The Parents Are Coming!

Tomorrow night is Open House. I have no student work in the hall, and I'm not sure exactly what I want to say to my students' parents. Hopefully, more will come than did on Back to School night when I had 2 families stop by to meet me. I had a great day today and my class did also. My new TA is in place and my challenge child was absent, so things went more smoothly than they have in a week or so. We actually did almost everything on my plans today and the classroom environment stayed quite positive. Tomorrow we give the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test followed by the TPRI the next day. I had my first somewhat Spanish conversation with a parent today. I sent home progress reports on Thursday to each child describing his or her progress in letter and sight word recognition, writing first name, counting and mathematical concepts, and classroom conduct. One mom brought it to me and asked for a translation which I was able to give to her satisfaction. I'm pretty happy about that. Also, I learned that the new Microsoft Word can translate documents into Spanish using WorldLingo, so I'm expecting better parent/teacher communications from this point forward. Now, if I can just get things ready for tomorrow night...

Setback & Highlights

This week was short, but difficult. We surplused a teacher, and my best bud, on Wednesday. She moved to another school who had too many students, because we had too few in our Kindergarten classes. This meant that we also received new students in our classes as her students were divided between the remaining classes. In some ways, it felt like starting over. My students were much closer to tears than they have been in a while, and there is much arguing over seating and other territory-type issues. I still do not have a TA. I was alone on Monday and had a sub. for Tuesday until today. It was great to have another warm body in the room when I had to chase my challenge child around the room or down the hall, but otherwise, it seems like she created more problems than she solved. She worked hard though, and did her best, and for that I am thankful. Next week, I should be getting my friend's TA as a permanent helper. However, she has been absent a lot with illness and I am wondering how this will work out. Hopefully, she will be fully recovered and ready to go by Monday. I'm looking forward to establishing a routine with someone.

Other highlights of this week and last include the Kindergarten Olympics where my friend's class and my class "competed" in an obstacle course to practice using position words such as over, under, top, middle, bottom, above & below. This week, we had three community helpers come to our classes - a doctor, a police officer (female), and a bank representative. The latter was a young man who had attended our school as a boy. That was cool! Next week, we will write our Thank You letters.

Finally, to end the day, I opened the boys' bathroom to find a huge puddle of water which had begun to run over into the classroom next door. There was no sign of where the water was coming from, so the custodian wetvacced the water and all seems to be well. Tomorrow is Professional Development Waiver Day - many meetings and no students. I'm hoping to retool, refocus, and re-energize. Also, I found Psalm 35:1-10, perfect!

Growth!!

Since my teaching assistant resigned last week, things went from bad to worse. I was looking forward to having some days with the classroom to myself. I thought I would be able to put some things in place so that when my new teaching assistant came on board I would have a better idea of what I needed from her. Instead, I discovered just how much help my last TA was. You never know what you have until it's gone. So I spent Monday and Tuesday just trying to hold things together as my one wild child ran around the room, destroyed classroom materials, pinched her classmates, and ran down the hall whenever we traveled. To make matters worse, our upper grades had benchmark testing this week and we were not allowed to leave the room for specials or go to outdoor recess Tues. - Thur. Also, it rained...a lot. So you can see how this created a recipe for disaster.

I prayed a lot, and God sent me Ms. Reed - a wonderful 76-year-old retired teacher who had no problem telling my students how important it was for them to sit still and pay attention so that they could learn. Also, I spoke with the counselor, assistant principal (who is in charge of discipline), principal, and the last year's PreK teacher about my challenging student. On Wednesday, I hit a wall and could not even begin to think about what I should do next even thought my lesson plans were on my desk. Everything started falling into place that day, and I am happy to report that we began to have productive afternoons on Wednesday. We have now had three good days. One of my students who could not even hold a pencil is now writing his name and other words. I have forged what I think will be a good relationship with a parent who called my principal early in the week with some concerns. I was able to step somewhat into my role of department chair, which I had no idea how to do just last week. I have no idea what next week will bring since Ms. Reed will not return, but I have hope!

Stormy Seas

My second week was somewhat eventful, mostly because my teaching assistant resigned. One of my students sprained her ankle and came to school hopping on one foot. We borrowed the wheelchair from the nurses office to get around school. She went back to the doctor today, so we may be back to normal tomorrow. I'm feeling discouraged because I don't feel like we are where I'd like to be after 2 weeks. I'm not getting everything done that I need to accomplish each day, our afternoons are still really rough, and I have one student who refuses to stay with us. This was a particular problem today when I was without a second grownup and had to be sure we all arrived safely at our various destinations. I asked my daughter's Kindergarten teacher, who is quite experienced and very wonderful, when my class would start to listen to me. She answered that it would be six weeks, and she was very serious. So, maybe we aren't so far behind after all. The next few days should be interesting as our classes will be restricted to our own classrooms for specials and recess. The older grades are taking benchmarks under simulated TAKS test conditions. If it continues to rain, we may have some mutiny among the Kindergarten classrooms. I'd better plan some art activities and such to help relieve the cabin fever.

Minor Episode

Well, we're coming to the end of our second week. I'm trying to decide if my kiddos have come along two weeks worth or if I'm already behind. I think I'm too tired to figure it out right now. I have a lot of stories already, but I only have time for one. Last week, I sent my first child down to the office one morning (with a friend) because she was overly tardy and this is our procedure in such cases. The girls returned seemingly without incident, official paper in hand. During lunch, the office assistant came in to tell me that the two had come into the office asking about a "heart attack." We had one staff member fall victim to stroke while at school, so the assistant was understandably alarmed and continued to ask for details as she followed the girls back to my class. About half-way down the main hall, she discovered that one of the girls had come to school late and that I had sent them to the office for a paper - a tardy pass.

Payday, Friday, Crushing Blow, and Tea Time!

Yesterday was our first department chair meeting. For some reason, I was asked to fill that position for Kindergarten. It's kind of funny to me because I'm not the most experienced or the most motherly or the best organized or the most inspiring or the best yes-man, but my principal assures me that she chose me purposefully. I kind of think she got me confused with someone else. However, my point was about the meeting. I found out that our team should be meeting pretty regularly, maybe everyday, at least until things settle into a bit more of a routine. So, we met today. It was a good meeting and we covered much ground. Yesterday was also payday. Everyone was pretty excited about that. It felt really good to have worked so hard and made it through the first week of school and see that nice amount go into the bank. Someone said, "That check looked good!" That about covers it.

I was so excited about today being a great day. Not just because it was Friday, but because it was the first Friday, and because I had a kind of laid-back day planned with a few special events included. It started with a wonderful breakfast courtesy of the admin. team. (At my school, a different team provides breakfast on the Friday following payday each month.) Then class started with a new plan because there were several different instances of crying in my room yesterday. I was frustrated, the kids were not having enough controlled fun, and I did not enjoy the climate in my classroom. I was determined to end the week well so that the students would be able to spend the long weekend decompressing on a positive note. I thought I was pretty successful. I had several more "I love you"s and hugs and even a few "I love Kindergarten!"s, so I was pretty excited. That is, until I asked for my T.A.'s opinion of the day. She felt that it was not a good day, and that it was far too chaotic. Now I can't decide if she is correct, or overly tired, or just lacking in vision for the big picture. After all, it is only the first week of school. It made me wish I hadn't asked. I don't know if I will ask again. I do need to implement a few more things in the classroom. For example, I haven't opened any play centers, and I think we need to have those to look forward to at the end of the day. We will start Writer's Workshop next week as well. I have the long weekend to make plans, so enough of that for now.

The day ended pretty well. Our staff celebrates the Friday after pay day together with tea time (read happy hour). I don't go to bars and rarely even drink, but it sounded like fun so I went. It was. I learned a few interesting, personal-type stories about my principal which is good because she seems more human now and maybe I will be less nervous. Then, I spent a half-hour discussing Fort Worth food and restaurants. This sounds pretty boring, but I'm old and not that exciting, so it was a good time. I would have liked to have stayed longer, but I've barely seen my family this week. Yea for Labor Day!

Labor Day is Coming!

Tomorrow is Friday and my feet are so happy that we have a long weekend. This has been an amazing, but exhausting week. I sat in a meeting today and heard stories from teachers in other grade levels about how they had been collaborating and implementing strategies to improve the learning climate after a pretty crazy first day. The transformation from Monday to today is hard to believe. We've each had some frazzled moments, or days, but we keep moving forward. As for me, I keep adding layers of structure as I discover more about my students. I feel so bad for them because they are very young and they are completely out of the habit of going to school. So after about noon they are hungry and tired and have lost their focus. I keep adjusting my activities to suit their level of endurance, but I haven't found the right mix yet and that is frustrating for me (and for them). We did make our literacy boxes yesterday. Right now, they have self-selected books in them for independent reading. My class loves books! Monday we will add writer's journals. We started Student of the Day and they love that, too! Tomorrow we visit the library and the guidance counselor is coming. That should break up our day quite nicely. Next week, I think we will move recess to the afternoon.