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…..

What to do, what to do……..

I’ve got a little girl in my class of 30 who is becoming more and more disruptive.  I’m a little puzzled because I don’t know if she is just being defiant, and willfully disobedient or if she has something going on that she can’t help.  The problem is that what she does is so disruptive, but it’s not usually an out and out blow up.  She doesn’t seem able to pay attention, she is restless and moves around the room a lot.  When told to be quiet or sit down, it doesn’t happen.  When it becomes confrontational, she laughs.  I think that the laughter on her part is defensive though.  It’s putting on a front, as she backs herself into a corner……

Friday, she visited the principal and had to talk to dad on the phone.  That sobered her up… for about a half hour.  So I talked to Mom when Mom picked her up.

Today when she was being disruptive by talking and moving around and playing in the sink, and going back and forth between the sink, the drinking fountain, and the bathroom, I finally put her in timeout.  She promptly tipped her chair over and fell down.  So I took the chair away and had her sit on a tile on the floor.  So then she started rolling around and crawling on the floor.  At P.E. she was swearing, knocked or pulled another child off of the bars and hurt the child, so the P.E. teacher put her in timeout.

I need to talk to the guidance counsellor about her.   If we can’t get things figured out for her, it’s going to be a long year, for her and me.

How could I forget THIS first day thing?

If you have buses at your school, you need to find out EARLY in the day, not the last minute, exactly which kids ride the bus, and if there is more than one bus, which bus they ride. In our district, parents have to sign their kids up with Transportation in order for them to be able to ride the bus, so in theory, it is possible to get a list of the bus riders. Someone at the school at the end of the day, should have the assignment to take the kindergarten kids to their bus and see that they get on it (at my last school, our buses were on the far side of the school. Someone escorted the kindergarten bus kids for the entire year. ). You can’t do that AND dismiss the rest of them, nor can you expect to be able to send them off to the bus by themselves with any reasonable expectation that they will in fact actually make it to the right bus. If the buses pick up in visual line of sight for the teacher it might be feasible.

And this is not a one day thing. Some parents aren’t comfortable with having their kindergartener ride the bus the first day, or even the first few days. I tell them to let me know IN WRITING, the day that the child will begin riding the bus. Do NOT have the child tell me verbally when they are riding the bus. In fact, with any deviation from the norm they should let me know in writing. If a student tells me for example that today, they are not riding the bus, and it’s too late to check at home on the phone, the child WILL ride the bus.