Shocking Events!

For the first time in five years, I had a class get on the stage in front of the rest of the school and perhaps eighty parents and actually perform their song.

Not even one child stood on stage covering his or her ears.  Nor did anyone hide behind his or her third grade buddy.

A bunch of kids actually strategically positioned themselves near the microphones for maximum volume.


They were the eleventh act to perform and had had three stage practices, which I think helped a lot.  But still: the Kindergartners were actually audible while rapping AND danced in front of an audience.


Wonders never cease, seriously.

Not All Guests, Also Crafts.

What We Have Been Doing Lately:

Sprouting Wings: I bought these.  The quality on these is really good - the cardstock is so thick the kids couldn't paper punch it, actually.  This was a three-day project:

1. Symmetrical Painting: Paint half of one side with a thick layer of acrylic paint, fold over and press.  This would've gone better with finger paint - it's easier to get a thick coat and finger paint is less sticky - but we didn't have any, and I uncovered a bunch of acrylic at SCRAP last year.
2. Pick Two Centers: Kids got about twelve minutes at two centers (three available): using dot markers, using glitter glue and stick-on rhinestones (you used to be able to get these very cheaply at OTC, but no more it seems), and using paper punches and ribbons to make streamers.
3. Finishing Day: Kids get a twenty-minute center to use whatever they want to finish off their wings, plus chip glitter glue (which covers huge areas with both sparkly shapes and translucent color for a nice effect).

Unity Mosaics: We do a virtue every month at our school and start with unity.  I got a bunch of paper mosaic tiles and gave every kid a pattern sheet to make a mosaic.  Each one had a quarter of a larger design, so when they were all fitted together, they made a big wall display.  The kids really liked these, particularly seeing them hanging, and want to do this again.

Oh Look, Science: We demonstrate liquid water turning into a steam by making tea using mint from the school garden.  Once the kids start steeping their tea (we were fairly free with the honey this year, too) we demonstrate how the steam can be collected and condensed into water).  We also put flowers in liquid watercolor so that we can use capillary action to show that liquids flow.  And we froze liquid watercolor so that the kids who aren't using the play sink can use paintsicles (luckily, it's supposed to be warm this week).

Once we finish with water/states of matter/water cycle stuff, I want to do color and light again.  I also committed to doing a month of family/celebrations/remembering crafts and Dia de los Muertos stuff with the 2nd graders next door and my ex-Resident's 1st graders.  And I signed my class up for monthly environmental education trips with Kids in Parks.  So in some ways it feels like my first year all over again - tons of new stuff to plan out and organize, etc.  Still, some things are easier: this is the first year that I've managed to have stress-free crafternoons, just assuming the kids will move themselves between stations and everything will get cleaned up (starting clean up fifteen minutes before the bell helps - if they clean fast, we can pack up and go outside for a quick afternoon debrief/PE game/song, and if they don't it still gets done by the bell).

In These Times of Counts and School Shifts

...a friendly reminder that, in the event EPC calls, do be so good as to inform your child's current school that you won't be returning.  This is just simple politeness.  EPC does not call the school to inform them, and - speaking from years of SFUSD experience - it may take quite awhile for your child to actually be dropped from our enrollment.

Additionally, if you choose to decline your new spot, please do your best to make this clear to EPC.  Otherwise, they call my school, bluster their way into being transferred to my room, and holler at me over the phone during class time.  I'm still not sure how the person hollering figured it, but the opening line was "You can't tell us where the child is going to school.  OR the family."  Eventually I was able to cut in and inquire what, precisely, they would like me to do given that the child was presently in my classroom, eagerly awaiting my return from phone screaming.  Once that point got across, the person hung up abruptly.  I'm still not sure what the point of all that was, but I fear it being repeated.

One of last year's Kindergartners asked me today why the current Kindergartners are so little, because when her class was in Kindergarten, they were WAY BIGGER.  It is for the best that the current Ksters did not hear this, because they may have needed to defend their honor.  This class is like that.

Today it was very warm, and by the end of some quite rigorous groups we had eighteen kids who were hot, tired and doing eighteen different things.  This was a little overwhelming for the new Resident, even though they settled down in two minutes.  One of the nice things about experience is that this kind of thing happens, and you know it.  You have ways to get them back on program and you don't internalize the chaos.  Besides, we gave them rather meaty work today and despite the breakdown after doing it, it got done and done quite well.  Hopefully she believed me that these things happen and it gets better.

One Week Down.

Saturday I was exhausted and somewhat sick and spent the entire day on the couch rereading Elizabeth George novels.  That's the result of a first week, I think.  The work is particularly physically demanding, and emotionally you have to be on the top of your game the entire time.  Anyway, overall I think I did pretty well establishing the class community and getting started:

1. I have a hard time with files because there's just so many of them.  Every single master goes into its own file, creating giant piles of files (I have a file cabinet, but one drawer is permanently jammed and the other is full of puzzles.).  This year, I have decided to make a file for each week and put every master I use that week in it.  Since I use the same things around the same time each year, this should - if I maintain it - make it easy to find things in the future.
2. Our formal Caring School Communities meeting was lacking, but the general ideas of it (looking at the speaker, one speaker at a time) were introduced.  I'll do this meeting again next week.
3. Reading Workshop is going pretty well; the kids are really into it and they have a lot more interest in the class library than in years past (the loft helps there, too).
4. I spent half an hour after school every day just cleaning up and organizing.  If I can keep this up, things will go well.  I also spent one lunch break copying - a task immeasurably helped by having spent the afternoon before organizing things to copy.
5. I didn't introduce a formal classroom management system until Friday, and I won't begin using it until Tuesday probably.  That's the longest I've gone without.  As yet, the class is fairly manageable, and I'm also letting the little things go.  Having a resident helps, since she or I can take on a meltdown while the other deals with the rest of the class.

This week, I really want to get all the Brigances done and start demanding lowered volume.  I have a couple of kids who are just loud - not grumpily loud or not getting my work done loud, just totally unaware of their volume.  I also need to order animals for the year (other than Silkie eggs) and call the local library to schedule a field trip.

Day Four

Okay, we got through Wacky Wednesday.  So far this class has not been untowardly; indeed, their management issues have been straightforward and they're generally disposed to enjoy themselves.  It helps a lot that it hasn't been very warm, so while they get tired they're not exhausted and uncomfortable all at once.  I am hoping to finish off the week on a good note these last two days, but at the same time waiting for the boom to drop.  I've been cutting activities shorter than I generally do so that things finish before the kids do.  It helps.

The lunch issues are still not worked out, and it's infuriating.

Guess What's Missing!

I teach at an early start school and the Kindergartners go to lunch at 10:30 am.

Lunches arrived shortly before one, ready for their fifteen minutes in the oven.

Even if we had petty cash on hand that could cover, say, an all school deli run, we kept hearing that lunches would be on site by 10:45.  Well, 11:00.  In maybe half an hour.  They aren't there yet?  Certainly before noon.  And so on.  Once it gets past 11:00, it's really too late to do anything but wait.

The kids who expected to eat school lunch got cold cereal with milk and a sampling of granola bars from my extra snack stash.  I also gave them an all-fruit popsicle towards the end of the day.  It was a rotten situation and the kids were great about it, I have to say.

I can't get over this!  I mean, mistakes do happen.  Lunch has been late before.  But this kind of thing - on the first day of school! - is inexcusable.  What kind of message does this send to parents?  I should NEVER be in a position where I have to explain that your child may be famished because SFUSD left us unable to feed your child.

Otherwise, it was an easy first day.  (I'd rather they eat lunch a little later - the two and a half hours after lunch get pretty long for Kindergartners - so in some ways a late lunch wouldn't have been bad.)  This was the first time I never felt that I had no idea what I would do next on the first day of school.  Almost all of the kids on my roster showed up but one of the Ks is very small.  No one got lost and there were only a couple of criers, both of whom settled quickly.  This class is overall very confident, so the usual management issues (frightened of school, too shy to ask for the bathroom) will probably apply less.

I know that most teachers start pretty strict and get looser; I tend to go the other way.  I just don't think they can manage every routine and protocol I'm planning to hold them to on the first day of school.  Tomorrow I think I'll be enforcing sit-on-one-picture on the rug (they love each other and want to be close) and walking in a line (I don't deal with cutting, but today we had some clumping problems).   They should also get imagination stations tomorrow, which they will enjoy.

They also seemed to largely enjoy themselves; this was the first year where a lot of kids apropos of nothing informed me that they like Kindergarten and our class and all that stuff - near the end of the day.  Usually by the end of the day the kids who wanted to tell me they like our class did so earlier and are tired and the kids who aren't sure yet are cranky.  Hopefully they will still like me and the class tomorrow afternoon, too.

No Stress Free Path

I'm debating whether or not to go into school for a little bit today.  I spent five hours there Saturday, completing the following tasks:

• accepted a delivery of popcorn kernels, yogurt, all-fruit popsicles, healthy granola bars and bottled water for my class snacks this week
• whacked my head on the freezer hard enough to raise a big ugly bruise at my hairline
• filled out, had signed and faxed four bus requests to the Transportation Office (a trip to the Farmers' Market for each K and 1st and a trip to the California Academy of Sciences for my class and another Kindergarten)
• Received a final roster.  I'm back up to 22 students, but a child who toured my room and had his picture taken with me last week was switched yet again into another class.  Someone or some program at the District office is constantly fiddling with class lists over the last week before school starts, and it's really irritating.  Anyway, I'll be starting with 23 on my roster.
• Made copies and filed everything.
• Set up baskets, etc. for Reading Workshop.
• Collected and stored some of my classroom workbooks.
• Ordered this, a couple of these* and some hand sanitizer
• Wrote out lesson plans for the week
• Did some final cleaning
• Got first day intake materials together.  On the first day of school, I have a worksheet so that I have a single, in-room class list that provides the following for each child: 
• a telephone number guaranteed to be answered that day at all times,
• any allergies
• what the child will be doing after school, with a back-up plan if the child is planning to attend the afterschool program but has not been officially registered (there will be a full waitlist), the exact bus stop at which the child disembarks and the name of the adult who is picking up the child there, or the name of the adult picking the child up at school.
• In addition to getting the list filled out, I pass out my class letter, a general field trip form for all walking field trips (for those occasions when a child forgets an event-based walking trip form) and put a name necklace on each child.  This is hectic.
• Made sure I had gone over my rising first graders with each first grade teacher
• Failed to fix the dollhouse and refusing-to-open file cabinet
• Confirmed that my incubator still works (yay!)
• Missed not one, but two buses

If I went over today, I would drop off some Sharpie markers, a chart tablet and these.  Then I would just walk around my room a little, make sure I had plenty of sometimes and anytime snacks pictures for our collage and write a list of sparklers.  No matter how many years I do this, there will be at least one brief moment every day the first week wherein a significant minority of the class is exhausted, hungry and hot and I suddenly forget everything I know about teaching.  I do not think a list will keep this from happening, but it might inure me against feeling a total failure when it does.

The biggest thing I've learned about Kindergarten is that the first couple of weeks are the hardest part of the year.  I feel especially horrible about the kids being tired and cranky toward the end of the day because it is the beginning of the year: they don't know about all the cool and awesome fun we will have as the year goes on.  Moreover, since this is the first week, my Resident will be leaving an hour before the end of the school day, so the most difficult portion of the day during the most difficult portion of the year will be just me.  

I have a giant fan now, courtesy Donors Choose, and I think that will help a great deal.  I also filled four spray bottles for misting, and scheduled PE (indoor and outdoor), cooperative and imaginative play for the last hour.  Historically, I have avoided outdoor PE the first week due to the hassle of collecting backpacks, placing them on the lower yard bench without anyone fleeing for the Kindergarten yard, etc. This year, I'm going to have the Resident help me get them to the yard before she leaves.  The first day will be either parachute or ribbon wands, depending on child fatigue (the parachute is a lot of work, physically).  So I'm crossing my fingers against the likelihood of someone deciding to test the teacher's boundaries by bolting for the lower yard play structure.  My goal this year is to go with the flow: five year olds are five, and that's going to mean some tired, cranky kids.  Getting tired and cranky because they won't do what I had planned does no one any good.  Still, I don't intend to flow to lower yard play structure use on the first day.

Typing this up has made me feel less stressed out: the benefits of navel-gazing on one's internal psychodrama are real!  Maybe I won't go in.  That would be ideal, honestly: I'd like to go to the gym before I go to Outside Lands.

My only other major worry is around eating.  Having ended my medication holiday, I am readjusting to Adderall, which was originally developed and marketed as a weight-loss drug.  For me, the drug improves my focus enough that I don't so much forget to eat as

a. I decide to eat whenever I finish, but since there's always something else to do I don't ever finish.
b. I have adequate focus that I do not get distracted and decide that I need a snack.

And then when I do eat I am not very hungry.  This side effect doesn't last that long, but what with the endless tasks of the first week of school, I didn't eat very much.  I didn't notice any major low blood sugar side effects, but when managing twenty three brand new Kindergartners, you want all systems at go.**  So I think I'm going to pack small but powerful lunches (packing a lunch being one of the skills Adderall helps me master).  I'm also going to stay at the very small dose level at which I restarted.

*I have everything I need to make kaleidoscopes except caps.  My theory is that making these easier ones will enable me to make caps and use my materials next year. Making a good kaleidoscope is a little complicated, and since this will be an early in the year project, I really want it to work well.
**I have efficiently managed Kindergartens without medication; however, currently I feel that my life in general - including all portions that do not take place on school grounds - benefit from a combination of ADHD management strategies including medication.  Besides, other than the eating, the improved focus, decreased fidgeting and lowered stress levels really make for a happier me.

The Low Hum of Heads Exploding

For my own sanity, every time I get a new iteration of my class list, I make new name badges, name writing sheets and name project pages for that student.  I do this because it's the kind of thing that keeps me up at night, even though it is not difficult or time-consuming to wait and write a name.

This is why I know I have had as many as 25 students on my roster.  In total, I've had thirty different children enrolled in my class at various points.  When I left school today, I had a final (ha!) roster of 19 students.  Two are siblings of students I had in the past, three came by to say hello and three are new to the country within the last four months.  Pretty cool.

Tomorrow when I go in, I will pull all the sheets and projects for students who have disappeared from the roll and put them in a folder just in case.  I also will make sure I have a few blank everythings for students who come in the first few days.

And I will resign myself to some of my students leaving when they get a placement offer at a different school.  This bums me out even though I understand it; our school is not convenient for everyone.  And some people want programs (immersion, etc.) that we don't offer.  And some people have concerns about our school that strike me as unstudied, unjustified and questionable in motivation.

Whatever the case, it always feels like a personal rejection, you know?

Tomorrow, I've also got copies to make, a shelf to organize and will be expecting a delivery of snacks and water that I've ordered for the first week for my class.  The room's ready to go and my Resident graciously took home some laminated stuff to cut.  I'm also planning to meet with one of the first grade teachers and give her a quick overview of her students who were in my class last year.  And then it's just Monday.

Perhaps ambitiously, we are cooking a healthy snack on the first day of school.  Well, we are mixing yogurt, (healthy) granola, frozen blueberries and ten mini chocolate chips in a cup and calling it cooking.  Should be fun, though.  Since I am planning to be dressed extremely well, if not in a fashion generally seen in Kindergarten, I have already made sure a large apron is ready and waiting for me.  Now I must only remember to put it on.  And if the worst thing that happens this year is that I get some yogurt on the McQueen, then I'm a very lucky person.

Death Match!

IN THIS CORNER, me.  On a scanty three hours of sleep after an attack of ADHD brain, wearing a disappointingly plain outfit and equipped with an ipod.

IN ALL OTHER CORNERS, my classroom.  Left in the disaster state I thought appropriate Saturday.

I'm staying until it's done and hoping to stroll out of school by 8pm.

I ended my Adderall holiday today by taking half of my old morning dose.  That should partially hone dulled brain.  Since ADHD was responsible for dulling it in the first place, I think it's a fair trade.

I have relatively good coping strategies for getting by with a lack of executive functioning.  I also am of the school of thought that believes there are positives to ADHD: it can make you quick on your feet, willing to try new things and intensely creative.  I think I'm more accepting of learning needs in the classroom, too, because I know there are environments in which I cannot be successful.  That said, I really love Hyperbole and a Half and somewhat identify with this.

In other news, here is the dress that the USPS finally saw fit to deliver.  Providing that weather reports hold, I'll be pairing it a turtleneck shell as a first week of school ensemble.  I also have a kicky Byron Lars suit and a Fendi sundress for first week looks.  Today, however, it's going to be a scruffy day.  I may even wear pants.

In further other news, I have a Resident again this year - hooray!  I also have a document outlining my responsibilities and the program's early goals to read.  I am looking forward to perusing it since it should help me be a better mentor for my Resident.

ETA, 7:05 PM: Barring about an hour's worth of scrap-collecting, I'm done.  The new set up rocks my socks, too.

On the Subject of Teacher Laziness

Over half the staff of my school spent their Saturday at school, for which they were uncompensated.  Among the chores completed: moving classrooms, cleaning classrooms, hauling in supplies purchased with one's own money over one's vacation.

I will be seeing well over half the staff in a couple of hours, since we're all attending a week of uncompensated training, for which several members of our school staff (and another school's) put in hours and hours of grant writing to afford.  Thanks to their efforts, we don't have to pay.

I recognize that Joel Klein's proprietary and totally secret study of New York public school teachers found he was the only person in the district who cared about children, but since I can't see that study or its design to understand how he got those conclusions, I have to go with what I see.  It contradicts his claims, to say the least.

...The training this week should be extra-exciting since I still haven't ended my summer ADHD drug holiday.  That may not last too long, since we'll be starting every morning with a presentation/lecture.  As aids, I've packed my special archival glitter pens (for your most fabulous archival needs, I suppose), but only those.  (I have a box of pens containing several hundred metallic, puffy, glittery, UV-sensitive or otherwise awesome pens, helpfully labeled 'Ridiculous Quantity of Pens'.)  That should provide distraction without enabling me to entirely tune out while I create a masterpiece.  Also, I'm going to wear soft-soled shoes to protect against noisy tapping, and we're supposed to bring two books, so I can read under the table.  I forgot to grab my quilling papers, though.  Oops.

Goals for the Year

1. Run a reduced version of the Bread unit.  I wrote this unit with a first grade teacher who is no longer at my school, and it is too complicated, expensive and time-consuming to run alone.  Also, the  cross-age factor is really key for the unit.   I did a really reduced version last year with a 2nd grade class around Day of the Dead.  Maybe I can talk to that teacher and we can plan a four-week unit.  It covers a lot of social studies and science standards.
2. Always have eight projects in process at Donors Choose.  That is the maximum you are allowed to have, although there was some kind of system flaw and I presently have nine (three funded and waiting for school to start, six partially or unfunded).  This is the only way I get any of the classroom supplies I really want and need other than buying them myself, and I can always hope a foundation will buy all the California projects again.
3. Continue to develop major, multi-day art projects.  I think the kids get a lot out of these beyond a really nice product: they develop a lot of patience.
4. Chickens.   Right now I am thinking I will just try to hatch six eggs, in March.  That way if the hatch fails I can try again in April.  These will be silkies.  I need to make sure the incubator was not broken over the summer - I found it on the floor and partially out of the box when I returned to start setting up the room, which is a drag because I had stored it very carefully - and bite the bullet and order another one if it is broken.  If it is broken, I might request that the school replace it but I think that would be a big fat no.
5. In the spring, have some kind of weekly fashion design club with older students.  Self-explanatory.  The afterschool program sort of had one, but frankly: I could do a lot better.  Originally I was thinking to start a cheerleading club - I was a cheerleader, it's not that big a stretch - but I think that would be more of a time commitment than I am willing to make.  (You see, I am not one of those good teachers, those eager beavers without a personal life.)

I try to mix up my classroom design every year.  Two years ago I tried all-child-responsibility, which meant a lot of really low shelves and crates, all with very few items on them for ease of retrieval/return.  This felt like a rat maze.  So last year I went with a more minimalist approach - I got rid of some furniture, set up everything in stations, and went back to teacher-moderated storage.

This year I'm trying to deal with reality.  For instance: I never use the mounted white board in my classroom for anything other than hanging charts and messages.  So I don't really need to make it a focal point, right?  And apparently the smaller carpet in my room is so old it can no longer be cleaned, so I need to have one rug-seating area rather than two.  And while putting the play kitchen in the corner makes it more like a playhouse, it also makes for an exciting area hard to resist when five-year olds are tired, grumpy, and want to see what will happen if they just refuse to follow the rules.

So I moved the kitchen to the front of the room, covered the white board with fadeless to make a new bulletin board, and put the workbench in the corner.  Since I can't make a little chill-out/morning meeting station by the door without a rug, I need to figure out what's going in that corner.

I also cleaned out a closet that has hooks and I think was intended to be used as a cubby.  I had been using the hooks to store scooter boards, but since I finally cleared out all of the detritus left behind by the teacher who used the room before me* I piled those in a storage cabinet.  That means I can ditch a rolling coat rack/cubby unit.

That leaves me with figuring out where to put the tables and how to set them up.  Hmm.

*By the way: bad form, particularly if you are still teaching at the school, just in another room.  Sure, it's easy to tell yourself that it's a lot of useful stuff.  But let's face it: you know it's mostly junk, with a few mimeograph masters from the early eighties.  It took four years to clear it all out of my room, and it included insect parts, multiple copies of the same useless blackline master book, notes from staff meetings held in the late nineties, chalk bits, and tins I was afraid to open.  By the end of it, I was lurking, waiting for the custodian to come by and take it out so I could holler, "IT'S NOT MINE!  I SWEAR!"  Leaving an absolutely empty room is preferable.

Running Out the Clock on AB 114

(I do not link to the Huffington Post, which is the source for this quote.)

[SFUSD Superintendent Carlos] Garcia said he thinks AB 114 might end up in court.

"Some people would claim ... that seems like an unfunded mandate by the state," he said. "There will be some legal challenges to that question. If you're not allowed to have some flexibility on laying off people, you could bankrupt a school district."

Oh, cry me a river, Superintendent.  "Flexibility" in SFUSD means "teacher layoffs that disproportionately impact high-needs schools".  If the Superintendent really and truly needed to lay off people to make the budget balance, there are all those administrators who got noticed but not laid off - all but seventeen of them. Not to mention the ever-growing cast of administrators and "teachers on special assignment" and so on cluttering up the Bayview and Superintendents' zones.

I think it's more than fair to read "I think" for "Some people would claim", and as far as "unfunded mandates" go, I'd like to draw the Superintendent's attention to federal and state school budgeting in general.

This is going to be a pretty immediate court case, if it begins at all.  15 August is the hard and final deadline for teacher layoffs - a particularly ugly one for SFUSD, since that means our Superintendent is considering laying off teachers (court battles depending) on the first day of school.

Maybe he can get the Mercury News to do it for him.

Cherry Picking and Legality.

Whenever one gets to the brass tacks of charter school enrollment and retention, charter advocates immediately point out that charter schools are blocked from outright selection of a student group through admissions: no testing, etc.  So those concerned with charter schools enrollment have to explain other, legal methods of restricting the student population.

The fact that charter schools have been gaming the system for years generally doesn't come up.  But now that even the New York City Public Schools - who've never seen a charter they don't like - are having to discipline their charters for illegal conduct in enrollment.

I don't think you can put this down to CHOICE.

In other news, I went to school yesterday and had my first how-will-this-ever-look-like-a-classroom freakout.  I decided to stick with two cubbies rather than cleaning out a closet that has cubby hooks and fixed the pegboard on the workbench.  Then I grabbed everything I had laminated and went home to cut it.

Budget Comes Back to Bite.

We use a big chunk of our site budget to buy mental health support at my site.  We are one of the District's schools in a partnership with UCSF, which provides us professional development and a post-doc therapist. That's free to us.  The STAR program buys you a half-time Learning Support Professional - more or less a school social worker.  Our school budgets to make that a full-time position.

We also have had PIP, a play therapy program.  I spend a decent chunk of my time scheming how to get as many of my students as possible into the sixteen available K-3 slots.  This is a state Early Mental Health Initiative program and I've been to the EMHI conference twice through this program (extremely worth it from a professional development perspective; also, I like to wear my nice clothes and breezily inform acquaintances that I am "traveling for work").

Last year, as part of our giant annual Edgewood contract, we had a full-time Behavior Support Coach.  The coach did social-emotional skills groups, one on one counseling, and worked with classes whose dynamic had taken a bad turn - for instance, the class whose teacher went into early labor, thereby leaving before expected, in a way frightening for some students, and without a ready-to-go long-term substitute.  This was a huge support, so we budgeted it in this year.  We couldn't afford it without support from Edgewood's own state grants.

We heard today that we won't have a BSC next year.

This is frightening, not only because we are expecting the same bunch of smart kids with more than anyone's fair share of trauma, but also because word has it that we will be getting a decent number of kids from Willie Brown.

Willie Brown's last year was apparently not so awesome.  This story hints at the problems a bit, but the teacher grapevine included really miserable reports, and any time the principal's replaced halfway through the year you know things are bad.  I think we can expect that the kids from Willie Brown are likely to be dealing with the psychological implications of their last year there, and it's not too hard to imagine that they will be academically behind.

It strikes me that if we're getting some of these kids, we really need all the help we can get.  A lot of high-needs schooling is relationships, and we don't have any with these kids.  Moreover, their last school experience puts us in the red to start: it's all the school district, after all.

Here's hoping something good happens to get us our Behavior Coach back.

How List Making Went

I was absolutely supposed to:

• laminating several sets of flash cards for long-term viability,
• mapping out where the furniture goes this year, and

I didn't map out furniture, which was probably a good thing in that I have several pieces I wanted to move that end up being an inch or so too big for where I wanted to put them.  However, finding this out without a map probably led to more furniture-moving than necessary.

• hanging fadeless paper and bordette on all appropriate surfaces.

It is a pet peeve of mine not to replace fadeless and border every year.  Fadeless fades; I'll use the same set of calendar tags for a few years but not bulletin boards: it's depressing.  I have four bulletin boards in my room.  I repapered three and papered one wall entirely.  The fourth bulletin board I didn't do because I didn't want to move everything in front of it and because I think it will probably be the calendar wall (which requires special treatment).

I may also consider:

• Moving the library to the other side of the classroom (this is a major endeavor),

I decided against this.  I worked out a new way to contain the enormous quantity of books.  I'm still planning to clear out some books and give them to the ex-Resident, I think.

• Plugging in the computers and printing out game sets, and
• Hanging filters and contact paper on all the windows (to cut down on glare/heat).

I did none of the things on my "don't do" list, and I also:

• moved the computers elsewhere
• fixed a shelving unit
• had a mild fit when I realized one of my classroom rugs was thrown away.  Admittedly, it was very old.  However, since it is unlikely to be replaced, it's a loss
• had a larger fit when I realized my incubator had been moved, dropped, and badly re-boxed during the waxing process.  I could not bear to see if it was broken but will have to go in and check that.  It's $150 to replace it and I need to buy silkie eggs this year, so...argh.
• broke an extra brooder light bulb and hunted the hall for my broom and dustpan to sweep it up.

Opening the Year

Tomorrow will be the first day I go to school to get ready for the upcoming year.  (I did one day in early June, but that was not targeted toward The Coming Year - just maintenance-type stuff.)  One of my little goals for the year is to plan out my weekends at school (as opposed to my usual "Oh, hey - I'll just go in and do some stuff on Sunday).  This is intended as a time-management strategy.

You see, when I go to school on the weekend I invariably have a lot of stuff I should've taken care of on Friday afternoon waiting for me.  Friday tends to be Enormous Messy Project day.  If I know I'm coming in on Sunday, why stay to clean it up?  I forget that I am coming in for a reason - say, to make a month of homework and pull materials for an ELD unit.

And then when I get to school?  It's Sunday - the weekend!  I am supposed to be relaxing and having fun on the weekend!  So clearly I should do the things I like: planning out the arts and crafts extensions for a thematic unit, making a new bulletin board, organizing my pens.

This ends up being a colossal ADHD dramafest, wherein one of the following happens:

1. Although I plan to leave at 1:00pm, I stay until 5:30, forget that the alarm is on a timer and re-arms and set it off while locking the back wing.  By the time I get to the front and disarm it, I am having a panic attack and my eardrums have exploded from the noise.
2. I do exactly what I want to do, leave at 1:30 and end up coming into school at 5:30 Monday morning for a massive clean/pull/craze extravaganza.  This is a bad start to the week.
3. I do exactly what I am supposed to do and feel bitter and grumpy about it.  I engage in shopping therapy, typically purchasing arts and crafts supplies for the classroom.

Anyway, it's not really ideal.  I'm thinking that perhaps setting myself a list of required, conceivable and Absolutely Do Not Even Think About It tasks will help me manage more successfully.  So for tomorrow, I will definitely be:

• laminating several sets of flash cards for long-term viability,
• mapping out where the furniture goes this year, and 
• hanging fadeless paper and bordette on all appropriate surfaces.

I may also consider:

• Moving the library to the other side of the classroom (this is a major endeavor),
• Plugging in the computers and printing out game sets, and
• Hanging filters and contact paper on all the windows (to cut down on glare/heat).

However, under no circumstances may I:

• Start making homework packets or
• Pull out all my quilling materials, quill a demo project and plan a craft unit.

While I'm on a list-making adventure, my other little goals for the year are:

• Write at least five successful Donors Choose grants,
• Keep/Train another Resident,
• Support the Ex-Resident, and
• Avoid all psycho-social interpersonal drama at my school site.  My school site is highly functional and the adult culture is okay, but a high-needs environment is high-stress for everyone.  Last year I tried to help people mediate their way through the pressure cooker and it's just too much vacuum-sealing for me to be healthy and stable.