Another weekend has arrived. Not much to write about, so this entry will probably be short. Yesterday was the second day at the school on the hill. Yesterday, both assistant principals were out of the building, so originally no one knew what to do with me. I was able to use the first period to organize my shopping cart full of worksheets. I didn’t think about it at the time, but maybe I’ll take a photo and attach it to this blog entry. After the confusion, I was assigned to a kindergarten class. My assignment was to cover(watch) the class while the regular teacher completed the year-end assessment tests for the each individual student. Originally, I brought my shopping cart to the classroom (I also contemplated bringing down my shopping bag filled with kindergarten teaching materials. Luckily the class was not in the room. I decided I needed to stop overworking and stressing myself trying to plan for every possible contingency. I decided I would just go in empty-handed and let the teacher give me the materials. Where were the kids?

All of the kindergarten classes were in the auditorium practicing for graduation/moving up ceremony. What did I see? I saw disorganization and chaos, but the kids seemed to be okay. It looked like the teachers had never had a ceremony before. There seemed to be two camps, one for leaving spaces for the absent students , and the other camp for filling in the gaps. As much as I wanted to jump in with my two-cents, I kept my mouth shut…for the most part.

After the rehearsal, and after lunch, I returned to the class. Why was I not surprised. I didn’t know who Ms. A was, but I should have known. I was assigned to a wild class. I had already prepped this class once a few months ago. This was a class of students that did not seem to know the word “no”. Few (if any) could sit still for more than a few minutes. The students’ tables were messy, but the teacher’s table was messier. It was also a class with mostly Spanish speaking kids. Unfortunately, 1. I don’t speak Spanish, and 2. the students (I think) were used to the teacher translating everything. Everything in the room had double labels; the work written on the board was in both English and Spanish. There also seem to be about a 50/50 division of the books between English and Spanish. I am not sure why, but I was suddenly in a very bad mood, maybe it was being in a difficult class without materials that I knew (and was comfortable with), maybe it was not being able to speak Spanish (It seemed like every other kid spoke only Spanish), maybe it was being in a room without an air conditioner (and the windows blocked and covered with junk so that I could not open them[at least a couple of the windows were opened from the top]), or maybe it was so hot (I was sweating like there was no tomorrow). Most likely, it was a combination of all of the above.

The teacher left a few things that I could do with the students, read a story, do a simple math lesson (reversing numbers), and free time. The teacher gave me the option of book activity instead of letting the kids loose. Normally, it would not be a good idea for a class that is wild to be given free rein. However, with this class one of the things I needed most was a bargaining chip. Once the teacher left the room (she did the testing in the hall), I gave the kids a very simple message:

Listen / free time
No listen / no free time

They understood. They listened (for the most part), and the ones that did not listen lost 5 minutes of their free time. Only the twins were consistently disruptive. I was able to read the story (a very long boring story most of the kids probably did not understand); take the whole class to the bathroom down the hall, and have the kids clean up the classroom (before they could have free time). It turned out to be a very nice class. The kids were nice. I could see the potential trouble makers, but since everyone really wanted to have free time, everyone tried to behave…even the twins. I actually liked this class. Usually, there are 2 or more (for lack of a better word) aggressively disruptive, the ones that seem to have no self control (and no fear). This class didn’t seem to have any. This class did have a large number of boys over girls (about 3 to 1), and it did have a number of “hyper” boys. Now that I think about it, there probably was one boy who has some self control issues, but he was manageable yesterday.

At the last minute, my schedule was changed. I was assigned to also go to the K/1 special ed. bridge class. Again, I used the free time to keep them in line. I also told them that if they did not clean up and the end, then I would tell their teacher that they should have a shorter free time next time. They cleaned up very nicely.

Yesterday was a shorten schedule day, so I finished (and was out of the building by) 2:35pm. I even managed to catch a train that was just arriving as I was walking down the steps (no running and no waiting time). There have been a couple of thunderstorms in the area over the last few days, and on Friday (yesterday) another one was expected to hit. I managed to return to my shoebox right before it hit (or in-between). After finishing about 30 minutes on my rowing machine, I decided to risk going to the store (for milk and sherbet) and get some Chinese take-out. The rain had off until I returned to my shoebox.

All in all, yesterday was a good day.