New day

Today was a pretty good day. After yesterday today it had to be. Because of yesterday I woke up seriously considering calling in sick, I just didn't want to go. Why don't I rant about yesterday and then can focus on the positive side to end this AWESOME BLOG on an positive note.


Yesterday was voting day at Baker Heights. Because of this, my kids came straight to my room at 7:55 instead of the usual 8:20 when school starts. They (and I) were thrown for a loop when we found out about this change that morning. Is that good??? Oh yeah, and its raining. Here's a little formula from my observations: (Kindergartners + Rain = crazy bad stuff will go down.) Anyways, I had them write in their journals, "NOT TALKING," which of course gives Arial the permission to shout cross the room, "Deandre is takling!!" Typical...


Anyways, the morning went well, we worked on some reading and I showed them what their library center should look like. My principal walked in at the PERFECT time when they were all at the rug (holy $#!%) and participating. So that was one good thing I guess. So then I bring them to P.E. Let the Day begin.


Walking to PE they are sliding on the wet cement. One of our main goals for the school is Saftey. Apparently it is very safe to have 5 year olds sliding on wet cement on their way to PE. I dind't know if you knew, but kindergarteners are very excited about things that are different, so the fact that there was water on the ground, and that it was 'new' water pretty much constitues hitting, cutting in line, stopping in the line and most importantly, "GETTING OUT OF FLIP AND ZIP!!"

Flip and zip is how they are supposed to walk in line, with one finger over their lips (they apparently can't talk with their finger when its over their mouths) and the other hand on the adjacent elbow. So they were crazy in line and I was not very happy.



Remember my 'kindergarteners + rain = crazy bad stuff will happen' equation? Well I have a few more for you: 1. Rain = no flip and zip. 2. No flip and zip = 5 year olds talking in line. 3. Talking in line = making fun of Xavier. 4. Making fun of Xavier = Xavier crying. 5. Xavier crying = Xavier leaving the line and trying to walk back to the room = Mr. Rushing running after Xavier like a fool to chastise him for leaving the line. After doing all of these equations, Mr. Rushing is tired so then decides to walk back and yell at all the students who are making fun of Xavier who then also begin to cry and try to leave the line. See where this is going? All because of the damn rain.


We're still on our way to P.E at this point in the day. Its only 9:30....Awesome. And guess what, the P.E. teacher is not here today and there is no sub for her so I get to run PE from my room, during my time off. So we walk back sliding, and yelling about the rain. For the record I was not yelling about the rain, I was yelling about how they were yelling. Is that good?.... So we had PE in my room, we did some jumping jacks and toe touches. No biggie. Then to the rest of reading which went allright. Then to lunch, which of course requires us to walk, outside, in the rain, again. Same story, I won't repeat it.



So because the voting booths are set up we (the students) could not eat in the cafeteria. Guess where we went because it was raining? Back to the room to eat our food, have recess (which it seems like the students were trying to do for the rest of the day) and finish our day. My lunch is at 11:15. School ends at 7:45...I mean 3:15. I never knew freudian slips could happen while writing. Anyways, we ate lunch in the room which was actually pretty good both behaviorally and meal-wise. It was corn dog day. I like corn dogs. I bought a lunch for 3.25. I got 2 corn dogs with my meal. The kids just got one. Thats what I get for going to college and getting into TFA....2 corndogs. I'm not going to lie, it was the best part of my day.



After lunch I needed to give an assessment. This is a 21 question reading assessment I am supposed to give to my students with my cirriculum. Apparently the Treasures cirriculum doesn't account for the fact that I'M TEACHING KINDERGARTEN.



So I pass them out. Every time I pass out papers I give 4 copies per table so one person can pass them out to everyone else in their table. Apparently this is the most important thing to do. So I have students reaching as high as they can asking me if they can pass out the papers to their table. My rule is that I never pass it out to people who ask. This may be a little counter-intuitive, but if I gave it to the ones who yelled, screamed, ran, jumped, and reached the most I would have a class full of kids who do that.........oh yeah, I still do.



Anyways, the kids who want to pass it out the most don't get to, so their mad. The ones who do get to pass it out give it to everyone, and when it comes to the kid who wanted to, (Kentriel) he decides to throw it off of his desk.



So the first part of the assessment is reading comprehension. This is where I read a story and the students answer questions about the reading. I read (yelled) the story over their talking, and repeated again, and again for those students who either didn't get it, weren't paying attentinon, or had thrown their paper off their desk. So after 10 minutes of me reading the story I read the first question.

I got through about 5 questions at this pace. 50 minutes down....this is a long time for kindergarteners to sit down, but WE HAD TO GET THROUGH THIS TEST. Daveion decides this is a good time to stand up and walk across the class to take Kentreil's pencil. Kentreil just got over the fact that he didn't get to pass out the papers, but then gets mad at Daveion and yanks the pencil back, throws his paper off his desk and starts yelling at Daveion to not take his pencil. So I finally get Daveion in his own desk by himself so it won't happen again, I turn around to address the class and Eleisha's crying, Kentreil is sitting under his table and Deandre has somehow disappeared from his seat only to re-appeared on the other side of the room making kissing faces to Karissa who begins screaming, "Leave Me Alone."

Once I get these issues taken care of I return to administering (yelling) the test questions. We have to connect the pictures from the first thing that happens to what happens next, circle the words with the beginning sound /m/, and middle sound /a/ (short a), and cross out the things that are the biggest.

So after 3 hours of administering a test to my class both they and I were exhausted. Because we start our afternoon at noon it was now 3:00, time to go. I learned the hard way not to give a test with 21 5-year-olds in one sitting.

So after yesterday I guess any day would be a good day if we're comparing days. Today was still filled with fun, it was just a little less intense.

Hope you enjoyed the long blog, I'll try and be better about getting more up for those of you who are interested.

Week ?

Ok,

So the end of another week. This week in reading we were working on the letter "t" which makes the /t/ sound, blending the letters 's', 'a', and 't' together to say the word sat, and writing (drawing/scribbling) about different vehicles.

This is how it went. Apparently the letter t not only makes the /t/ sound, it also makes the /s/, /p/, "he hit me", "I'm bleeding", "BA" and "MR. RUSHING" sounds. Even though I never taught any of those other sounds they really seemed to catch on to those parts of the letter t. There were 4 students (out of 20) who successfully blended the word sam, while the others attempted to do so by re-arranging my library, taking things off of my desk, un-tieing their shoes, taking off their shoes, smelling their shoes, throwing their shoes, writing on their shoes, or hitting their neighbor. I really fee like they got the idea of blending by the end of the week it was wonderful! Oh and our vehicles! Our vehicles were actually pretty good. Kemon, who rarely ceases to impress me, drew a picture of himself on a school bus colored yellow, in the lines, with uncolored windows and tires colored black. He wrote the words, "I can see the str" on the top. Str stands for store, which I did prompt the class beforehand, but I was still impressed. Karissa decided to draw a picture of herself and her mom, that was also great.

Today was especially crazy for me for some reason. I went into the day expecting to give an assessment to my students on how to order numbers between 1 and 10 counting both forward and backward

It went fairly smoothly until my first 3 finished and still 7 hadn't started yet. So while I'm trying to help the ones that havn't started yet get on their feet, the three that have finished begin to get out of their seats. This leads to their idea that they can run around my classroom and steal pencils from other people who are still trying to take their test. This is problem number one, but its also leads to problem number two, when the other student screams, "gimme back my pencil!!!" and starts grabbing and hitting the theif. So I take away the thief's recess, and the theif then begins to cry a piercing cry that I'd swear matches the sound that wolf cubs make when they have been lost in the arctic desert and know that the only way to reach their parents is by creating the most annoying sound possible. Maybe my kids are trying to reach their parents.... Anyways, then Caitlin decides to get out of her desk and take her test on another desk, Deandre sticks his tongue out at Arial who just got her pencil stolen, Arial screams, "DEANDRE IS MAKING FUN OF ME," and Tanyjah decides she's done, walks over to my desk and begins re-arranging the pictures that are sitting on top of my desk. So in order to curtail some of the madness, I decide to say forcefully, "sit down with your heads on your desks," which worked for a bit.

There was one good part of the day though, during calendar math I had about 90% of my students with their pointer fingers up counting with me. It was pretty good. That's one party of the day that things are starting to work. The kids come in, put up their homework folders, put up their backpacks, sit down and start writing. Its actually pretty cool and I can have them quiet for the first 20 minutes of the day which is amazing. If only I could cut and paste that part of the day to the rest of the day it would be awesome. Anyways, that's what's going on with me now. It's tough, and I feel lost most of the time, but we're making it work. Next Monday is a new day right?

Welcome to your life Mr. Rushing / Rush / Rushington

So....I never thought I'd be teaching kindergarten. I also never thought I'd be a blogger. Kindergarten teachers were for the Jim Brewer character in Half Baked type who don't have a care in the world, love 5-year-olds and are high for 15 out of the 17 hours their awake. Kindergarten teachers, in my mind were basically exemplified babysitters teaching how to be nice. And bloggers....oh bloggers. Bloggers in my opinion are post-emos who are not quite over their teenage angst, but have found a love for the English language and have finally found their way to communicate with the world...THANK YOU GMAIL BLOG/BLOGGER/BLOGSPOT. No one in their right mind would ever want to read about someone else's life and experiences over the internet EVERY SINGLE DAY. I just didn't get it.

Anyway, I never thought I'd be one of THESE, but here I am, writing about my troubled kindergarten class (life) so my mom, sister, dad and THE WORLD can empathize with me and read about my awesome classroom every day. I won't pretend that I have any sort of literary skill, so don't be too harsh if you see some grammatical mestakes or spellings wrongly done badly.

Oh, and sorry to those who I may have offended with my pre-conceived notions of kindergarten teachers or bloggers. I am wrong and am now one of you, hope you let me into the club.