables I'll pass out the small sheets of paper..." ... if I can find them. Yeah, I wasn't prepared. I was supposed to have gotten together some 4x6 sheets - I had already pre-cut a bunch for Tuesday [when we talked about THE PAST], but I couldn't find the leftovers. I ran over to the Substitute and whispered to her, with a nervous smile, "Do you know any songs that you could sing with the kids while I cut some pieces of paper...?" Just as she began to sing, I found the missing stack of paper. Crisis narrowly averted.

Oh, I almost forgot that the African-American girl in class, at one point in the day, turned to her neighbor and said, "I just don't like white people." [Yeah, she had to say it on the day that Miles was gone.]

Today was: Quite Good

I don't really have much time to write, I'm doing a Solo Day tomorrow because Miles has a seminar to go to [there will be a sub in the room with me - the sub that is always there] and I'm still trying to get everything planned for that. Brian saw me meticulously planning the day out in Word and was worried that I would have to do that EVERYDAY when I've got my own classroom. No, I won't have a 3 page [single spaced, 12 point font] outline of the day organized by half-hour blocks all the time, but, for right now, it helps me get my thoughts in order. Truthfully, I thought about not planning so thoroughly this time [I know that I don't REALLY need to anymore], just to see if I could go "without a net", but, I thought it best to be safe instead of sorry.

Miles asked me if I was excited about tomorrow. I said, "No, I wouldn't say that I'm excited, but, I'm pleased with myself because I'm not nervous at all." Really, for some reason, I'm not nervous. I'm not going to stress out about it - I'm just going to go in there and do it.

This morning, the Speech and Language therapist at school brought in a "book" that she made for the girl with autism. It's SO cool. Basically, it's a little spiral bound notebook with some phrases like "I feel" at the top of a page and then drawings of people smiling, crying, etc. There is a page of just letters, a page of numbers, a page with the words "I want to" at the top and pictures of various activities at the bottom, etc. In short, it's something that she can communicate to us with since she is non-verbal. I told the therapist that I wanted one. I'm seriously hoping that she makes one for me.

There was a 20 minute period of the day where things were really crazy. At 10am, we were scheduled to bring our class out into the lunchroom to have a dentist do a quick check of their teeth. It became my job to get a class roster and start taking kids out, 5 at a time, to let the guy look in their mouths. As I ran back to get the second of group of kids, the classroom door opened and 8 adults in suits and dresses, led by the school principal, walked in - it was a walk-through by some "higher-ups" in the District. There I am, yelling out kids' names, herding them to the door, a bunch of strangers are walking around inspecting what the kids were working on [it was Workshop time where the kids work independently on various literacy activities], and kids are screaming out, "Eric! How do I do this?!" Trust me, it was hilarious chaos. Ah, timing. Miles, who was conducting a guided reading group at the time, later called me "a star" for my performance.

I've got to finish planning and then turn on one of the 10 TV shows that I have recorded but haven't had the time to watch.

Today was: MUCH better than yesterday

I woke up this morning still in a funky mood. When I got to school I said to Miles, "You know, I was thinking this morning that this whole experience is just so stressful and weird. It's like a psychology experiment where you want to see how naturally someone [in this instance, ME] will act in an everyday environment. However, the environment is COMPLETELY CONTROLLED so you won't get any authentic data from the experiment." I just don't feel like I can completely be myself/my own teacher in someone else's classroom.

During Math center time [again, I'm planning and teaching Math at this point] I just KNEW that Miles thought that the room was WAY too loud. And, for a while, I kept running from table to table saying, "Shh! You're being a bit too loud." I wanted to please Miles, and have the room like Miles would've had the room, instead of doing things my own way. AND, when I stopped to look around, I noticed that, yeah, the room was quite loud [at least, louder than it normally is] BUT THE KIDS WERE ALL WORKING ON WHAT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON. One table of 4 boys was playing a memory game [we're going to start a Math chapter on one-to-one correspondence next week] and were SCREAMING every time they got a match, but, they were taking turns and playing nicely together - so, who can complain?

In addition to teaching Math, I also did the morning Phonics/Phonemic Awareness stuff out of the mandated reading instruction program. Today, the kids were introduced to Hattie the Horse:

Hattie is a hungry horse.
She's hungry for her hay, of course.
Hattie is a hungry horse.
She hurries home at noon.

These songs are just SO embarrassing. Like, I know these kids, and I always think that the AlphaFriends songs are TOTALLY insulting to the kids' intelligence, but they LOVE the songs. There is a picture card folder that comes with each AlphaFriend, showing them in some situation where they are surrounded by objects that start with their letter - in this case, H - and Hattie is there on her card with hay all around, hens above her head, and a horseshoe on the wall. I pointed out to the kids that horseshoes are supposedly good luck, but that Hattie would probably have bad luck because the horseshoe in her picture was pointing down, shaped like an arch, instead of hung on the wall like a U [so that the good luck wouldn't spill out]. There are so many spontaneous "teachable moments" in a day...

I ALSO taught a Science lesson today. We talked about TIME [the 4th dimension, not the magazine], with a focus on THE PAST. Thursday afternoon we will continue the discussion by chatting about THE PRESENT, and THE FUTURE. For today's lesson, I asked a bunch of questions about what the kids did when they were babies [in THE PAST], we generated a list, and then they went to their tables and drew small pictures of things that they did when they were younger [on Thursday they will draw pictures of things they do in THE PRESENT, and things that they want to do in THE FUTURE]. Naturally, while the kids were finishing up and bringing their drawings back to the rug to share around, the FIRE ALARM went off - all-school fire drill. Perfect timing - perfectly timed to ruin my perfectly planned lesson! Nah, actually, it didn't ruin things at all - the kids' pictures looked great, and I hung them up on a chart on the wall. After school Miles said that all of my lessons went really well. Today WAS much better than yesterday.

Today was: not my favorite day

Right now, I'm feeling burnt out and I kind of just want Student Teaching to be over. There, I said it. I'm just emotionally and physically tired, and the fact that I was pretty sick all this past weekend certainly doesn't help my current mood.

I was having a pretty good day - in fact, despite the fact that I was sick all weekend, I woke up feeling quite good and ready for the day - and then Math time came. For various reasons over the past week we haven't been able to finish up the current Math chapter [patterns and left-and-right] so Miles and I decided just to wrap it all up today. Initially, I practiced with the kids some pattern making and extending, and then some left-and-right stuff. Then, I had them go to their tables to get their pencils, Math books, and crayons and return to the rug. We did the last Math book page together, then read this little tear out Math book together, and then I had them go to their tables to take the end of the chapter assessment "test". Throughout all of this, I kept looking over at Miles and saw that he was getting more and more uncomfortable with the way things were going. Yeah, I could've had a bit more control over everything, and, yeah, there was a bit of chatter and unfocusedness going on amongst most of the kids, but, I wasn't going to freak out over it. When we went out to recess I walked over to Miles and said, "Sorry. I could tell that you didn't really like what was going on in there." Right then, he made some comment to the effect of, "Oh, yeah, well, it was a bit more chaotic than what I would like, but, it was good to be able to see that." Ok. After school, though, he really let me have it. No, he didn't yell or anything, but he let me know in clear words that he thought that it went pretty poorly. Honestly, like I said, I didn't think that it went THAT bad, and, I told him that I was kind of proud of myself because I didn't let the fact that things weren't going 100% as planned frustrate me to the point where my frustration would effect the rest of the lesson.

Miles had to leave early, and this left me sitting alone in the empty classroom at the end of a crappy day, feeling pretty lousy. I started feeling really insecure and wishing that the whole experience would just end. But, even when this is all over, and I've got my credential, will I be able to get a job? I'm also starting to worry about my Solo Week which will be the week after Thanksgiving - I mean, if I get this exhausted only teaching one or two lessons a day, and a Solo Day wipes me out for a whole week, how am I going to be able to withstand an entire week on my own? I don't know. I guess I'm just feeling vulnerable and exposed. I've got 3 lessons to teach tomorrow, and a Solo Day coming up on Thursday [Miles will be out at a seminar], and I'm feeling kind of down on myself and my abilities. Hopefully I will bounce back by tomorrow morning.

I wish I still smoked, because I could REALLY use a cigarette right now.

Thursday was: FUN

During Workshop time, some students got to work on the computer in the room. When they were done, the program they were using was still up and working, and for the REST OF THE DAY the computer periodically emitted the sounds of birds chirping. This pretty much set the tone for the day.

In the morning, instead of doing the usual "Let's meet an Alphafriend" phonics/phonemic awareness stuff, Miles wanted to go back and practice rhymes with the students. So, he did this great activity where the kids all drew monsters, adding body parts based on a rhyming sentence. First he started off by saying something like, "We're going to draw monsters, yes, that's what I said, so let's all start by drawing our monster a ___." The kids all yelled out "HEAD!" and then drew heads on their papers. With every body part, Miles drew his own on a large white board, and, amazingly, the girl with autism sat right down and drew a monster - sure, hers was a carbon copy of Miles', but she did it. AND, she used multiple colors! Up to this point, her color palate has been quite limited - in fact, the only color that she has really been working with is orange. On Wednesday, a mother of one of the students brought in a pinata [we had been talking about families and the different ways that families celebrate] which the kids got to smash open outside. As the pinata split open, candy and confetti spilled onto the playground. Thursday, during afternoon recess, the girl with autism spent the whole time picking up only the orange pieces of confetti.

Instead of doing Math on Thursday, we took our first trip to the COMPUTER LAB. The kids all got to log onto their own computers, and then play some "find the keys on the keyboard" type games. Since there was some goofy dialogue and songs in the game, each kid got a pair of earphones to wear - the girl with autism wanting NOTHING to do with her pair, though. All in all, I was WAY amazed at how well most kids were versed in a computer keyboard - the computer revolution IS upon us.

Friday afternoon, I went in to school because the kids had earned a "Kindness Party" to be given that afternoon. Miles said that he was going to bake some cookies and bring them in for the kids, but, I offered to make them instead - I like to bake, and I'd been wanting to make chocolate chip cookies for weeks. When I walked into the room, pan of freshly baked cookies in hand, the kids were gathered on the rug for a visit from the Oral Hygiene woman - she was presenting something referred to as "A Smile for All Seasons" [which continually makes me think of the song "Girl for All Seasons" from Grease 2]. Basically, she gave them all toothbrushes and showed them how to brush their teeth. As I walked to the storage room to hang up my coat the kids noticed me and started yelling out, "ERIC! ERIC'S HERE!!" I immediately shot the kids a "Hello,-but-go-back-to-what-you-were-doing" look, and the Tooth woman said, "Sounds like this Eric person is popular." Yeah, well... Miles came up to me and said, "You might want to hide the cookies away. I don't think the Tooth lady would appreciate being followed up by chocolate chip cookies." The girl with autism sat next to me and refused to stick the new, bright pink toothbrush in her mouth. Instead, she started brushing my hand with it. "No. Don't brush me. Practice brushing your teeth." She still wouldn't do it. For the kindness party, Miles turned the lights down and put on some dance music so that we could have a Dance Party. As luck would have it, one of the kids' parents AND the Principal chose this time to walk into the room. The Principal jokingly remarked, "Looks like a lot of academics are going on in here..." The girl with autism actually grabbed my hand and hopped around to the music - I was pretty surprised. As the day was winding down, Miles gave me a piece of cake that one of the kids' moms had brought in that morning. I bit into a piece and found something pink and blue and HARD. At first, I thought that maybe it was some kind of "hidden candy" cake, but just then I overheard one of the students in class mention something about "finding the baby" in their piece of cake. Turns out, it was some kind of traditional "Three Kings" cake that is eaten in January, and, normally, there is one plastic baby in the cake and if you find it in your piece, you get to have a party at the beginning of February. Wow, I feel so lucky. But, I just wish that someone had told me to be on the lookout for a small, plastic baby that I was in danger of either choking or breaking a tooth on.

Goodbye, Devo. Safe travels in the next world...

Today was: Quite Good

So, on Monday morning I actually went to school to take part in the teacher meetings - on my day off. Other student teachers in my seminar last week were saying, "No way am I going in for Teacher's In-Service on Monday. I'm not getting paid for this gig, so I'm not going." When one of the other student teachers at my school found out that I was going he said, "You're such a kiss-ass." To me, this whole Student Teaching experience is about so much more than just standing in a classroom with a bunch of students. I want to get the FULL experience out of this, and that includes doing everything [or, just about everything] that a teacher does each day - and, that includes doing professional development hours and days. Actually, I'm glad that I went because I got to go out for lunch with all of the teachers and the principal. We sat there, chowing down, while talking about stuff completely unrelated to school - like how old everyone is. I was WAY surprised to find out that most of the teachers [there are only 14 or so] are around my age. I guess that I just SAW everyone as older because they are "established" teachers. It got me thinking, though, that I could've had as many as 10 years or so under my belt if I had just finished the teaching program at IU. Oh, well, but then I wouldn't be having the rewarding experience that I'm having now, eh?

Miles told the principal that he was going to take next year off. He said that he was also going to mention that he thought that I should take over his class for him for a year, but, I don't know if he did or not. I'm kind of afraid to ask. Plus, I don't want to get overly eager or count on it too much. On Monday, one of the other Kindergarten teachers [hers is a bilingual class] announced to everyone that she is pregnant and due in May. I approached her and offered my congratulations and she said, "You don't speak Spanish do you?" I told her that I knew a bit. She said, "Oh, because I thought that you would be PERFECT for my job." I could always take a refresher course...

The Math stuff right now is all about getting the kids to recognize their right from their left. As I mentioned, there really aren't a whole lot of documented lesson plans to be found for teaching this subject. I did, however, find an idea for a lesson on getting kids to figure out whether they are right or left-handed. Basically, it involves having students cross their arms and note which arm is on top, clasp their hands together and note which thumb is on top, scratch their backs and note which arm/hand they use, etc. In theory, the dominant hand you use in these activities would point to your "handedness". Well, I mentioned to Miles this morning that I was going to try it with the kids at Math time and he seemed REALLY skeptical - like, he gave me one of those "Um... well... you could TRY it..." responses. Well, I'm pleased to say that after school Miles said, "That Math lesson went REALLY well - it was a really good idea." Yeah, it did go well.

The funniest comment that I heard today which I probably shouldn't find funny: Miles was trying to introduce the concept of words in the English language which don't conform to certain linguistic rules - he deemed these "Brat Words". The kids didn't seem to know what a "brat" was, so Miles said, "A brat is someone who doesn't follow the rules and, instead, does whatever they want to do." One of the more vocal [though incredibly sweet] boys in class yelled out, "Like [the girl with autism]!" I immediately felt like I should've gently scolded the kid for his comment, but...

Today was: Veterans' Day [NO SCHOOL]

Yesterday was: Teachers' In-Service [NO SCHOOL]

Happiest of Birthdays, Taragirl!

I went in to school yesterday for all the fun teacher meetings and stuff. Today, though, we went to Malibu Grand Prix and it wore me out, so I'm not going to talk about yesterday until tomorrow.

Last week was: LONG & EXHAUSTING

And, frankly, I needed a break from writing here after school every day. So, I took a break. Sue me.

It was conference week last week. I sat in on around 10 Parent/Teacher conferences and pretty much didn't say a word. I don't know, I guess that I just wasn't sure what I should say. I feel kind of at a disadvantage when it comes to talking about the progress of each kid because my attention is so scattered every day. Technically, when you think about it, I'm not only watching and observing 20 kids, but I'm also watching and observing Miles, and spending a lot of time watching and observing myself. When you are just the regular classroom teacher, you don't have another teacher to watch, and you [hopefully] have a lot more confidence than a student teacher, so you can spend the bulk of the day watching and observing the students. Another reason that I didn't say much was that 7 of the 10 conferences were in either Cantonese or Spanish - two languages that I don't speak. Ok, I took A LOT of Spanish in high school and college, so I can understand a good deal, but I really can't speak it at all. It really got me thinking, though, that if I want to teach in this city, I should really brush up on my Spanish. Miles did a program this summer in South America where he studied Spanish intensively for a couple of months, so, he conducted the conferences in Spanish himself. I want to be able to do that, too.

Thursday morning Miles said, "So, you've got a choice - you can either work with half the class looking at pictures of families around the world and then pointing them out on a map, or you can read a story about familes to the other half of the class." I thought that I'd go with the more "hands on" activity, so I picked the map activity. Oh, what a mistake that was. First of all, the only wall space left in the room [at student height] was back in the corner of the Play Area - this is the section of the room with a play refrigerator, sink, stove, pots and pan, fake food, dress-up clothes, hats, etc. Naturally, the first group of kids came over to the Play Area and immediately started playing with all of the Play Area stuff. "We're not playing with that stuff right now! Look up here at this map." Ten kids packed into a small corner means that not everyone can see a map posted on the wall - in turn, this means that kids will poke and push each other, jockeying for position so that they can see. "Hey, look at the picture of this family! They live in Ethiopia!" "I can't see!" "Here's the picture. Now, can you find Ethiopia on the map?" Flurry of fingers jockeying for positions on the map - kids elbowing other kids in the face while trying to reach the map. Before the second group of kids came over, I moved all of the play appliances off to the side [I'd learned my lesson], but there really wasn't anything that I could do to make up for the lack of space. Thankfully, another adult that was in the room saw what was going on so she brought out a globe so that students standing in back could find Ethiopia as well. Oh, and don't forget that we have a student in a wheelchair - and, one of her Moms was there with her yelling out, "Excuse me, everyone! Could you all move aside so that _____ can see the map?" I really wanted to say to her, "Hey, don't worry! NOBODY can see the map!" Ugh. During lunchtime I said to Miles, "That map lesson was a disaster of EPIC proportions. I mean, it was AWFUL." He said to me, "Yep. I knew that it would be."

Thursday afternoon, because we are in the midst of a theme on Families, the Grandmother of a girl in the class came in to speak about her family and their Chinese culture [she even brought in chow mein for the kids to eat]. She was a SWEET old woman who was super nice and fun. As she was leaving Miles said to the class, "I learned today that Grandmothers around the world are the same - loving and sweet." It brought to mind my Grandmother that passed away a couple of years ago, and if there hadn't been 20 kids and a couple of other adults in the room right then, I would've bawled my eyes out - as it was, tears immediately came to my eyes, and my heart ached.

I forgot to mention that I went to this thing [with a woman in my program] called The Children's Book Project. I've been freaking out lately because I'm going to have my own classroom VERY soon and I have NOTHING. I have no supplies of any kind, and, most importantly, I have no books for a classroom library. Well, thanks to the Children's Book Project, I am slowly building a classroom library. Here's the deal: you go to this house on the first Saturday of the month and down in the basement are BOXES and BOXES of books - and - you sign in, stating your name and the school that you work for, and then YOU TAKE AS MANY BOOKS AS YOU WANT... FOR FREE. How cool is that? On my first trip [you'd better believe that I'm going again next month] I walked away with over 125 books. Sure, a lot of them are REALLY old, and kind of beat up, but books are books and I'm not complaining.

The mother of the girl with autism got my attention the other day as we were sitting on the rug and said, "I want to thank you for helping my daughter. She likes you a lot, and talks about you all the time at home."

I had the students find patterns in the room during Math time on Wednesday, which they then recorded in their Math Journals. A couple of kids looked at their shirts and recorded those patterns - one kid noted that the pattern on his shirt was "red stripe, BURGUNDY stripe, grey stripe, black stripe, red stripe, etc." Yeah, the kid actually used the word BURGUNDY. Most amazing, though, was the girl who found a pattern on the bathroom door. We have a kid bathroom in the room, and there are pockets on the outside that read "Open" [with a green circle on it] and "Closed" [with a red circle on it] - when a kid goes into the bathroom they move the marker from the "Open" pocket to the "Closed" pocket, and then move it back to "Open" when they are finished. This one girl drew green and red stripes on her paper, and then noted that it is an ongoing pattern since people keep moving the marker from the green pocket to the red pocket and then back to the green pocket over and over again all day. Whoa.

This coming week in Math we are talking about "Left and Right". I have SCOURED the web for ideas on how to get kids to learn their right hand from their left and I've pretty much come up empty. I guess that I will just have to stamp a red bear on everyones' right hand and then we'll do the Hokey Pokey.

I got my RICA results back on Friday. I PASSED! Basically, this means that I AM DONE! I mean, I AM JUST A MONTH AND A HALF AWAY FROM BEING A FULLY CREDENTIALED TEACHER IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA! The only things that I have to do now for everything to be 100% complete and in order are: finish Student Teaching, and go down to the Credential processing office on campus and say, "I'm done. Submit my paperwork for my credential." That's it.

Today was: LONG

10 hours long, to be exact. During the parent conference that went from 4:30-5pm, my brain and body had pretty much checked out.

This means that I'm not going to write much more today. No conferences scheduled for tomorrow, so I'll do some catch up writing then.

Oh, I had another Solo Day today. Naturally, while it was in progress, I thought, "This blows. I'm doing a horrible job." Going over the day with Miles afterschool, though, I really couldn't pinpoint anything that was glaringly awful. Lessons learned today: I need to be MUCH less critical of myself, and I need to not expect things to be perfect. I can plan a day with every i dotted, and t crossed, and it will NEVER go off without a hitch. There will always be something that won't go as planned, and I need to be OK with that.

MUCH more tomorrow - promise.

Today was: Quite Good

I didn't leave school until 5:45pm - Parent/Teacher conferences are this week. The good thing is that we get out of school an hour early everyday. The bad thing is that I have to stay at school until 5:45pm.

I'm doing another solo day tomorrow. My supervisor is coming. I'm feeling COMPLETELY unprepared. Miles wants me to come in tomorrow morning half-an-hour earlier than I usually do - he REALLY wanted to leave right away after tonight's last conference - so, I didn't get to prepare the room this afternoon for tomorrow.

Stuff happened today, but I'm not going to talk about it now. Instead, I'm going to freak out about [and plan for] tomorrow.

Thursday was: Very Good

Again, a really good week. I'll tell you what, this Student Teaching experience has been WAY different from the one that I did in Indiana 10 years ago. When I did Student Teaching the first time around, there were a couple of days here and there that I thought were really good, and the rest of the days I STRUGGLED to get out of bed in the morning - even calling in sick from time to time when I REALLY didn't want to go. Yeah, that was pretty much a day-to-day [even, some days, HOUR-TO-HOUR] rollercoaster, one day I would think, "This feels good. I'm doing the right thing with my life." The next day would be, "I HATE THIS. I JUST WANT TO QUIT. WHY AM I HERE?" Even now, this time around, I'm not SPRINGING out of bed each day thinking, "WOW! The sun is shining! The birds are singing songs just for me!" - and, yes, there are days where I would rather not get out of bed. But, I have a WAY better attitude about it all, it feels "right" 95% of the time, and, as I've mentioned before, the bad days are really all THAT bad.

A kid [strangely enough, the son of the witch... heehee, that sounds like I'm cursing, eh?] from our class BIT a kid from anothor class out on the playground Thursday afternoon. This is the boy who has the [technically undiagnosed] condition whereby he rocks when we are sitting on the rug, he blows on other kids, he contorts his face with his hands, and, when he gets angry he gets REALLY angry. Apparently this other kid kept pushing our kid [the only Anglo kid in our class] and our little guy hauled off and dug his teeth [FIRMLY] into the shoulder of the other boy. I looked, and it was bad. Skin was cut, and there was major bruising. The kid who got bit came up to me and told me all about it and I, prompty, went to Miles and said, "Um, this seems to be under your jurisdiction." Well, I can handle kids calling each other names and lightly kicking each other, but when there is bloodshed... well, that's what Miles gets paid to deal with.

As a whole class, we did a lesson on the difference between FICTION and NONFICTION books - or, as we also referred to them, INFORMATIONAL and MAKE BELIEVE books. One of Miles' books that we sorted was about sunflowers, and the second he showed the book to the class I thought, "GIRL WITH AUTISM." [Well, ok, in my head I didn't say "girl with autism" but actually referred to her by name...] She LOVES flowers, she draws flowers all the time, and spends a lot of her afternoon recess time looking at the flowers [including sunflowers] that are growing in the school garden off to the side of the playground. When it came time for the students to have free-reading time, I picked up the sunflower book, walked over to the girl with autism's table [knowing that she probably wouldn't have followed directions and gotten out a book of her own], and asked her if she wanted to look at the book with me. She nodded. So, we sat there for the entire time, looking at the pictures and figuring out the lifecycle of a sunflower. At recess that afternoon, she poked at me and then pointed to the sunflowers on the playground. I walked over to them with her and said, "Yeah, those are just like the sunflowers that we saw in the book, huh?" We were over there looking at the flowers for a good 5 minutes when this other girl in class [who hangs on me all the time] ran over and tugged at my shirt saying, "Will you play tag with me?" Without missing a beat, the girl with autism pushed the the other girl away as if to say [because, she still has yet to utter a single word at school], "Um, he's hanging out with ME right now!"

Math went very well on Thursday. Actually, after school that day he said, "Math went much better today than yesterday..." To which I, naturally, exclaimed, "What was wrong with Math yesterday!?!" Ah, my insecurities. So, for Thursday's Math lesson I had the kids sit in a circle and I started a pattern in the middle of the circle using little, plastic, colored bears [red, yellow, green, blue] and I had each person, in turn, come to the middle of the circle and place a bear to continue the pattern. It was fantastic - they totally got it. Next, they went to their seats and, using the same bears, planned out a pattern of their own which they would then stamp onto a paper article of clothing [I guess I described this on Wednesday, huh?]. Again, I thought we had a class of HAMS, but, it was like pulling teeth trying to get kids to stand up and "walk the runway", showing off their pattern-adorned headband, tie, or bracelet. All in all, yes, I suppose that it did go a bit better than Wednesday's Math lesson.

I went in to school on Friday afternoon for the class Halloween party. Thursday night I got home from seminar and looked in our wardrobe to see if there was ANYTHING that I could crudely fashion into a costume of sorts. A couple of shirts immediately jumped out at me: Brian's "racecar driver" looking shirt, and both my Nabisco and US Postal Service shirts. In the end, I thought that it would be easiest to pull off the "mailman" look. Friday morning I put on some grey pants, the mailman shirt, and stuffed a shoulder bag full of junkmail - tada, I was a mailman. Sure enough, though, when I walked into the classroom a bunch of kids kept asking, "Where is your costume?" Um, I'm wearing it! A USPS shirt and a bag full of junkmail! A mailman! Who am I kidding? I still don't like Halloween, and I DREAD having to put together a Halloween party for my students next next year [and EVERY YEAR AFTER]. The kids in their costumes were awfully cute, though. And, they were SO excited [although probably just from all of the sugar...].