The Cat in the Hat & Fishing for Friends

I'm completely aware that pictures of my colleagues and my bulletin boards are not very exciting but it's really all I have to offer. The first 2 belong to my fellow K teachers and the last 2 are mine. Actually, I'm behind because the Cat in the Hat is already down, the shamrock men for St. Patricks Day only have a few days left, and the spring flowers are in the box in the plans ready for when we get back.

Giant Grasshoppers & Dead Fish

Do you see that HUGE grasshopper!?? We got to hang out with them a little over a week ago at an all school field trip to the U of I campus and the "Naturally Illinois Expo." Thanks to be able to leave all my troublesome students back at school, we had a good time. It was a lot of scientists talking and explaining things at a level WAY over our students comprehension level but they didn't complain. We stayed almost 4 hours when we could have been done in 2. If it weren't so crowded we probably could have stayed in the bug room for 45 minutes. They really were pretty cool.


They also had some dead fish for us to touch. We did touch them but didn't like it very much.


I'm on spring break and have a couple more pictures of bulletin boards so hopefully I will get to that later this week. It's on my list.

T-Shirts are my favorite.

I hope there is never a time in my life where I feel like it might be not okay to wear a t-shirt on a lazy weekend. Or every day of my summer vacation and spring break. T-shirts and hoodies were made to be enjoyed for long term. If you have disagree, than we will have to agree to disagree. I hope I wear t-shirts when I'm 80.

Remember when my principal told me I needed to "grow horns." Well, it must be working because last week a student said, "Ms. Lock, are you ever going to smile again?" I'm not sure that's the kind of teacher I want to be but at least for now I am accomplishing what my principal wanted. The old adage goes "Don't smile until after Christmas" and perhaps that's what went wrong. I smiled too early and got ran over.

Perhaps these two paragraphs are what sum up my classroom management issues. My personality is more fitted for a t-shirt but it needs to be more buttoned up. I'm too relaxed when I need to be zoned in. I let little things go that can escalate into bigger things that are too far out of control. I've said all along that I thought this year was better than last year and I still believe that. There's just a lot more that I can do better. I'm sure I'll never have it all figured out. I've changed some things and they have gotten better. I hope I'm always changing to make things better. It's the best practice and best way to be successful in the career I have chosen. For now, I know I need to put the t-shirt mentality away and keep wearing a tie. Save the t-shirts in the tub for the weekends. That's where they're at their best anyway.

Horns and Love Bugs

I kinda grew horns. Everyone was improved and I had a lot of good conversations with parents both just because I needed to tell them that their children were being monsters and because we had parent/teacher conferences. On a high note, everyone who had a monster child, agreed with me. They just didn't have a lot to suggest we do about it. I have to admit that Monday I was feeling pretty discouraged. It's hard to be mean all the time and can be discouraging to be so negative all the time. By the end of the week, I had found a better balance and so had the rest of the class.

We survived Valentine's Day and the sugar that comes with it. There were 3 of my kids out the next day probably from stomach aches. We tried to keep things sane in our room by having a "healthy" party since it's Dental health and Heart Healthy awareness month. We had carrots, apples, oranges, granola bars, and one cookie. They had more than enough suckers and other candy in their treat bags.

On Tuesday, we are starting a "Kindness Initiative" because Kindergarten is too young for kids to be treating each other the way I hear them being "friends." It seems that is always a condition on friendships that results in hurt feelings 9 times out of 10. Someone won't sit with you if you don't share your crayons. Someone calls you stupid if you if you beat them to the place you wanted in line. Someone else gets friends to chase you on the playground because you answered a question before them. It's just not nice and we are going to try to come up with alternatives. I have a bulletin board ready to go that says, "Fishing for Good Friends," a book called "How Full is Your Bucket" waiting to be read, and a list of kind words ready to be brainstormed. I hope it will push us out of this phase of constantly picking on one another one second and being friends the next. It's my goal for the rest of February and boy do we need it.

Oh yeah, we made these bugs out of hearts. They were cute.

Sick Day

I am at home with strep throat today. It's my first full sick day in 2 1/2 years so I guess you could say I've done a pretty good job staying away from the germs. When the doctor asked, "has anyone around you been sick?" I just told him I was kindergarten teacher. He didn't ask for more specifics. I did a great job of going sick yesterday and exposing everyone to it. Whoops. In my defense, it wasn't until noon that I really felt like it was not good news and by the end of the day that I really felt terrible. Besides, if I had gone to Convenient Care earlier my "quick" strep test might not have come back positive and I would have had to wait for labs. Instead, I am positively fighting strep throat and on antibiotics for ten days. Guess I'll go do all the lesson plans that I didn't get to do Sunday. Good times.

In other blog worthy news, my fire alarm puller has been moved across the hall to another teacher. It was the principal's decision with a lot of different factors going on there. I feel bad but relieved and bad for feeling relieved. Hopefully, now we can get everyone else back on track. The principal did an observation yesterday which went terrible maybe because I was sick but maybe because we have taken several steps back dealing with other student issues. New plan is that I have to grow horns and have some conferences with parents. If we can accomplish that, I think we end the year with a bang. Just do it.

100 Days!

I took on the organization of 100s day this year since the teacher who usually does it had her baby 2 days before. I pretty much took what we always do and emailed it to everyone as well as making sure everyone had the supplies they needed. I think it was success and there were compliments. On a side but still related note, The district is having a firm from Australia come and align all of our curriculum. They are visiting all the schools, observing classrooms, and talking to teachers and administrators. He chose Friday to come visit us. If his goal was to see us with our typical routines and curriculum, he didn't get what he came for. I don't really know what kind of report we will get but the 10 minutes that he observed my class my kids were listening so that's good. I didn't see him around in the afternoon for the craziness of all these activities but maybe he'd seen enough. Or our principal hid him away. I'm not really sure. Thankfully, he was gone by the time the fire alarm puller dropped his pants and took a whiz on the playground for all to see. Yes, it happened. No, I'm not surprised. It was pretty much the perfect way to end the week. The principal wasn't even going to tell me what happened. He just looked at me and said, "No, I'm not even going to tell you. You don't even want to know. I'll deal with it and you have a great weekend!" I did find out of course because my students are 5 and tell me everything that happens but I am still enjoying the weekend and hoping for his sake that it's a better week next week. We both need it.

An Addition

Last week, I got a new student that per his IEP has to have a full time aide. So, now I have an extra person in my room all the time! It's different because I'm usually a one man show and I'm just not used to having extra hands. It's also a sub aide and not the permanent person. I have no idea when they will hire someone but I haven't heard so it could be a bit. The student only needs her for academic work and most of the time he is able to participate and doesn't need any extra help. He is a really quiet sweet kid and doesn't look like he's going to be a problem. It is definitely going to be helpful because I have 3 students who are all very low and need a lot of extra help. They get to have their own little group with her which is fun.

We are doing testing the first part of this week which is no fun for me or the kids but gives us good information about how far they've come. I've been really impressed with the progress of my class so far. Some of the kids that started really behind are completely caught up thanks to our intervention specialist and a little bit of me. I still have the 2 kids who are still having major struggles and 2 with IEPs but overall we rock at reading. We are testing math too so we'll probably see that it's been a little neglected in our push to pick up the reading scores. There just doesn't to be enough time in the day to get everything done.

Friday is the 100th day of school! WOW. YEAH!