Actual Kid Comments 2

First some background info...

We start our weekly reading lessons on Thursdays and test on Wednesdays, because they are our early release day. So, today we started our 3rd reading lesson, this occured while going over our new spelling list.

We come to the word flaw and of course the kids want to know what it means. I explain that a flaw is something that makes you imperfect. I proceed to explain that my spine is curved making my hips uneven. I state that it is a flaw and thus something that "makes me not perfect." A little girl calls out, "but you're perfect at being a teacher!" So sweet. Definitely made me smile.

Then we come to the word brown and I say "ya know, like my hair, but who knows maybe next week it will be red." The kids then ask what my natural color is and of course I say blonde, but I dyed it brown. A little one says, "so you tanned your hair?" I thought it was hilarious!

It's Official

One of my teammates will be leaving our school. We found out today that her last day will be Friday and she will be splitting her kids up between the 3 of us. I will have 9 new kids after the 3-day weekend. I'm so super bummed that she's leaving. She is an amazing teacher and teammate. She is going to a school in desperate need, they have 2 teachers with 37 kids apiece, and she will really help them raise their scores. I will GREATLY miss her. Fortunately, our schools are going to be working together a lot this year, so I will still get to see her often and work with her. I told her to remember that she has an extended team this year and we will still share resources and ideas. I'm so sad to see her go, but I know it's a great opportunity for her to really shine as a teacher, her new school needs leaders. I broke down in front of my entire staff when our principal announced it. I felt like all of my bones became jello and I dropped pens that I'd been holding. Then of course she started crying and then we found ourselves hugging in the middle of the library with the rest of the staff looking at us in pity. But who cares, I'm truly heartbroken that it had to happen this way. I know that she is attached to her kids and they love her. It will be a big transition for everyone involved. I just hope that the kids can adjust quickly to my room and my current students. It's definitely going to be a huge challenge.

News

Well I was hired as the Community Outreach Specialist. I spent the last 2 days at a training. It was overwhelming but great at the same time. I already have ideas of businesses to contact for donations, now just have to actually start making calls. It should be a good year. I know that I have a lot to learn for the position, but I will get there. I will be working with a lady who has worked on the 21st Century grant program for the last 7 years, so I'm in good hands.

I had 2 students drop so now I'm at 20. As amazing as that number sounds, it's actually bad for our 4th grade staff. We are in big danger of losing a section of 4th grade. Our principal is working very hard to advocate and fight to keep all 4 of us. Let's hope he is successful, as a team we have the potential to do amazing things for our kids and the school.

I have really enjoyed seeing my "tough" kids from last year. My one little man passed all of his state assessments and I made sure to talk to mom on meet the teacher day. She was very proud and so was he. It felt amazing. He has come to see my every day after school and even stopped by on open house night just for a hug. In out training today we had a speaker who talked about making sure that all kids have 5 adults that they know truly care about them. I can honestly say that I believe I am in his top 5, which makes my job SO worth doing every day.

My other super tough kid has come to see me quite a bit, too. I'm sure I'm in his group of 5, also. He has made his day every day so far and last year it was a stretch for him to make it 2 days in a row. It's amazing what a self-contained behavior class can accomplish with the right supports and staff. He is finally going to be successful in school and he feels proud of himself. He makes sure to give me a hug every day, too. I often feel that those 2 kids, who were the toughest I've encountered in my short 4 years, are also my biggest successes. They make all the long hours well worth it.

This year, I don't seem to have anyone as challenging (yet). Right now I would say that my biggest struggle is going to be balancing my classroom duties with my after school position. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I always felt when I was a student under time constraints that I was more productive. I'm hoping that it still holds true. We shall see!

A New Year Has Begun

Well, another year has started. I have an astonishingly low 22 kids! It's fabulous! Today was by far the best first day of school I've had as a teacher. Everything just seemed to flow. I almost had to kick parents out this morning. It seems like I will have a lot of parents want to help out, which I've never had. And...I already got a gift! A kiddo's step mom is a HUGE Gator fan and sent some things to school for me today. It was pretty awesome! <3 Gator Nation!!! I have a couple of kids whose siblings I have had in the past and they are super sweet. My biggest behavior kid was withdrawn from the school and my biggest behavior kids from last year stopped by just to ask how my day was.

I have a mostly new team this year and they are FABULOUS! I think it's going to be an amazing year. I'm excited to be in my 4th year and only be observed 1 time a year (officially). But more than that, I'm excited to not feel like such a newbie anymore! I feel like I can really step up and become a veteran teacher now. I have applied for (and most people anticipate my being hired) for a Community Outreach Specialist. Basically I will work closely with the after school activities coordinator and be in charge of really trying to get our school's community more involved. Plus, it has a pretty large stipend attached to it, but honestly it's not about the money, because the hours are pretty insane.

Anyway, I'm super excited about the new year beginning, and I'm pretty sure I've completely rambled...so I'll call it quits for now! :-)

Check Out My Little Guy

I had a conversation with the Superintendent today at my BEGIN class. She said he was so cute, but she couldn't get him to say a word! I assured her that he was very excited and proud of himself. She then proceeded to talk about me when she was addressing the whole group (of more than 90) people. She talked about how we are the future of teaching and it's stories like this one that keep her going. It just made me more proud of my little man and myself and team!

He's the one in the tie that looks completely miserable! He really was happy, I promise :-)

http://wesdschools.org/News.aspx?type=viewArticle&article=1266

Actual Kid Comments

This week we are doing a fun writing project. Well I guess the writing isn't fun, but the end result is. The kids have to write step by step instructions for how to make a PB&J sandwich. On Thursday they will follow a classmate's directions to actually make the sandwich and of course they get to eat it. The kids are very excited about the making and eating portion of the assignment ( I will be sure to post some of the instructions and some pictures to go with them). But a few had some interesting comments about the preparation.

One student said, "My parents said I'm not allowed to touch or eat jelly, can you do that part?" Of course I will kindly oblige and eat a sandwich.

Another said, "please don't get wheat bread, it's pretty much nasty".

My favorite comment of the day, "do I have to eat the sandwich? I don't trust the people who make the peanut butter and jelly." My response..."honey it's from the store." His reply to that..."I just don't trust the people in the factory who put it in the jars." Seriously, how do you respond to that?! Truly bizarre.

On another note, we are starting to study Ancient peoples of the Southwest this week. The kids are going to be making a bunch of dioramas in their table groups. They don't know it yet, but I'm sure they will be very excited and I can't wait to see how all the dioramas turn out. Luckily, last summer when I taught summer school a woman gave me a TON of shoe boxes (though I only needed 13). I have more than 100 boxes which is awesome, since over the next few weeks I will need 56 for the dioramas! Of course I'm sharing with my teammates, also, but they are doing things a bit differently, so they don't need as many shoe boxes as my class does. I'm super excited to see how they all turn out! I will post pictures as we get started!

AIMS Week Has Arrived

Well, it's that time of year again. Time for me to be bored out of my skull while my kids test for 4 days. I'm hoping they are as ready as they seem to be. They are excited to get candy and gum during the test, let's just hope they don't get it everywhere and ruin their test books. Friday we had another student of the month assembly.

My little man who FINALLY started meds was the kiddo for my class. His mom came with her boyfriend and when his name was called mom was a total wreck. She sobbed for a good 5 minutes and thanked everyone for caring about her son enough to try to help him. We all just reminded her that he couldn't have done it without her. She took a bunch of pictures of him with myself and the other people that were on the team to get him help. He is doing SO well now. He has stopped saying that he's dumb and no one loves him. He cares about his learning and tries hard to get things done to the best of his abilities. He is still low in reading simply because he has to play catch up, but he has learned more in the last month than he had all year. He jumped from a 32% on a district test to a 72%. I think that speaks volumes. He is so proud of himself. I made sure to write him a letter telling him how proud I am of him and he just kept thanking me. He got TONS of hugs on Friday. When I asked him if he was surprised, his response was "I knew I could do it Mrs. Barnes". I wanted to cry, he never would have said that before. It's so amazing to know that this little guy actually has a future now, where before I would have said the opposite.

ADDED APRIL 18 Well, my little guy has been selected for another reward. This Friday, he will be taken to lunch with the Superintendent of my district. Every month she takes 2 kids from a few schools out for pizza and calls them SUPER kids. SUPER stands for "students' unique performance earns reward". My principal asked for nominees who have worked hard and changed behaviors drastically. I, along with multiple other people, nominated him last week. This morning at the beginning of the day I announced the news to the class. Before I said his name, I explained that it was for kids who worked hard to change their behavior and out of the corner of my eye I could see him smiling and pointing to himself. It was so cute. He was very excited and everyone in my class congratulated him by giving him a cheer (we do cheers constantly to tell each other good job). My ltitle guy's favorite cheer is what we call the gold cheer, "if good work were gold, you'd be a millionaire!" Needless to say, this little guy has certainly learned how well he can perform and how much people care about him (remember he used to say that no one liked him and he was stupid). It's truly the reason I got in to teaching and it's certainly a success story for so many people at the school (even those people who thought it could never happen)!

Been A While

Wow, it's been a while. Things have been crazy to say the least. We bought a house, I got in a car accident, we bought a new car...plus school. Let's see, school.... My little darling is on meds now and is a totally different kid. It's literally a night and day difference. He started them on Monday and I was expecting to have to wait a bit to see the effects, but it was immediate. He can sit still, he participates, he is an amazing kid now. I have been making sure to tell him how proud I am of him and letting him know that he is doing a great job in class. I will have a sub for about an hour tomorrow and I'm making him one of the helpers because he has been so fantastic this week. He is super excited, he made sure this afternoon that he knew all of his duties and how to perform them. It was really cute. If he can keep this up, he will be a student of the month soon. I'm hoping mom sees the difference at home and keeps up with the doctor appointments and meds.

My other little darling that had a really horrible home life has been moved to foster care, so she is no longer in my class. I hope and pray that she is in a good situation now. I pray that she will find stability and consistency, she desperately needs it.

With those 2 situations being different, my classroom looks completely different. I feel much more productive now that I'm not constantly having to deal with behaviors.

I had my final observation this week. I'm professionally competent in every area (whew!). At the beginning of the year we had to complete a rubric about ourselves and our abilities. The principal fills out the same rubric about us and we discuss the similarities and differences. There were some areas that I need to work on, but I already knew that. I will be writing my district goals about them. He said there were a couple areas that I might have underrated myself. That was an awesome thing to hear. We also talked about how my personality can overpower sometimes and make people feel uncomfortable or not like me. I told him I've heard that before, unfortunately I tend to have my dad's personality, which is fine for a man in a managerial position, but not so fine for a woman in my position. So that's another thing I will continue to work on. Luckily he is very understanding and really is there to help make me a better teacher and staff member!

I have been taking a class about how to work with gifted students that has been really fun. I have learned a lot about how to identify students who may be gifted so that I can let the teacher know to test them. For example, I have a relatively new student who has astounded me the last couple of days. I think she is definitely gifted nonverbally. I gave the kids a squiggle picture last week and they had to complete the picture hoewver they saw it. She saw the word "dusty" in the squiggle. I will post a picture later. Then today, the kids were doing math centers and one of the centers was pentominoes. (For those of you who don't know what they are, they are confusing and much like a puzzle.) Basically there were 2 shapes and the kids had to use the 12 pentominoes to fill in the shape. They had 10 minutes at each center and she finished both pictures in about 4 minutes and told me that they were too easy. I will have you know that I spent about 20 minutes trying to figure them out. Needless to say, I have already passed her name onto the teacher to have her tested.



Pentominoes

Intern!

I have an intern!!! She is in her last semester of interning before student teaching. She has to be with me 75 hours this semester. Today was her first day in the room, she was just observing. The kids were NUTS today. I think it was the rain, it throws them off. I'm hoping some of my gems didn't scare her away. One of them told her a story about how he protected his sisters this weekend by sitting in the house with a knife so he could slash a ghost and then there was blood everywhere. He's a special one. He's one that will hopefully soon be moved to a self-contained behavior classroom. I never thought it could get worse than my other little guy, then this one came. He makes the other look like a saint in comparison. The poor other little one is even wowed by him.

In other news, the original "tough kid"'s mom is supposed to be getting him medicated soon! Hooray! He desperately needs it. I'm hoping it will help him with his self-confidence, so he doesn't call himself stupid anymore.

I had a meeting today with a grandmother of one of my girls who now qualifies for math resource. She doesn't know the value of coins and barely knows addition facts. Her life story is unbearable to hear and I'm so glad she has a grandmother whose main goal in life is to help her grandkids. If only some of the other parents cared 1/100th as much as she does.

This year out of the 4 that I have taken through the process of getting extra help, 3 have qualified for services. Feels pretty good to know that I'm the reason they are getting the help that they need. Still have to convince a teacher mom that her son has serious issues that look like Autism, but I'm guessing she's not going to budge on her perfect son.

Is it just me, or did parents used to care more? Maybe it was just mine...I'm just lucky I guess. :-)

Addendum to Stressful Tuesday

We had a meeting with the school psychologist, special education resource teacher, social worker and mom on Friday afternoon to discuss that little guys psycho-educational evaluation. We know that he is so severely ADHD that he can't function, but some things came up in his evaluation that we were not expecting and are terrifying. We basically had to tell mom that it is time to medicate and get her son in counseling, but we aren't sure if she actually heard any of it.

According to the evaluation this little guy has elevated levels of: depression, anxiety, violence potential, helplessness, hopelessness and worthlessness. These levels are as elevated as they can be according to the rating scale that I filled out about him. The scariest part of all of this is that normally those scores don't come out unless the kid is rating themselves. So that fact that he is projecting these things for others to see is shocking. He is 9 and hates himself and feels that no one in his life loves him because he can't control himself (those are his words to me). We are begging mom to get him some help but we are 90% sure she will do nothing. She never sees him so she doesn't realize what he is going through. We are out of options to help him at school, now it's all up to her.

My next step is to follow up with child protective services and see if it's neglect or something if she doesn't help him. I've got to believe that with psychological evidence of depression and everything else that some higher power than mom can help him.

Hearing of the violence potential really struck me considering he just brought a knife to school. I did not see him as a threat originally. I knew he had the potential, but I just figured it would come later in life if he was not helped. Essentially, I have no idea what to do for this poor child. I feel so horrible that he feels this way at the age of 9 and I just pray that his mother will see that he is in serious need of intensive help. She cried during the meeting when we all said that we really like him and know that he has huge potential if he gets some help. Hopefully that means that she listened.

Stressful Tuesday

Yesterday was quite the hectic day in the Barnes classroom. The first bell rings at 8:05, by about 8:10 I had a note in my hand from a student saying that someone had a knife in their backpack. Of course I have to call the office, by law I am not allowed to look in backpacks. My principal was off campus at a meeting, so someone else from the office came down and found the knife. He was escorted to the office with a pile of "stuff" to work on. We had to wait for the principal to return to campus to hear his "fate". He was suspended for 3 days, yesterday counted as day one. In my 3 years of teaching, this is the second knife and last year I had a toy gun. All have resulted in 2+ day suspensions. Needless to say, starting the day that way throws everything off.

In other interesting news, the 4th grade team at my school has been selected to participate in an international math assessment. We are one of 2 schools in the state. My school is a very low socio-economic school with a mostly Hispanic population and a lot of students who are not proficient in English. The 3 of us upon hearing this news looked at each other and laughed. Our mentor told us that the program is trying to select schools with similar groups of students, which seems impossible considering that it is an international exam. So basically, our students who are behind according United States standards are going to be compared to students from excelling countries. We are not going to stress about it, we will just laugh it off, because we were chosen completely randomly from a lottery of all the schools in the state. We won't see the results until this year's 4th graders have left the school.

It has been an interesting couple of days to say the least.

Back to Reality

So after a hectic Winter Break, we are back in the swing of things. Barry and I have moved into our home and all my kids want to see pictures...anything to stall schoolwork. I had 2 students move over the break so I am down to 27, until tomorrow when I get a new little guy with an IEP (individualized educational plan) meaning he receives special education services. One of the kids that moved was a behavior problem that fed off of others and competed for negative attention. It's been smoother this week. One of my little guys that usually never makes his day has been fine this week! It's been weird.

I was totally braindead Monday and Tuesday, but today seemed to go a little better. I was observed yesterday and it went well. Because I was having a total brain fart all day, there were a few things that I needed to fix that normally would not be an issue for me. Oh well, there's a first time for everything.

Basketball will be getting started tomorrow and our first game is the week of the 18th. We don't have a lot of time to prepare the girls, but hopefully it will work out ok.

Report cards went home today, so I'm sure I will get some phone calls in the next few days. I have already gotten some from a mom who is in denial about her son having attention problems. Other teachers have spoken with her and she continues to blame others and say that her son is just bored, though she does not think he is gifted. We are getting offended that she continues to say that we are boring and give suggestions (because she is a substitute) for things that we should be doing. All of the suggestions are things we already do . Nothing is getting through to her, and we have had to mention multiple times that his constant nose picking is a HUGE problem, but she doesn't agree. It's extremely frustrating.

Anyway, I will update soon, hopefully with more uplifting or happy news.