miss kylene.

Days 5-7

School has been pretty hectic. Satan has had a bulls-eye drawn on my back ever since I voiced my opinion about the cooperative groups. She told my lead teacher during their Leadership Meeting that the first grades really need extra support. It is true that I could use some pointers (Believe me when I tell you teaching first grade is a whole different game than teaching sixth.), but her inconsistency as an administrator is part of the reason why I need extra support. For example…she says she wants the students to follow proper procedures for walking through the hallways, but when I arrived five minutes late for lunch (because that’s how long it took for the students to walk in quiet, straight lines) she bitched at me, screaming in her megaphone, “These kids can’t be late for lunch! You need to have them here on time!” First of all, Satan, they are children, not baby goats. Second, what do you want? Do you want the students to know that they will not go to lunch until they follow the procedures correctly, even if that means being late for lunch, or do you want them to know that they must be on time so they can do whatever they please in the hallways on the way there? You can’t have both! (Not until they realize that they will be late UNLESS they go quietly! ) God, Satan, you’re a real moron.

On a more positive note, my lead teacher this year rocks. He actually came into my room today to help out and offer suggestions. I know why his children don’t mess around- he’s scary! I heard him talking to my students who were having “issues” and, man, I had chills. I can’t imagine how scared they must have been! Note to self: I need to be scarier! Maybe I’ll start wearing black clothing and pointy boots just to add to the dramatic effect!

Welcome back to Kenderton...

Well another year is under way at Kenderton. I’ve kissed my social life goodbye. The next time I’ll see any glimpse of that is at Thanksgiving…

I love being in first grade. Socially, my students are adorable, still at the age where I mean the world to them, and where they will do anything to please me. Don’t get me wrong, though, their behavior is horrendous, but, in my opinion, it’s because they truely don’t know any better. They are not deliberately defiant, like my sixth graders last year…

Speaking of my sixth graders, three of them came to visit me during the first week of school. They were hugging me and telling me how much they missed me. ”Who were these imposters,” I thought to myself. Last year these were the students who were the bain of my existence. In these brief moments, I felt warm inside. ”I did make a difference, even to them,” I smiled as I held back a tear, thinking that I would explode.

On the first day of school I was ten desks short. I spent the following three days begging Ms. Wilkens, who I will, from now on, refer to as Satan, for desks. “This first week is crucial in teaching my students the appropriate classroom procedures, and I can’t maintain order without enough desks!” She told me she’d do the best she could do. In the meantime I had to take my centers apart to use the tables as makeshift desks.

Teaching classroom procedures to first graders is like training an animal. You tell him or her which action to perform, model the desired action, observe him/her’s attempt at the action, then reward him/her if the action is executed properly. I’m still learning how to do this. For example, on Day 1, I told the students to take out their crayons. Out came the crayons. The students spilled them out of the boxes and soon were screaming that some of them were lost or stolen. Rewind, I told myself. “Ok, boys and girls. I would like to try that again. Will you please put all of your crayons in their boxes without talking? (I’m waiting with stickers for the students who do this properly.) Now, when we use our crayons, we should only take one color out at a time, so that the crayons don’t get lost or mixed up with anyone else’s. Without talking, who can take out a blue crayon from the box? (Stickers are again awarded to the students who complete this task.) Good boys and girls. Now, when we’re finished with the blue crayon, we should put it back in the box before we take out another color. Will you please put your blue crayon back in the box? (Now the stickers are old news, so I reward the students who are still following directions with a pretzel!) This type of conversation continues all day, before any task can be accomplished. Sometimes I think I’m going to blow my brains out.

On Day 3 it was Jayshawn’s sixth birthday. We sang to him, and I gave him a certificate and a Dr. Seuss pencil!

Day 4 was a day from hell. We practiced putting things in and out of the desks, following the procedure mentioned above, all morning. When we were finally ready for our Read-Aloud, Satan entered my classroom. She directed the students to sit on the reading rug and the teachers to move the desks out of the way. She said she needed room for the tables she was moving into my room until she was able to locate desks. She has the custodian bring in two long, folding tables and places them in the middle of my room. “Is Satan for real? She wants me to sit these students at these tables?!” On the way out of the room she says, “They will sit in groups of five.” (Currently I had them seated in pairs, the desks arranged in rows. I did this deliberately, because I knew I would need to teach them the difference between left and right, and this is easier to do if the students are all facing the same direction.) I chase her out of the room and say, “Satan, I do not intend to keep the desks in rows. My goal is for the students to sit in cooperative groups, but right now they don’t have the social skills necessary for that type of seating to be conducive to the learning environment. I need more time to teach them those necessary skills.” She replies, “I did not ask for your input, I gave you a directive.” Stupid fucking moron! I do everything I can to keep myself from ripping her ugly wig off of her bald head. Later that day she called me to her office and said that she didn’t appreciate how confrontational I was when she gave me a directive. I replied, “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful at all, however, I thought it was necessary to provide you with my professional opinion, since I’ve been in the classroom with these students for four days now.” She said she didn’t care about my opinion and any further “unwillingness to be flexible” would result in disciplinary action. Stupid bitch.

A few notes: I have a teaching assistant in my room, who will be with me until she gets placed in her own room. It’s a big help having another certified teacher in the classroom.

I am teaching the class about numbers in math. I have a number line going around the entire classroom. We move a marker each day, which helps us count the school days, hence “Day 1” language above. It’s pretty exciting. The students know that if something exciting happens that we want to remember, we will make a sign for the event and put it on the appropriate day on the number line. What fun it will be to look back on the year in June!

Round 2

Well it’s almost that time of year again- the much anticipated first day of school. I remember what it was like to “gear-up” for the first day of school. I remember wondering which homeroom teacher I would have ( I always liked not knowing who I would have. Being the oldest of my family I was like the test dummy. By the time my brother and sister got to school my mom knew which teacher to request every year, so they were never surprised. Bummer.) and hoping my best friends were in the same classroom, because my life would surely end if I was separated from them. Then there was the ever-so-important shopping trip to buy new school shoes. Since attending Catholic school put the obvious limitations on clothing shopping, the shoes were everything. My mom and I never agreed. I always wanted the highest heels that were permitted according to the dress code, and my mom knew that I would come home wincing in pain after wearing them for a day. She was always right, but for 8 years I fought, got the high-heeled shoes (so I wasn’t the biggest loser), suffered blisters for days, and, in the end, purchased the shoes my mom suggested in the first place. I was a spoiled brat, but I was lucky, too, because I had parents who were just as excited about the first day of school as I was, and not because it meant free day care for them. I recognize that more than ever now, comparing my own grade school experience to the ones that my students are living, or I should say, more appropriately, coping with.

School starts Tuesday. Miss Kylene signed up for another year at Kenderton- teaching first grade. Since so many students in my sixth grade class couldn’t read, I am excited to get to the “root” of the problem. I can’t wait to share some of my favorite stories with them. Stay tuned, because school’s in…

pet peeve #2

The students here very rarely suffer any consequences for their actions.

Proper protocol for end-of-the-year book collection is that I inspect the textbooks, and books that have been damaged in any way or are missing are to be paid for by the students’ parents BEFORE the students receive  final report cards. Today the first parent complained about paying, and sure enough I get the book back with a note from Ms. Wilkins that reads, “Please wite out. Thanks.” First of all, Ms. Wilkins, you’re a dumbass for not being able to spell “white,” and second of all your sixth graders next year are going to have math textbooks with torn or missing pages. Of course that one student spread the word that she doesn’t have to pay, and now none of the students think they will pay for the “dirty-ass books” either. Another administrative duty well done.

fun day cont.

So today was Fun Day at Kenderton Elementary! Fun Day meant going out into the yard for an hour and a half and playing semi-organized games like bean-bag toss, hoola-hoop, and jump rope, while eating (if you brought money to buy tickets) hot dogs, pretzels, water ice, chips, candy, and soda, and listening to the lastest rap and R&B hits that were playing from giant speakers located in the music room (on the third floor of the school). The entire school was in chaos the entire day, despite half-assed attempts to designate a time for each house. As if my students aren’t a handful the way it is, I arrived to find Mr. Turner’s children invading my classroom as well. Since Turner is the “lead teacher” in my house he had to help set up. This was bullshit, I thought. He has a homeroom just like the rest of us, and we should not be responsible for his students all day. Set up should have been left to special and prep teachers, aides, and parent volunteers, all of which do not have homerooms full of students. I was stressed and pissed. The worst days are the ones I’ve been even the slightest bit unprepared for, and I certainly wasn’t prepared to have four of his monsters on top of my own. The whole day was a mess, complete with parent volunteers threatening the staff, students leaving the yard to ride bikes in the streets, and still other parents stealing food and other materials from the school while most of us were outdoors supervising the students. What was my principal doing all day? She was dancing to the “Stanky Leg.” Successful day, Ms. Wilkins. I missed All Saints Academy today. Fun day was the best last year. Mr. Mendicino (the principal) volunteered himself for the dunk tank, students were behaved, games were organized, pizza was donated to the faculty. Ahhhhh the good ole days…

no fun day

fun day was no fucking fun. updates later.

ughhhh more rain on top of more school...

It’s raining again. It makes the fact that I still have two more weeks of school even more depressing. I’ll be here until 7pm tonight on account of the talent show. Stay tuned for pictures and videos…

love this man: http://bit.ly/qJcWQ

more random thoughts...

1.  Classroom management classes teach you nothing about managing a class of inner-city poverty-stricken students. My sixth graders are smoking, drinking, and having sex. They think they are “grown” and do not listen to adults as well as other children their age would. I sacrificed a great deal of pride in order to avoid getting into power struggles with the students, all the while maintaining control.  It isn’t about barking orders at students, who you demand, in turn, to comply with those orders, but rather providing carefully thought-out “choices” for the students to make on their own. Choices, of course, that you have ultimately already made for them.

2. Positive reinforcement works wonders. Negative reinforcement results in the students becoming angry, violent, and stubbborn.  They are used to punishment, so it is an ineffective tool for maintaining positive behavior in the classroom.  Rewarding positive behavior is much more effective.  Food has been the best reward in my classroom.

3. They are far behind other students their age academically. My biggest struggle in dealing with this was that they wouldn’t admit that they couldn’t do it, but rather they had adopted the mentality that they simply wouldn’t do it.  One of my bulletin boards for next year is going to read “We All Make Mistakes.” My students were so afraid of being made fun of by their peers that they shut down and refused to try to read aloud, answer questions, or do a problem on the board during math.  Most of them refused the help I would have been able to provide and, sadly, will probably do so for the rest of their school careers, which, in most cases, will end at high school.

4.  Character education is a must, and, in my opinion, needs to be taught explicitely, not integrated into the last five minutes of reading or math. Most of the students do not have a sense of character or integrity.  They lie, cheat, and steal without batting an eyelash.  They are angry and no not know how to solve conflicts peacefully, since their own parents are in the school yard fighting for them after school. I’ve seen many of the teachers here curse, yell, and even use some minor forms of corporal punishemnt with the students because, “it’s your word against mine, and who is gonna believe you.” I’ve heard a teacher say to a parent, “Don’t beat him in the hallway with the cameras, but come on in here (into the classroom)…no cameras in here.” How can we teach children that violence is wrong if there are teachers in this very school acting violently?

5. A theme for instruction this year was differentiated instruction through the use of choice boards. Great idea, but where is the school’s overall differentiation? Where are the arts and drama classes, or the shop classes for the tactile learner?  Not every student is here to perform outstandingly in reading and math, and shouldn’t the school offer chances for ALL students to experience some success?  Isn’t that what true differentiation is all about?