The start of school

In our district, the teachers report back on August 24th, the students on the 29th of August.  Our principal emailed at the first of August when the office got back,  that  they didn’t want us back until tomorrow, so we wouldn’t get in the way of the custodial “deep cleaning”.    Apparently there  is some funding to pay us hourly money if we want to come in a few days early and work on Common Core State Standards.  We are going to do that as a grade level (conditional on everybody getting a time that we can do it).  The beginning of the year is always stressful, but this year will be more so than some.  Our school was listed in the paper as being one of the schools in the district that has never met AYP.  Most teachers understand how flawed No Child Left Behind is.  But that doesn’t prevent the stress.  It seems to me and I think most educators who have ever worked in at-risk schools, that most of the things that have been put in place and are being put in place to “fix” education, will not fix education, and much of it will make things worse.  You can’t fix a problem by treating the symptoms.  And most teachers aren’t the problem anyway.

I went to some of the big department stores that typically give good sales on school supplies.  The deals are still good, but things have gone up  It is especially apparent when you are trying to get supplies for 30 kids, not just one or two.  In the past I have usually purchased about a gross of the smaller glue sticks, about 40 folders for homework, and about 40 of the 24 packs of crayons.  The crayons and the glue sticks have been 20 cents a package, this year they are 40 cents.  And I can’t find the folders I usually use for under about a dollar a piece.  I’ve decided I can’t afford to spend that much on supplies this year.

I usually send home homework once a week on Monday to be returned on Friday.  It usually consists of a Weekly Reader, and a free book from Scholastic, a little math review and their current letters and sight words and a reading log.  They are expected to read with a family member for 20 minutes a day.

We give each family a list at registration, of suggested supplies for the classroom.  Paper towels, facial tissue, some liquid soap.  It’s not mandatory, but it helps.  I also give them a list of acceptable snacks that can be donated to the classroom for snack time.  No donations, no snacks.  That’s not strictly true, but since the school doesn’t provide snacks, if the parents don’t, then I have too, and in the past that has been a significant expense.

The economy continues to hard here, the school is cutting many things, the parents are in a bad way financially, and teachers can’t keep taking up the slack out of their own pockets. I haven’t worried too much about what I spend on my class in the past, because if I wanted to teach a certain way, then I would provide the materials to do so if the school wouldn’t.  But this year, it seems that my discretionary money has finally shrunk to the point that I am making a conscious effort to cut back  on the spending.

The End of the School Year

The kids are gone.  The room is cleaned out, and I’m checked out and my keys are turned in.  This will be the first time in 21 years of teaching where I have had a summer off.  Previously I have always worked in a year round setting where our breaks were smaller and spread out throughout the year.  The year round schedule was eliminated in our district as a cost saving move with all the budget cuts.  I’m looking forward to the break.  At the end of this week, we travel to get together with our children and grandchildren for a week.  It will be the first time we have had them all together in several years.  They are kind of spread out across the country.  One son in Nevada, one in Utah, one in the process of moving to Kansas, and our daughter in Colorado.  We just celebrated our 40 anniversary and this will be an extension of that.

We plan a road trip later in the summer, and there is the kindergarten conference (I Teach K) in Las Vegas in July that I plan to attend.  Other than that, it should be a nice quiet summer……

Well, that and “The List”.

1. clean out the garage (it has never actually been a garage, as in a place to park a car….) (and it won’t be after it’s clean, but it would be nice to be able to actually WALK in there…..)

2. fix bathroom sinks

3. paint outside of son’s house.

4.paint inside of house.

5. new carpet.

etc. etc.

not sure how much we will get done, but there are things to do…….

“Did the hampster die?”

One of my co-teachers had one of her little girls ask her that while she was working at her small group table.  The teacher was puzzled.  Finally the little girl pointed to the pencil sharpener.  It had a bunch of pencil filings in it and looked like an empty nest………. albeit a very tiny one…….

Immigration……..

First off, I have nothing against Hispanics, most of the children I teach are Hispanic and I really love them all.  It’s not about Hispanics, it’s about the law and the way it’s inforced, or not…  This is just another Unfunded Federal Mandate.

Gov. Brewer vs Robert Sarver (one of the owners of the Phoenix Suns, who by the way lives in San Deigo)

Reported by Dave Hodges 
Date: 07-24-2010
Subject: Immigration

The owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team, Robert Sarver, opposes AZ’s new immigration laws. 

Arizona’s Governor, Jan Brewer, released the following statement in response to Sarver’s criticism of the new law:     

“What if the owners of the Suns discovered that hordes of people were sneaking into games without paying?
 
What if they had a good idea who the gate-crashers are, but the ushers and security personnel were not allowed to ask these folks to produce their ticket stubs, thus non-paying attendees couldn’t be ejected.

Furthermore, what if Suns’ ownership was expected to provide those who sneaked in with complimentary eats and drink?

And what if, on those days when a gate-crasher became ill or injured, the Suns had to provide free medical care and shelter?”

-Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer

Sea World Assembly

We had some representatives from Sea World do assemblies at our school today.  They said that they were bringing live animals.  Not much other information.  So even among the teachers there was a lot of speculation about just what animals they might bring.  It’s not like we live even close to the ocean.

Turns out that even though they represented Sea World, the animals they brought weren’t really “sea” animals.  They brought a Great Horned Owl, a lemur from Madagascar, a red fox, a mommy kangaroo with baby and a 6 foot alligator.  The kids were impressed.  They let the kangaroo hop around the MP room and the alligator scared the heck out of even the principal.  I had two little girls crying when they saw it trying to wiggle loose from the handlers.  I explained that they were really safe, being back in the middle of the room, the alligator would have to eat a bunch of kids before it got to them………  That seemed to satisfy them.

All in all it was a pretty good assembly.

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.

I feel guilty that I don’t feel guilty……….

I had 29 students, now I have 28.  And I’m not sad.  One of my lowest of the low boys moved out of zone and had to transfer schools.  Apparently my principal has a NO ZONE VARIANCE policy.  Mom wanted to keep him in my class, but they moved clear across town, and for four days she either hasn’t been able to get him or his sister here, or has been late picking them up…….every day.  That wasn’t going to fly IF the principal had given them a variance.  Mom wanted to keep him here because we are a Title One school and as such, have full day kindergarten.  Their new school apparently isn’t Title, so kinder is only half day.   The boy NEEDS full day kindergarten, and more,  much, much, more,  but I don’t need the disturbance he created in my class.

I was reaching the end of my rope with him.  He couldn’t keep boundaries,  by that I mean, I gave up trying to get him to stay in his chair or in one spot a long time ago.  I would have been happy if he had stayed in a zone or area.  He wouldn’t or couldn’t stay on task and pretty much did what he wanted in the room.  I would tolerate it as long as it wasn’t a violation of another student’s space or materials.  But it often was.  He wasn’t malicious, he was often even trying to be helpful.  You know, by taking all of my carefully stacked piles of papers and putting them into ONE stack.  Sort of shuffled as he did it……..The only other name heard in my room as much as my name, was his, ALL the other children knew his name.  And you would hear it all day.  If it wasn’t me, it was one of the other kids, even the ones in the other kindergarten classes. 

The sad thing is, I really liked him, he just drove me crazy and although he was making some academic progress, he wasn’t keeping up with the class.  Having 29 kids in the class made it really hard to give him the individualized help he needed.

And then there’s this.

Apparently one can get quite involved at circle time.

I neither SAW or FELT this going on…………I have no idea who did it…to me…..

OK, I haven’t Really dropped off of the planet……

Last week was Spring Break, and I’m also in a year-round school setting where right after Spring Break we do our turn at vacation time.  Instead of one long summer break we get three smaller breaks throughout the year.  I’m out for another two weeks.  The unfortunate thing is that it’s my LAST break until the end of the year.  So I haven’t done much about thinking school.  In fact I haven’t done much in the vicinity of the school.  Like I’ve been literally on the other side of the planet.  My wife and I took a trip to Italy over Spring Break and although we are back, my head isn’t really back.  Other than earthquakes (of which we were thankfully not too close too) I would definitely recommend Italy.  In capital letters…….

Today we had perfect attendance… well almost

The first time since early January I think, but alas, it was not to be.  One of my kids got sick after lunch and threw up in the middle of our math lesson.  Fortunately, it wasn’t much volume wise, and he didn’t get any of it on the manipulatives, just mostly on himself and the floor (and as luck would have it, he happened to be on the tile….YES!!!).  So after I had him sent off to the health office, and the floor cleaned up and disinfected (I keep Clorox Wipes around for just this kind of thing, a side on that, the principal suggested the other day that the Clorox Wipes weren’t on the “approved list”,  I replied, “What Clorox Wipes?”) we had the class discussion again about what you are supposed to do if you THINK you might throw up… Namely, go stand by the trash can.

Apparently this kid has a really bad gag reflex, both the times the nurse has tried to take his temperature, she has made him throw up again…….

Her comment was, “I just HAVE to get one of those thermometers that reads their foreheads……”

On a different note, “Twilight” came out on DVD this weekend.  I have, and have read all of the series, but some of the people at my school are a little crazy.  In the lounge at lunch earlier this week I heard one teacher complaining that she had gone to Walmart early for her copy and was really bummed that they didn’t have the “deluxe” edition.  Then, one of the office workers mentioned that over Saturday and Sunday she had watched the entire movie SIX times.  That’s just goofy.