Irony of the "Fire" Room

At one of the school I taught at, my room had a blue-green and white checked pattern tile floor. It was interesting to have kindergartners in that room because I would occasionally catch them hopping hopscotch. The rumor was that the floor had that tile because, at one time, a student set a fire in the coatroom. Traditionally, in older buildings, the coat room would have two doors, one on either end. This coat room was open leading me to believe that the story was true.

Yesterday, I rearranged the furniture in my current room in order to be able to use the projector with my computer. The principal stopped by today and liked how I had rearranged my current room. During our conversation we shared how we would often change the furniture around and then sometimes change it again the next day if the traffic did not flow the way we wanted it. Somehow the conversation led to a previous school I had been at, and she had been at also. I shared that I was in the room with the checked floor. She revealed that it had once been her classroom also! What a coincidence!

Here is a sample of the floor!

Student Teacher

Last year I decided that it was about time that I gave back.  I have been teaching about 10 years and have never had a student teacher.  There seem to be many student teachers floating in and out at my school that the next time there was a request for teachers to mentor student teachers, I signed up.  It may not have been my brightest idea in that I am teaching a new grade level this school year that I have never taught and so it is a learning curve for me also, but she came along for the ride.

I got my first student teacher about a month ago.  This was only a five week experience; she will do her real student teaching, where she teaches solo for four weeks, in the spring.  In this experience she was to teach two social studies lessons, two science lessons, and get use to transitions and see how different classrooms at different grade levels run.  She has been wonderful, and I can totally see her in a classroom of her own someday.  We have gotten along well, and we have been able to transition smoothly when teaching/handling the class.

Her last day is next week, and I will miss her.  I do realize now that I somewhat miss having an assistant no matter who that person was.  I like someone in the room to co-teach with me, to help me out with individual students, or to lend a hand with projects that need completed.  I was lucky to have a good experience with my first student teacher.

Full Moon

The last two days have been a challenge with both my own children and my students.  There is something about a full moon that causes more energy than normal.  The children are more talkative, hyper, and just in general, LOUD!

Today, I had an activity planned that would require manipulatives that I just could not do.  The extra equipment would have caused mayhem in the room, and I just couldn't handle the extra chaos in the room.  We had to go with a quiet activity in order to bring quiet to the room.  The rest of the week will probably not be any better due to changes in routine.  Tomorrow, there is a coat giveaway and on Friday, a fire drill!

How I look forward to the weekend this week and starting over again next week!

Two Senseless Acts of Violence

Back in May one of my friends, her family, and neighbors were having a cookout/party on a Friday night. They were outside and it was about 10pm when two boys showed up in the yard and said that the group was making too much noise. My friend's husband apologized and as one of the boys left on his own, led the other boy from the yard while promising to keep the noise down. About 10 minutes later the boys came back armed with a baseball bat and a golf club. One of them asked who touched my brother and when my friend's husband came forward, he began to beat the husband on the head with the baseball bat. The other beat the man with the golf club and when they were done, they ran away. The boys were chased, caught, and held until the police got there.

My friend's husband was taken to the hospital by ambulance and had to have brain surgery. He will have to take anti-seizure medicine for the rest of his life and although he has some minor physical issues, he is back to work.

When this happened, I thought to myself, who has the right to do that to another human being? How does making too much noise warrant a beating on the head with a bat? These boys are 17 and 18 years old, and why are you ruining your life over something so minor? I had a really hard time with this event because I know the guy and I know the type of person that he is. I couldn't believe that this had happened to my friend's family, and she lives not too far away from me.

Well, last weekend I went to the funeral of one of my parents from when I taught. She was a major presence in our school because she was PTO president and a parent consultant. Last year when I left teaching, she was 8 months pregnant and when she came in to ask who needed help packing up, the office sent her to my room. She spent the whole day in my room, and I really appreciated the help. I had her son the year before, and she was a very involved parent in her children's education.

The weekend before she passed away, her family was having trouble with their neighbor who did not like her children riding their bikes over his lawn. When asked to come out and talk to an adult about the situation, the neighbor came out with his gun. He shot up the family car as the family hid behind it, and somehow the mother got shot in the neck. She was unresponsive when the paramedics got there and never regained consciousness. Her organs were donated, and she was taken off life support a few days later. She was a mother of four and 29 years old. (The man who shot her had a standoff with police and then committed suicide.)

When this second event happened, it was surreal to me because you always hear about people and tragedies that happen on the news; you just never think that you will know someone that the news is talking about. But, I did not have as hard of a time dealing with this event as I did when my friend's husband was beaten. Some of my friends that I taught with were in disbelief and shocked that this had happened to such a wonderful person. I was somewhat numb to the event, I think, because all the feeling that my friends were experiencing with this mom's death, I had felt when my friend's husband was beaten.

C C-B, you were taken too soon, may you rest in peace.

Subbing

I have spent some of my free time substitute teaching.  I have found that I enjoy it, and I really do miss my classroom kids.  I like the variety of subbing and getting to know different grade levels and their expectations.

It is amazing to see the differences between the urban school district where I spent my teaching career, and the suburban school district where I current sub.  In the urban school district it seems that there was a great deal of concentration on social norms and school norms that the suburban children seems to come to school knowing.  Walking in the hall is a different experience in the suburbs.

The suburbs seem to have a great deal of diversity and proof that their taxpayer money is well-spent.  The children are generally the same no matter where you go, but the accommodations that are provided by the suburban school district for their children are wonderful.

One day I may have my own classroom full of kids again, but I am enjoying my small snippets with kids.

PS

I actually ran into one of my students that I had in Kindergarten last week.  He is now in the third grade and seems to be doing well.  Good for him!

Food for Thought

I was sitting in the waiting room of the clinic where I took Riley for an OT evaluation filling out paperwork when I started listening to this girl talking to her dad. She was saying how she was not going to her meeting tonight because it would not count against her. Her dad replied that she needed to go, and she said that she did not see the purpose because she was attending the meeting for something that was not her fault. She sounded like she took the rap for someone else, and now, she was being punished for it by having to go to this weekly meeting. Her dad was telling her that she needed to go anyway because she needed to take responsibility even if she did not do it.

Anyway, the dad got up to look for something and when he came back, the girl started listing off the schools that she had attended, and the last one that she mentioned happened to be the one where I had taught. I looked up then to see who she was and realized that she was in my first kindergarten class. She was a child that got her way a lot and missed school for no reason other than she did not want to go. How do I know this, well, that year, I happen to have a classroom in the front hallway of the school, and she would come with her mom to bring her brother and sister to school, but then she would just go home with mom rather than stay at school. The sad thing was that she was a bright kid with a great deal of potential, but because she did not attend school regularly, she did not make many friends. Her classmates quickly advanced, and that made her not want to attend school even more. No amount of convincing on my part or hearings with the attendance program could get this girl to attend school regularly.

When I look at her now, I see what people mean by kids needing limits and you, as the parent, needing to be the parent and set those limits.