Its Raining...Rocks?

The closer it comes to graduation the fewer entries I find myself writing in here. Also since I am not consistently spending time in any one classroom it is too difficult to write about time spent in classrooms without using the names of children which I refuse to do - personal information is confidential even if just first names were to be used! I realize the name of my University, my location, and the name of the school have not been written but its still not right to use names of children publicly without permission.

Anyway, today I was working with the oldest children at the school - the 4 and 5 year old classes which were combined today due to teacher absences. So we had just been outside on the playground and come inside so the 3 and 4 year olds could play. However there was a fire drill (we saw it coming and grabbed jackets before entering the classroom...too hard to explain) so we had to re-exit the classroom and go back out to the playground. Once the fire drill was over the three year olds were allowed to play and I was assisting the older children in lining up to go back inside. All of a sudden something smashed into the side of my head right behind my temple and I simultaneously saw stars (ok flashes of light) and heard a loud cracking sound. About a milisecond later a pain smashed into my head as well and I grabbed the side of my head and unfortunately those stupid tears began to fall. I turned to see what had just crashed into the side of my head hard enough to cause a lump to start forming immediately. As I turned the only child I saw on that side of me for about 30 feet was my firecracker and he was running away. I then realized that the only object on the playground able to do that kind of damage would be a rock (dirt would not do that, a branck would have hit differently, and a toy would have been noticable when I looked around) and there is only one child who 1) has the behavioral pattern of throwing rocks at people unprovoked (or provoked for that matter) 2) was in the area and 3) has the strength needed to throw it the distance and angle needed to hit me in the head. That would be my firecracker. (side note he is still alive and well - I deserve something for that fact alone) But anyway I am standing there with tears running down my face and holding the side of my head. One of the aids asks me if I am okay - now does anyone else want to say "what do ya think?" at this point- but I appreciated her concern and shook my head no. I then explained the rock-versus-head thing and there was suddenly interest by other teachers (although not the teachers of the three year olds and not anyone responsible for my firecracker-turned-David who almost took out an inncent Goliath) who insisted I go to the office. Office meaning ice, quiet, and no little Davids sounded good to me. So I went to the office still with my annoying tears escaping a bit, and got ice and had to sit there. The director (also my student teaching coordinator, my student teaching seminar professor, and my advisor) came down and tried to convince me to go to student health (I would rather give my little David a second shot at me) or the ER (come on I am not dying here, just a mild concussion at best and I have been there, done that before) but I talked her out of that. A bit of ice, three tylenol, some quiet and all I have left is a headache (don't bend over or move too quickly), a large bump, and bruised dignity. Ugh, this child is seriously trying to kill me before I graduate!!! I love him, I really do and I don't mind working with him but why on earth did he blindside me like that today??? And why is it that the children who are the most aggressive, most unpredictable, and most likely to injure someone are the strongest and have the best aim????? Is that some freaky law of childhood and who decided on that one??? :OP

I also finished the new children/family lending library at school which was a HUGE amount of work (I mean enormous) and then realized that for the next month my job duties now include playing librarian and reshelving books every morning. YUCK! No where did i sign up to be any of the following: librarian, secretary, kitchen aid, janitor, photographer, personal assistant, gopher. I thought i was student teaching - I assumed that meant teaching, meant children and lessons and books, paper, stickers, goals, art, paint, glue, playdough, blocks, dolls, dress up clothes, blankies and babies, and well Teaching!! I am not complaining - okay I am complaining a little because I thought student teaching would involve teaching the same children consistently and learning from the experience, gradually becoming a teacher and practicing while there are still safety nets. All I have learned about teaching is as follows:
1) Never underestimate the strength of a small child - NEVER!
2) Duck first, ask questions later
3) How to hold down arms and legs at the same time and dodge a head coming back to smash into you
4) Calming down an angry child is sometimes like hostage negotiations or talking down a suicidal person
5) Listening to a child can make a huge difference in behavior, learning, and their trust *
6) Children who are not challenged can go two ways - they will either create challenges for themselves to learn or they will create challenges for you to make you learn
7) Never turn you back on an unpredictable child even if someone else is responsible for watching them
8) Red marker on a pull up is not a good idea
9) Examine all objects before placing them in a classroom for their potentiality as a weapon
10) Making reading interactive turns circle time into an exciting time*
11) Do not be afraid to challenge children and encourage them to go further even if you need to provide a lot of scaffolding *
12) Small children can run - FAST - even when turned around to stick their tongue out at you
13) Children are made out of some strange substance that allows them to bounce a lot more than adults do - they can fall, crash, run into walls and keep going
14) Sometimes a child curled up on a toy shelf is actually not a bad thing
15) teaching Assistants can be more trouble than they are worth
16) A great lesson is worth the extra time compared to 5 okay lessons*
17) Be creative, make lessons fun and allow children to explore things in new ways*
18)Learn to duck, dodge, and deflect
* Things I learned on my own with no help from my co-op teacher

Well those are my thoughts right now. My head hurts :P I really wish we could convince the family of my firecracker-David (**David is not his name but refers to David with his slingshot and a rock taking down Goliath) to become involved in a behavioral assistance program for both the child and the family because it is SO needed. He seems so confused and just filled with emotions he has no control over - its hard to be angry at him when he really seems unable to control what he does most times. More than him I am angry with his family for ignoring his problems for so long in spite of the massive incident reports, evaluations, and notes they have been provided about his aggression and behavior. Denial is one thing but when he is going to seriously injure someone its something else.

One head-achey, frustrated, confused student teacher :)

Long Ago But Not So Far Away

I think I may have missed a few days in writing here....just a few :) Things got insane my last few weeks of teaching in the classroom and once I took over everything I had little to no time for myself - it was teach, prepare lessons/materials, seminar assignments, and sleep - repeat as needed. I solo taught for ten days but of those ten days few were as they were supposed to be. Due to a family emergency my lead teacher was gone for the last week of my student teaching so she missed 5 days and then she was out of the classroom another 2 mornings which is when all of the academic activities occur so she observed me teach 3 out of 10 days. How helpful was that - I am supposed to be working WITH her and she is not THERE. This was a pattern for my experience, she would be gone an average of 2 days a week which was not helpful and she rarely gave me any feedback on things I did. So by the end I had no idea how she though I had done, how anything I ever did went in her opinion (unless I really worked to get feedback), or what her recommendation woudl be like. **Note she has still not completed my final evaluation three weeks after my placement there has been completed** Thankfully my supervisor who observed once a week provided awesome feedback with very specific comments and notes - down to quotes!- and gave me copies of all of her observation notes to keep as well as going over all of them with me. She seemed really confident in my abilities and thought I was highly successful so that is reassuring!! Also she saw growth over the time period which is what is supposed to happen - it was in fine details but it was there. That is what I needed from my teacher as well - specific feedback reliably. Oh well!! I was also talking with another teacher from a different classroom on the playground this week when I went to go visit "my kids" and just help out on my own time and she made some really positive comments about me teaching that made me feel really good. Its one thing for someone who is specifically watching you to see things but another for someone who is just in the environment to see positive things and comment on them to you. She was saying how she could tell that I really liked what I was doing and how good I was at it - how much patience I had with my firecracker (which is odd since I always worried that I was not patient enough with him and that I needed to be more calm and patient). We also talked about how she would sometimes ask people working there at practicums and such if this is really what they wanted to do because it takes so much from you but she could tell this is what I am good at which is amazing to hear and I was telling her how much I love it, that it is the one job I can imagine getting out of bed each day to do and I would want to do it even if it was not a paid job. Overall it was a wonderful conversation and it was such a blessing to hear from someone who just noticed me working with my kids saying positive things about my abilities and skills at the "career" (its more than a career, its a commitment of sorts that is hard to explain because you commit to give so much to children who have such needs knowing that it will be hard work with many frustrations and for great rewards in terms of the heart in many cases but little financial rewards) I love to do.

So, back on track, my last two weeks of student teaching when I was solo teaching were nuts. Tuesday of that week my firecracker at circle time decided to become a pro-soccer kicker only he did not aim at a ball. I had him beside me because of his propensity towards sudden aggression and he had done well all circle but I had to turn my back briefly to collect the beanbags we had used during the story. There were two other teachers and a (no comment) educational assistant present so I thought it was safe to gather the beanbags. Bad thought. In the 15 seconds I had my back turned he kicked my perfectionistic princess as hard as he could in the mouth (he was standing, she was sitting so it was a perfect alignment for this unfortunately). I heard that scream that as a teacher you NEVER want to hear, that child scream that says I-am-hurt-and-it-is-serious-way-more-than-a-bump-and-there-will-be-blood-or-something-broken and makes your heart panic. I turn around to see My firecracker getting ready for a repeat performance and my princess with her hands covering her mouth and blood running down from them onto her white (of course white) shirt. OK, GREAT! My second day solo teaching, the other two regular teachers are out of the room so there are two substitutes and I have just "allowed" a child to be seriously hurt. These thoughts flash through my mind in less than 1 second. One of the substitutes who works in the office grabs my princess and runs to the sink and I grab my firecracker who in a flash is a mess of flailing arms and legs. So now I feel like a teacher punching bag and the kids look scared to death but to their credit none of them makes a sound or moves a muscle. I calmly (or as calmly as possible with a bleeding child at the sink and a flailing child trying to injure me in my arms) instruct the rest of my children to go to get their coats on and to please remain over by their coats. With one more prodding they get up and actually do this, to my amazement and a lot of praise. This leaves me to wrestle with my firecracker and within a few seconds I have his arms and legs in a safe location so that I am not going to add to my list of bruises. My princess is rinsing her mouth out at the sink and the verdict is a cut/bruised lip but thankfully all teeth remain - I can take a cut lip as long as she still has her teeth!! The sub. cleans her up, gets an ice pack, and changes her shirt while I deal with the firecracker and assist with the rest of the children (unsure why between the other teacher and the assistant they can not manage this on their own). I have to ask the children to please remain by their cubbies a few times and once my princess is back, changed, and calm with her coat on they go outside.

Meanwhile I have a "conversation" with the firecracker. I explain to him that he can not hurt my friends and that this time he really hurt her - he hurt her mouth and made it bleed. His eyes get wide but its hard to tell if he is scared or actually excited by this idea and that scares me. I firmly tell him I will not allow him to hurt anyone else and explain what will happen if he does - which unfortuantely is not much due to the limitations of behavior management - and ask him why he kicked her. He said because he does not like her and he was angry. This leads to a brief discussion on rules of I dont care if you dont like her you can not hurt her and if you are angry you may go to the book corner and kick the pillow but you may not kick a friend or a teacher (self defense here!). I then ask him if he is going to hurt someone again and he says yes. OK, this is wonderful. I can not technically do a full timeout but I don't feel right letting him go outside right away and letting him pick from an array of victims when he honestly tells me he is going to hurt someone again (he is aggressive but honest most of the time). So we sit while everyone gets their coat on because "he can't be nice to his friends, he hurt them so he has to wait until they are all done". Once they go outside we pick up the beanbags he kicked over then go get his coat on and I remind him why we had to wait. Then I take him outside and remind him that he can not hurt his friends and tell him what the consequence will be (rules or not if he does it again he will sit down with me for a while - two strikes and your out is my policy for the day since he tried to take her teeth out with his shoe). Thankfully he does not follow through with his statement, probably because he can tell I am serious and not going to let him continue.

The last week of student teaching was nuts because the lead teacher was gone (not her fault) so we either had a variety of subs rotating in and out or it was just me, the co-teacher, and the ed. assistant (resisting comment). Those days we often skipped activities (not my idea but I did not feel comfortable saying no to the co-teacher as she was the classroom teacher and I was only a student teacher) so I missed teaching a lot of the activities I had planned. Friday of that week we had an all-day Dr.Seuss party which was fun but chaos. It started with a breakfast where we first read Dr. Seuss books to all of the preschool kids, then they all ate a breakfast of green eggs and ham (turkey bacon to be culturally appropriate) with juice, donuts, milk, and fruit. Then for art we made Dr. Seuss Cat in the Hat hats. At circle we read more Dr. Seuss books. After nap was the other half of the party where there were more green snacks - and more sugar- than you can imagine. The gym reeked of sugar the moment you entered. There were chips with green dip, green fruit punch, green frosted cupcakes, green frosted cookies, green jello, green sherbet, green fruit snacks, green frosted chocolate cupcakes, and more green things I can not remember. After eating the now-sugar-driven children ran around the gym and listened/danced to music until it was time to go back to classrooms (unfortunately it rained so running outside was cancelled) to play. The teachers also dressed in Dr. Seuss colors like the kids (red and white) or pajamas that day - I did not do either since red does not work with my hair and being a student teacher I was not sure if I could get away with pajamas if my supervisor or the director came down to observe me. So it was fun, wild, chaotic, and WAY TOO MUCH SUGAR!! The children smelled of sugar the rest of the day :)

Now I am interning in the office of the same school doing "service provision" which basically transcribes into doing everything and anything they need me to do. I have been doing these 6 page checklists examining IFSPs for all necessary components to prepare for inspection in August - its interesting in a way but after a few your eyes cross, you begin to get bored, and eventually you start to miss things. Also so far I have played secretary for a day (answering phones, operating the security doors, working the desk, data input), hung off of the second floor balcony to take pictures of the playground for the website, checked shirt sizes of children to figureout what size school shirts to order for re-enrollment and sale, attended a board meeting (where I was bored only because i had no idea what they were discussing most of the time and I had to sit still while bored for close to 2 hours), and substituted in the toddler classrooms. Mainly I have seen way more paperwork than I ever wanted to but its alright, tis part of the job and I will know better than anyone how to put together and set up an IFSP by the end of this!!