Every time this one kid uses the bathroom…..

He has to ask me before going in, if there is going to be a fire drill while he’s in there……  And every time, I have to look out the window for fire trucks (generally a good indicator of a pending drill) and assure him that, “No, we aren’t having a fire drill while you are in the bathroom.”  But you can tell by the look on his face, he’s not sure whether to believe me or not.  I have to assure him that in the extremely unlikely chance that one would actually occur while he was in there, that I would not go off and leave him in there to burn down with the school.  That it is in fact my responsibility to NOT leave students behind while exiting the building.  I want to tell him that if I was going to consider leaving someone behind that he isn’t on the short list…….  but that probably wouldn’t be too helpful.

But where did he connect the two?  Being in the bathroom and having a fire drill.  I mean we don’t talk about fire drills much.  We do occasionally go over the procedures if it’s been awhile since the last drill, but we don’t dwell on the gory details of what might happen.  Our discussions are ALWAYS framed around the context of a practice, NOT an actual fire.  You can tell that it is something he is really concerned about though.

Just GROSS -if you can’t stand gross, don’t read.

We were lining up outside the library as we left, and I saw this kid pull his hand out of the back of his pants, look at his finger, sniff it, then wipe it on the wall in the hall.  I stifled my urge to scream at him and called him over to me.

“What did you just do?”

“I forget…..”

“Hummm, well let me TELL you what I just SAW you do.”

I then proceeded to unload on him about just how GROSS, DISGUSTING, and UNCOOL it was.  Made him go to the room, not touch ANYTHING, and wash his hands and use hand sanitizer.  Took some Clorox wipes out and wiped that whole section of wall.

Kindergarten kids are just disgusting.

Fire Drills

Love ‘em.  We had our second one this week this morning.  At least we had a warning about this one, so all my kids were adequately clothed for being outside.  I’ve decided that the first priority is to get out of the building, and the second one is being able to survive once we do get out.  Therefore, from now on, during inclement weather, I will take the extra few seconds to grab coats on the way out.  They don’t have to put them on until we get to our spot, but they were really cold during the first drill when we didn’t stop for coats. 

It’s  a  real hassle getting out of our room and to our designated rendezvous spot;  two doors,  a locked gate, then a walk of almost 200 yards later. With 29 kids, supervising the front of the line, the middle of the line and the back of the line all by myself, and still managing to get to our spot without losing anyone can be quit a feat.  Even after repeatedly talking about the need to have quick feet, but not running feet, the front of my line still took off at a dead gallop today, and there wasn’t much I could do about it except growl at them real good when I caught up with them.

I found my little beaver with the pencils.

One of the other kids said, “Mr. L,  Sammy’s chewing on a pencil!”  I looked and, that pencil looked a lot like the one featured in a previous post.  I said, “Sammy,  why are you chewing on that pencil?”

His reply?  “Mr. L, They are DELICIOUS!”

So once again we had, “The Germ Talk“

The lunch lady has got to feed them more…………

They are just gross though,  for snacks most days, I give them a choice between a 4 oz cup of dry cereal, Gold Fish, or animal crackers.  We do other things on other days but that is one of my basic stand bys.  It’s cheap, and since I’m usually doing it out of my own pocket, that’s the primary factor.   Anyway sometimes kids don’t eat their whole cup full and will toss the rest.  Yesterday one of my favorite little darlings was digging some of it out of the trash and EATING IT.  He’s the same one that has to swab down the entire toilet with Clorox Wipes after using it because he doesn’t seem to get the idea that he needs to lift the seat and his aim isn’t good.  He’s marginally potty trained at best, I could go on, but won’t.

Disgusting!

Classroom Management

I mentioned in a previous post, the system that I am currently using for classroom management.  I really like the “rules” that I use here.  We spend a fair amount of time going over them at the beginning of the year and then revisit them as needed.  They are prominently displayed in the room.  Every year the class has a different flavor to it though and the system has to be tweaked.  This year we have been in school almost 1/3 of the school year and the kids just will NOT stop hitting each other.  I think it’s because, generally my class this year is really immature.  It’s usually not a major argument or fight, just the occasional “HIT”, for whatever reason.  And of course reasons really DON”T matter.  Hitting is unacceptable. 

So far I have handled episodes in house. That is, I have worked out consequences within the room, without referring anyone to the Principal.  But it hasn’t stopped, and if anything has actually escalated lately.  So today, my two most frequent culprits were actually hitting each other as I picked them up from lunch and one of them started to cry.  So I marched them over to the office and wrote them up, with the whole class watching.  One father came right down after the assistant principal called the house and picked his child up. “He will not do THAT again…..” the father said as they left.  I hope I don’t have to refer the parent to Child Protective Services, but I do want the behavior to stop and nothing I was doing in the room seemed to work. 

The assistant principal got real mad at the other one as she brought them back.  He was entering the room with a smile on his face and she thought that was inappropriate.  I had to explain that a) he was probably going to be special ed. and  b)  I don’t think the smile is defiant, I think he is a clueless little Hispanic boy (and by that I just mean that he is very limited in English) who just doesn’t understand and his response is to smile and nod at everything that’s said to him.  She thought about that for a minute and it changed her attitude a lot.

Art Today

How do you convince the specialists that they shouldn’t send kindergarteners to the bathroom by themselves?  Today while my kids were in art, one of the teachers brought one of my students to me that she had found crying in the hall.  The little girl has been in my class (and our school) for less than a week.  You can get lost in our newer  ”indoor” schools until you learn your way around and this little girl had gone to the bathroom and couldn’t find her way back, either to Art or to our room.  She was sobbing uncontrollably.  I walked her back to the Art room and suggested to the Art teacher (for the second time) that she shouldn’t let kindergarteners out alone – especially new ones…..

Ants

We have had an ant problem.  I have put in two requests for spraying.  When they started dropping on us from the drop ceiling I decided it was too much.  I invited the custodian down to watch them crawling around in the light fixture.  He allowed that I really did have a problem, but couldn’t say when the district might get around to doing something.  He said that I “could” put out ant bait for them.  So I bought about a dozen of them.  I put a bunch up in the ceiling, and  all along the wall by the outside door where the nest is, just outside.

Since even when they do vacuum, they don’t do a “real” good job, I have about a 6-8 foot section of wall now with the little carcasses piled up like this………

The Earring

One of my boys got an ear pierced and an earring a week or so ago.   Today he lost the earring during lunch recess.  It’s shaped in the shape of a letter S with little fake diamonds on it,  (we HOPE they were fake, if not, someone is an idiot, and I don’t mean the kid).   The shape is odd because it isn’t any of his initials.  Whatever.

He lost it.

After lunch he was pretty upset, he said his mom told him if he lost it, he would get a “whuppin”.  So we took a few minutes and the class all went out and looked for it in the grassy area where he thought he lost it.  No luck.

Awhile later, the class was all excited, one of the kids had apparently stepped on it and the peg had stuck in the bottom of his shoe and he had been walking around on it for awhile.  On concrete part of the time.  It was now bent, and missing about half of the little (we hope) fake diamonds.  I straightened it out, and had him sanitize it with hand sanitizer, then I used an antiseptic wipe on his ear and put it back in.  I keep a bunch of earring backs, hair rubber bands, and assorted other odds and ends that I might need taking care of 5 year olds.

Since technically it is no longer lost, maybe he will be spared the “whuppin”.

One can only hope.

Sick Kids

I had 5 out of 26 kids out sick today, and sent one home mid-day with 102.4 fever that was climbing.   I’m constantly amazed that parents can send kids off to school with NO current contact info.  Not one of the phone numbers worked for this child.  They had to send a truant officer out to the house to find the mom.  I have worked in at-risk schools my entire career and the fact that parents can’t seem to keep an active phone number is no surprise, but there has to be SOME way that the school can reach you in an emergency.

Even the nurse can’t medicate, so nothing to break or control a fever except fluids and cool compresses on the head.  It took almost two hours for mom to pick her up and her fever got to at least 102.7.

The Monday After Halloween

After all the kindergarten kids had lined up and gone into their classrooms for the day, I found a still wrapped tootsie roll on the ground.

So when we were all sitting on the floor, I held it up, explaining to the kids where I had found it and asked if anyone wanted it.    Pretty much the whole class raised their hands and clamored for it.  So I explained AGAIN where I had gotten it from and asked again.  Pretty much the same hands went up.  So we had a long conversation (well I did anyway, can you have a conversation if nobody is listening?) about where the candy had come from…..  i.e. nobody really knew, and so it came from a STRANGER.  Were they supposed to take things from strangers?  (Careful here to NOT talk about the strangers that they got half of their trick or treat candy from in the first place, don’t need to confuse or cloud the issue)  No, they were not.  OK, who wants the candy?  Same hands.  I’m seriously getting frustrated here.

So I said, “Nobody gets the candy, it’s going into the trash, BECAUSE WE DON’T KNOW WHERE IT CAME FROM….”

And to make sure it STAYED in the trash, I took it out of the wrapper and rubbed it on the bottom of my shoe.  They SOUNDED pretty disgusted about that, so maybe it stayed in the trash…..