So someone asked me the total cash amount of the various grants and whatnot I've done over the last five years (which is how long I've been teaching in my current District).

Anyway, I started to do the math and then realized it was over $30,000, so I figured that was a nice, round number and I'd stop there.

The continued generosity shown by total strangers to my classroom is really awesome.  It's a pity the state is not as willing to step forward, but given how bleak the annual budgets are, I can't imagine the austerity education that I'd be providing without this support.

This message brought to you by the shock of having a Donors Choose request fulfilled in less than twenty four hours, which is a personal record.

ALSO:  A big hello! to visitors from the sfusd.edu domain.  We certainly have some staff putting in long evenings!

Good News, Coping Strategies, Buy in Bulk Esoterica

Good News: Some generous person or organization funded all the Donors Choose projects in SFUSD today.  I got two, one a biggie for recess equipment, which makes me feel better about not having resubmitted the grant for a loft.

Coping Strategies: Something that comes up in teaching at high-needs schools is secondary trauma: many of your students are traumatized, and that trauma is shared with the educators on site.  And there's trauma just associated with teaching in a high-poverty environment, or in dealing with systems that really aren't set up to do the best for children.  Everyone has some coping strategies for these issues, maladaptive or not.

I have a new one: every time I am upset about classroom stuff or irritated with the district's utter disdain for certain necessities (heat) or fondness for extra-legal procedures that take forever, I am going to up the weights I use at the gym.  At this rate, I will be scary cut by May.

Teacher Esoterica, Buy in Bulk: Those little cups that you get pickled ginger in sometimes?  About 2 ounces and food safe?  Those and the lids have dozens of uses: fill 'em with pre-portioned paint for easy clean up, distribute high-density snacks like dried fruit, store beads that have been sorted by color, etc.  These are so great I want to buy some for every teacher at my school and just see what other uses people discover for them.  They are not perhaps the most waste-sensitive solution, but we reuse them many times and besides, my class is rumored to be the best composters at the school.  So I figure they can have a pass to save me a little after school work.

In better news...

I got two Donors Choose projects fully funded yesterday, which brings me up to three for the Friends and Family Challenge.  I have another one that needs less than one hundred dollars to complete.

This makes me more hopeful I will get backpacks for my students to take home at the end of the year and possibly even a full set of recess equipment for the Kindergarten yard.

SPARK!

This is a wonderful week to make a donation at donorschoose.org.

Select a project you like, and add SPARK as your promotional code/match code.  This provides a dollar-for-dollar match courtesy the Donors Choose board.

My school is already at critical alert status for some supplies: glue sticks, markers - and we have one hundred days to go.  I haven't seen a Sharpie I didn't buy myself in four years.  Other schools are in similar straits.  If you can, lend a hand - donate, and demand California fully funds its schools.

Year Five.

I have now cleaned out all but one of the cabinets in my room that were filled when I arrived.  The last filled cabinet has curricula in it, so while I can make it neater I can't, sadly, dump it.  (Curriculum sets for Kindergarten are huge, and I would like to disappear the HM set in my room.  I don't use it and I post the first grade alphabet cards.  I do intend to use the workbooks for homework packets this year, though.  Beats photocopies.)

Some of the stuff I found was kind of depressing, like manuals for an arts program.  Apparently there used to be District-adopted arts curricula.  Now that California can't even afford a Language Arts curriculum adoption cycle and the arts take away from the all-important testing time, I don't imagine I'll ever see one of these again.

I also found things that, frankly, the person who had the room before me should have not left for me to take care of.  Nothing as bad as muddy/painty/insect-part-y trays, but training manuals and observation notes and things like that.  Not cool.  Moving classrooms sucks.  Changing schools also is a big drag.  Clean out your room anyway, even though they don't give you any time or any pay for it.  (Easy for me to say, since I'm not moving schools or rooms.  But when I moved these in the past, I was very good about it.)

Last year, I taught two artists (Pollock and Mondrian), several movements/styles and various arty-sounding words (I mean, one of the kids wrote in her Paper Person Project that she learned how to make mixed-media collages in Kindergarten.  Consider these words TAUGHT).  We did a lot of sun-catcher/window crafts, some mosaics, quite a lot of sculpture but not too many fiber crafts.  I'm thinking to chart out what projects I plan to do when (although I'm hoping to get this Donors Choose for art supplies filled first, and that would make some changes to the plan).

I'm not entering the school building again until August, although there's plenty I could do.  I need a break.  This week I mostly slept, but I'm hoping that the debt is filled and I can be productive with the rest of the break.

And that's that.

I am checked out of my classroom (after an all-day Sunday adventure in stuff-moving, stuff-cleaning and stuff-trashing)!  I swear, next year I'm showing a video on the last day of school, not doing Child Pollock and other fun stuff.

...That said, for unknown reasons, we had several parents tour this week.  Early in the week, my classroom had Paper People remnants and various art activities out.  Not to mention an enormous coop of chickens.  By the last drop by, two hours before school got out for the year, it was a disaster zone of take-home backpacks, tear-downs, and craft explosions.  And an enormous coop of chickens.  I had paint in my hair from the action painting, so you can imagine what the kids looked like.  I do not think this makes a good impression, but really: on the last day of school, maybe don't tour.

At 4:30 on Friday, all 6 remaining pink slips at my site were rescinded!

I remembered to pass out everything I needed to and give away things I wanted to get rid of (like Moon Sand, the world's messiest substance.  That stuff leaves glitter in...well, in the dust.)!

I adopted out all my chicks!

I restrained myself from accepting an offer to raise my pet chicken Egghead for my retrieval in August!

I am registered for the Special Education PD in August!  (This means I'm skipping my site PD, and man, am I so happy about that.  Not that I'm tired with my site, just that what with the high-needs school endless teacher churn it ends up being more or less the same PD over and over and over and over and over and over and...well, I have ADHD.)

I am taking an Adderall Holiday!  Providing I survive the Doom Sleepy, that is.

I am leaving for New York tomorrow!

In other news, I got a couple of really nice letters from parents and/or students.  I made plans with my Resident to do a massive classroom purge next week.  This will mean that all the shelf-papering I did is for naught, but will mean I have more space to store stuff.

I have five active projects up at Donors Choose and a sixth (about the Science of Jackson Pollock) in progress.  I am thinking about linking them here, although that would be the end of my "anonymity".

I had some awesome conversations the last week of school.

CHILD (to child): You're evil.
"EVIL" CHILD: HA HA.  Yes, I am.
E. Rat: No.  Let's not call each other 'evil'.
"EVIL" CHILD: But I AM evil.  Listen: (laughs maniacally).
CHILD: What does 'evil' mean?
NEW CHILD: Devils are evil.
E. Rat: Um.  Well, I guess evil means that you do bad things that hurt others...
CHILD: So it means bad?
NEW CHILD: Devils are bad.
E. Rat: Yes, but also that you do bad things because they are bad and you want to hurt others, and that makes you happy. (Resolves to check a dictionary later).  So calling someone evil is serious.
"EVIL" CHILD: That's why they laugh like this (laughs maniacally).
ADDITIONAL CHILD: But what about the minions?
E. Rat: What?
ADDITIONAL CHILD: The MINIONS!  Are they evil, too?
ANOTHER CHILD: Can YOU do an evil laugh?

...this went on for awhile.  I recounted this to someone later and that person suggested that the idea of "minions" might come from a movie.  I have no idea.

CHILD, HOLDING CHICK: Do chickens make chicken?
E. Rat: Can you explain that a little more?
CHILD: Like, do they make fried chicken?
E. Rat: Yes.
CHILD: WILL THIS CHICKEN MAKE FRIED CHICKEN?
E. Rat: (Assists child in loosening sudden death grip on chick).
CHILD: WILL THIS CHICKEN MAKE FRIED CHICKEN?
E. Rat: Um, this chicken is too little.
CHILD: Oh, okay.

I'm just not so fast on my feet after the Promograduation insanity, you see.

I haven't seen Waiting for Superplutocrats - I have this thing about controlling my blood pressure - but I understand that the lazy, rotten, nogoodnik public school teacher types sleep while their students fail to learn in this movie.

I don't actually know how that works.  If I fell asleep in my classroom, two students would immediately dispatch themselves to run to the office to alert officialdom.  Three more would make a child tower to get at the Magical Mysteries of the Top Shelves.  The rest would tickle and/or suffocate me.  I don't even have a teacher's desk to sit behind, brooding, while my students have snail races/give each other haircuts/become depressed in a miasma of union-loving child hate.  My class can more or less leave me alone to do Guided Reading and/or assessment, but that's due to months of training (and is made much easier this year thanks to having a Resident).  Moreover, part of the 'leave E. Rat alone' compact is that you will eventually get your turn with the teacher, and you don't want anyone to interrupt it.

This week was a bit difficult.  In addition to some time at the vet, it ends up that part of aging is developing really miserable allergies to life itself.  It was also a week featuring things I find difficult (paper management: field trip permission slips, forms for certain school programs, thank yous to mail) and anxiety-inducing (putting together technological items like incubators, making sure no one jumps in the pond on the field trip, eighty seven thousand little tasks that are in themselves exceptionally easy but become this Doomy Doom in my head).

Also, I had this at my home, waiting for perusal.  And someone gave me a set of these.

So what I really wanted to do was spend hours lettering folders, permission slips, awards and similar for my students, taking breaks only to read my exhibition guide and to blow my nose, cough, sneeze and rub my eyes.

What I did instead was run the annual Read an Eggathon (we have an egg hunt, but with words in the eggs and stickers for prizes), get a snootful of pollen on our buddy picnic field trip (DUCKLINGS!), set up the incubator and leave my new fancy book in its overwrap.

The stars therefore granted me a Donors Choose of fine, fine construction paper - the kind that is smooth, crisp, bright and probably miserable for the planet - and twenty boxes of glitter crayons.  Perhaps one day one of my Kindergartners will rate their own fine museum exhibition of couture, and I will attend as a guest of honor in a bespoke dress.  THANKS TO THE GLITTER CRAYONS.

In other news, SFUSD indicates that - Oops!  Sorry again! - the coming year is NOT the worst.  The one after that could be even more dire!  At this point, I am presuming that if the state passes a budget before August 15 I'll be laid off thanks to the late window.  I'm also frightened by the increasing class sizes forecast for SFUSD (and thankful to the district for keeping them low as yet in K-3).  I started teaching after class-size reduction; I have a hard time imagining 31 students.  And the supports that made 31 more manageable (paraeducators, AM/PM Kinder with co-teaching) are gone, while the standards for students are much higher (and the school year even shorter).

Moreover, what with the financial crisis, every year more of my students are under stress.  In the four years I've been at my school, every year student mobility goes up.  I got a new student this week, for instance.  Of my students who have moved away, most if not all of their moves were directly due to losing housing/relatives losing housing (often complicated by violence and family members' passing).  This year I've held SSTs for seven students; about half my class is receiving some kind of school-provided social-emotional service.  Those are services that we may not be able to afford.

So beyond the academic requirements, the empathy and care needed for a class of 31 at a high-needs school in an ill-funded environment is at the 'psychic vampire' level.  It's hard to listen to education reform rhetoric about failing schools, failing teachers and "we already tried money" and believe they are anything other than self-assured, knowing liars who have enough time to read their Savage Beauty catalogues and enough money to send their own progeny to highly-supportive, exceptionally expensive private academies.

Ongoing Teaching Fascinations

One of the things that I want my students to find interesting and enjoy is coloring neatly.  Mind you, I didn't say coloring within the lines or coloring true to life.  When we go over what it means to do a nice job coloring, these ideas generally come up in the brainstorming.  The former I nix entirely; it may be that exciting coloring requires outside the line work.  As to the latter, if I want true to life coloring it's part of the directions.  (In science, for instance if we call it a "diagram" or a "science sketch" part of that is coloring the way you see it.  And certain portraiture projects involve accurate coloring.)

In my Kindergarten, neat coloring means:

• controlled strokes (long or short as needed, but not with total abandon)
• a legitimate attempt to color all colorable areas (leaving stuff uncolored is okay if you have a reason for it) in a picture
• prioritizing completeness of one picture rather than finishing (say, if they're coloring a take home reader)
• using multiple colors (at least three)

Later in the year, we add experimenting with shade and coloring more lightly/more heavily.

To assist students in this, I try to provide the best coloring tool for the job.  But I have spent some time working on finding a tool that is manageable and high-interest (if the tool is manageable, I will provide it more often; if it is high-interest, the kids spend more time with it).

For the edification of equally minutiae-minded people, here's what I've learned.

Big Crayons

Pros: Available in a wide array of colors.  Some students find thicker items easier to grasp.  Students generally color more heavily.  Very nice for crayon shaving/crayon melting projects.

Cons: Boring.  Many students associate big crayons with "preschool babies" and similar and want thinner ones.

Use: Out and always available.

Regular Crayons

Pros: Available in a huge array of colors.  Some students find thinner items easier to grasp and like using "big kid" supplies.  Very nice for shade and tone studies.  Children are more likely to use a tripod grasp when using these.

Cons: Requires training around "Why it is not a big deal when crayons break but we shouldn't break them on purpose".  Kids get bored.

Use: Out and always available.

Oil Pastels

Pros: Color well on black.  Smudging allows interesting color effects.

Cons: Messy.  Finished works need to be sprayed with fixative.

Use: Restricted to certain art projects.

Glitter Crayons

Pros: Thinner, therefore "big kid" supplies.  These inspire heavy coloring since the more you color over something, the more glittery it gets.  High novelty factor.  Finished works have a nice shimmer.  The glitter embeds itself nicely and doesn't get all over everything.

Cons: I haven't found these in assortments larger than 16 colors.  These are expensive (~$2.50/box), so we don't have enough for the whole class to use at once.  This can cause interpersonal drama.  Not that easy to find unless I am willing to pay shipping (I just bought the last three boxes at Flax, for instance).

Use: I toss a few of these in every crayon tray and require that they stay where placed unless borrowed through a conversational exchange (no snatching) and returned.

Thick Markers

Pros: Exciting for children.  The marker stands inspire sharing, teach the art of "cap until it clicks" and reinforce rainbow color order.

Cons: Leak through paper.  Hard to do color mixing.

Use: Restricted to large projects.

Thin Markers

Pros: Exciting for children.  Small tip enables detail work.  Do not leak through paper as badly as thick markers.

Cons: Not the best tool when there is not ample time for coloring, since kids will use these for a long time.  Hard to do color mixing (although nice for design work using darker colors on lighter colors).  I don't have marker stands for thin markers and the click of the well-placed cap is not as audible, so there is loss to drying out.

Use: Generally available by request.  (They have to ask but the answer is usually yes.)  We keep fresh roll trays around for sharing these out.

Gel F(x) Markers

Pros: Nice on black paper.  Interesting "fade in" effect that is fun to watch.

Cons: Run out very quickly.  Color mixing is not really possible.  I have only found these in thick sizes, so they don't lend themselves well to detail work.  Expensive; I got a class pack from DonorsChoose but I wouldn't spend the $70 replacing it.

Use: Restricted to black-paper projects as a special treat.

Mr. Sketch Scented Stix

Pros: Between the scent and the tiny tips, kids will color with these in great detail.  Inspire sharing.  Appear to last for a very long time; caps go on securely without a lot of effort.  The scents apparently last a long time (the kids will sniff their work for days afterward and claim they still smell the pens; I haven't tried this).

Cons: Leak through paper more than other thin markers.  Require teaching "How to Share the Scent of a Marker" lessons before someone takes an inadvertent pen to the nostril.  Not the best tool for projects with a short timeline - left to their own devices, some kids will spend 90 minutes with these.  I personally loathe the smell of almost all of these.  Expensive; I got a class pack from DonorsChoose but would not really want to spend $80 to get another one.

Colored Pencils

Pros: Excellent for reinforcing tripod grasp.  Allow blending and shading.  Available in a wide array of colors.  Kids will use these with good enjoyment.

Cons: The great art of sharpening is seductive.  In any colored pencil project, two to three children will want to spend all of their time sharpening until the points are extra sharp.  It may also be necessary to see what will happen if the other end gets sharpened (answer: nothing.  I have better things to get grumpy about).  Pencil sharpeners are not first-day-of-school tools in my classroom and I find colored pencils do not sharpen well in an electric sharpener, so these require a lot of work for me.

Use: Go-to tool when true to life coloring is required or thin markers are not available/suitable.  Otherwise they're available by request, but requests are pretty rare.

Christmas List!

Dear Red-Suited Imaginary Arctic Gift Givers,

I may not have been good this year, but definitely I did good things.  Despite epic budget cuts, regular interludes without heat and the daily denigration of my profession, I have successfully taught my students to read, figure, and treat others with a modicum of respect.

Given American capitalism's "pay for breathing" plans for CEOs, I suppose I could demand presents without any work.  However, the same Rand-reading illiterates* receiving bonuses for their ability to take in oxygen seem to think teachers have something to prove.**  Hence the above.  Additionally:

• I did NOT go to New York so that I could be used to denigrate my own profession.
• I voted in all elections.
• I spoke at Board meetings, gave interviews to the press, and had my picture in national publications. In all venues, I observed that equity is not equality.
• I spoke against child-blaming, parent-blaming and teacher-blaming.
• I took responsibility for my students' learning and demanded that the powers that be take responsibility for their inequitable actions.***

I'm worthy.  I demand presents:

1. Math and reading games to fill the backpacks for my students to take home this summer.
2. Bird print funnel neck dress, size 38 or 40 IT.
3. SFUSD cuts administrative paychecks and positions BEFORE cutting teacher jobs.
4. UESF does not capitulate on "No Layoffs".
5. We get the PAC-TIN grant.
6. Magical black tights that do not get ladders.
7. Aga Six-Four stove and range.
8. 20:1 class size reduction K-12 throughout the state.  12:1 reduction at "high needs" schools (say, those with FRLP over 75% and/or those serving a major public housing development).
9. Lots of nifty light fiction.
10. My very own cross trainer and/or elliptical machine.

As you can see, my desires are both many and extravagant.  I figure such an attitude has served Lloyd Blankfein well, so it can't hurt me any.

In anticipation,

E. Rat

*Yes, I meant for that to happen.  You don't really need strong reading comprehension skills to suffer through Ayn Rand.  Her books are all a disturbing amalgamation of bad, mildly sadomasochistic romance novels and repetitive semi-philosophical pablum.
**And the ones who didn't slap some sense into those boys DO.
***Not that they did, of course.  How much you want to bet that Garcia declines to take a solidarity pay cut (beyond furlough days) again this year?

Neither rain nor snow nor heat nor darkness...

So the thing with a field trip to Slide Ranch is that once you're scheduled, it's do or die.  You need small buses to get there, which ran us $400 a class.  The Ranch itself has a modified lottery system, and to get a fall trip your application is due the June prior.

So the rain did not stop us from going.  Upon arrival, we did open up the question of completing the trip activities to the parent chaperones.  Parents were overwhelmingly in favor of full participation, so we did everything.  Eventually it stopped raining, but I was up to my knees in mud by the end of it (largely due to a freak out in the goat shed, which necessitated a carryout, and I couldn't navigate the board walk with a kid).

On the plus side, the buses had to travel so slowly that I only threw up on the way there.  Which is nothing.

It was a great trip - very exciting and highly engaging.  The rest of the week was something of a wash, though.  Thursday was useless: everyone was tired and grumpy and I still hadn't warmed up.  Friday was marginally better.  Everyone needs a holiday, badly.

We have a week left and it will be quite low key; although report cards now don't go out until 7 January I finished all the assessment.  We have one more verse of "Christmas in Hollis" to learn, and while we made egg nog* (and egg nog ice "cream" from the leftovers) we still have to do something with collard greens.  We're also having an art sale Thursday.  My resident just taught a fairly heavy week of math content, so we'll just continue to review that and introduce nickels: nothing too intense.

Next week is the school dance.  As always, I take the kids who are not able to attend this virtuebration and get crafty with them (I cannot handle the 300 children, loud music and flashing lights of the dance: better to have all the bad-tempered behavior challenging children doing arts projects and making fun of the oldschool hip hop and Afropop we favor in my classroom.)  I think I have the project selected (translucent tile suncatcher grids), I just need demos and grid ideas.

Although I've hit my year goal on filled Donors Choose projects (30 lifetime filled), I am somewhat bummed out because it hasn't been the banner year we had last year, during which I sometimes got two projects in a day over December.  I got backpacks and school supplies for the summer, one for each kid, but not the materials to fill them.  Worksheets aren't terribly useful because it's hard to find ones the kids can do and check independently; most of my students have working parents and/or parents who are not able to check work in English.  So activities and self-checking games are better.  I sent the packs home last year; there was still regression over the summer but it wasn't as intense and some of the kids came back a little more ready in math, apparently (they had a lot of fact practice stuff and got faster).  Still, there's time left.




*No egg, no rum extract soy milk powder egg nog, but egg nog nonetheless.  We did grate fresh nutmeg over it!  And fold in child-whipped cream!

Halloween

Having sorted all of our Halloween candy into "chocolate" and "fruity/mockolate"(Tootsie Rolls, I'm looking at you) sacks, I am rewarding myself with a sampling.  I passed out my address to at least sixty kids, so I'm hoping to unload quite a bit of this stuff.

I don't do a Halloween party with my class, because I am a mean and terrible person.  We did manage to have our school walk-a-thon.  This is a fundraiser for a local community organization; they use the money to fund outreach programs and field trips.  So the money does come back to us (my class has already been there and will go again next month).  But as a school, we think it is important to stress community interrelationships and to work together for causes other than our own budget.  (That's important, too.  We're selling hoodies and tee-shirts for that right now, and I will try to pull off a much larger art sale this Spring.)

After the walkathon, we had a snack, did some work and baked intensely healthy seasonal treats: pumpkin muffins.  I didn't feel like dealing with flax seed, so they did have eggs but I halved the sugar and replaced the oil with greek yogurt.  After lunch and a little more work, their buddy class came over and we all made little tp-roll mummies and ate muffins.  In the end, it feels like a party day but is very low-sugar.  I am a big believer in teaching choices rather than noes (so that we have "sometimes snacks" and I allow cupcakes on birthdays but not cupcakes every day), but Friday Halloween at school followed by Sunday Halloween and Monday candy-eating is pushing "sometimes" a little too far for me.

Monday is a furlough.  I like the day off if not the pay cut; what with the vet bills and the Jeremy's sale I am not enthusiastic about my somewhat smaller paychecks.  I went in yesterday to put the library loft together, and I will be going in tomorrow to hang wall mazes and clean up for the next week.  I will be joined by many teachers on Monday, and it's all these extra hours that teachers work that make the arguments about why Board employee perks (food) ring a little hollow.  We make less.  We work plenty of twelve and fourteen hour days.  There will be no Arguello catering meal awaiting us at the end of the day.  Just a salary cut of at least $1200.  WHINE WHINE WHINE.

Words Cannot Express...

WHY is it RAINING?

Today is our school walk-a-thon.  It is a fundraiser for a neighborhood organization.

Obviously, the walking component will have to wait.  BOO!

The walking component is really great, because the overexcitement of Halloween is soothed by the walking and resultant tiredness.  Twenty one children in costumes on a rainy day does not excite, particularly since I haven't slept much this week and I'm still sick.  BOO!

Well.  We do have pumpkin muffins to make and bake, and half the class did string art while the other half did crayon shavings, so we have some art to do.  I've got a phonics sort that is Halloween-themed, too.  And we can check in on our water cycle experiment.

Or maybe it will magically stop raining, PLEASE.

I have a lot of Donors Choose boxes right now, but three of them are filled with unassembled furniture.  So  "Open the Box" would not be that exciting.  We do have a few more thank you notes to bust out, though.

I cannot remember any rainy Halloween-observed days in my youth or during my teaching career.  At least it should clear up this weekend.  I have liberally passed out my address to students at my school (since I live a couple of blocks from it) as part of our household campaign to Restore Trick or Treating to Urban Areas.

The problem with private funding.

I have received tens of thousands of dollars in donations through Donors Choose.  Indeed, I just got two more grants filled this week.  Over the years, I've gotten

• rugs
• backpacks stocked with games and supplies, one for every child to take home at the end of the year (...twice)
• a workbench and tools
• a puppet theatre and all the goodies to go with it
• costumes
• oodles and oodles of sensory equipment (fidgets, raised-line paper, ball chairs, sit disks)
• oodles and oodles of PE equipment (ribbon wands, balance boards, scooter boards, a tunnel)
• an ipod dock and speaker system
• a mobile kitchen, including plates and silverware
• science units
• books
• math games
• reading games
• chair pockets, bookshelves and a rolling cart
• wall mazes
• extremely nifty arts and crafts supplies

In short, I've been very lucky to have had many generous private citizens and foundations support my students.  I am also an eager grant writer; for the last two years I have always had a project up on Donors Choose - except when all eight allowed have been filled and I am working on thank you projects.  And I can write a pretty good grant.  A colleague of mine says it's free money being wasted if you don't get those grants up, and I agree.

Also: I'm shameless.  Are you my friend?  Frienemy?  We went to second grade together and I have your email address?  Prepare to be solicited.

I am also asking for things that sound good.  I've had a couple of grants filled by the same foundation because I write grants for a specific area in which they are interested.  I have written some other grants to attract the interest of certain funding streams (and have been gratified by managing to get that interest, and the cash that accompanies it).

The problem is that not everyone is quite the grant-writer I am.  Not every teacher has the time to pull a grant together.  And some very basic needs - like school supplies - do not sound as awesome as "Help my students make extremely awesome sewing projects about their science learning" or "Caitlin Flanagan sucks: we want garden tools."

So while I certainly hope that all the world continues to enable my students a world-class, interactive and project-based Kindergarten, I'd prefer that all students could have the same experience through public funding.  The system we have now is unfair.  My students and my school do not have the advantage of generous local funding; we are lucky to have Donors Choose as a resource.  But there are equally-deserving schools that aren't able to make up the difference this way.

So far I am batting 1.00 on conferences: no no-shows three days in.  This is very exciting for me, since I really need to get them all done in a week and not try to run clean up.

In other school news, I am wearing my spiffy new school hoody featuring art from a well-known children's book author (sadly, not Tomi Ungerer, but almost as good) made specifically for our school.  The shameless scrounging to awesome thing is a staff trait; one of the teachers got the art and another got us a deal on the printing.  If we can just arrange for a Banksy mural we're so set.  Also,  I had a cute little  plaid-and-crinoline number to wear with the sweatshirt.

Take a break and then look what happens.

1. Although I think it's depressingly likely that Michelle Rhee ends up in California, compressing all issues in education to bad teachers and getting favorable press despite her proclivity to demean her allies by mimicking them in funny voices, I hold out the hope she ends up far, far from the Bay Area.

2. Man, take a one meeting break from reading SFUSD BoE agendas and the National Urban Alliance contract shows up again.  I don't really understand what these overpaid independent contractors have other professionals in presenting the same graphic organizers that totally blew teachers' minds fifteen years ago.  Nor do I really understand why the various NUA contracts are the biggest bugbear for budget watchers; SFUSD drops unrestricted money all over the place.  (Again: I do read those agendas, and contrary to the belief of those with financial control in SFUSD, education funding isn't that complicated.)

That said, piddly teacher stimulus or not, I still hold that the A #1 way to improve the learning experience of poor children of color is to dramatically lower class sizes, and if we have fat piles of money for contracts, I strongly support teacher contracts over consultant contracts.

Based on my reading of the gutted Harkin bill, I think the federal teacher bailout money could be used to hire consultants for PD, and that is just too depressing for words.

One of my Donors Choose projects got posted on the Stephen Colbert challenge.  Funded in an hour.  TV is powerful, I see.

Checking in on Last Week's Plans

Folder Use and Care: Folders introduced, decorated and explained.  Adult assistance in the placement of papers inside folders provided.  Fewer incidents of papers floating idly about whilst Kindergartners clutch jackets, hats, lunchboxes and toys while toting empty backpacks.  Return rate of folders rather low, but most expected to be returned Tuesday.

Roll Out Small Group Rotation: Rolled out; we had rotation three days of five.  Only one incident of a child attempting to regroup.  Students successfully used in/out folders for materials and most completed independent work activities.  Due to class size, the groups are very large and it's still a toss up as to whether we'll go with groups or centers for the year.

Social-Emotional Goal Setting: Only got through about half.

Sensory Fan: Mysteriously turned its own lights back on.  Perhaps it just needed a break.  I am not enthusiastic about moody equipment.

We got a lot of boxes this week courtesy Donors Choose.  On Friday we got two Gel-E-Seats, which were unbelievably popular; we may need to request more.

Schoolwide enrollment is up, even up above District budget projections.  If you're below, they cut your money, so they better be handing out more money if you are high.  If so, I won't have to order my own Starfall stuff this year.

I successfully contracted my first virus of the year.  Luckily it appears to be receding to the disgusting coughing phase now.  It had a lot of potential to disturb the three day weekend...fingers crossed, etc.

On the behavior trend, of the three high-difficulty students I think we have two mostly sorted.  The other...well, we have a better idea about why wherever he goes, pandemonium ensues.  However, I am looking extremely forward to recess duty so that I can enforce safe play with equipment; our CSC meeting around playground rules and safety was enlightening.

In general, I'm not a big fan of press reports, books or films decrying the Dread Teachers' Unions.  I note with interest that all the venture capitalists so hot to fund KIPP are not so hot to send their own children to KIPP.  And I am always bemused by prostisuits and educrats explaining why 37:1 is actually optimal for classrooms while their own children attend fancy private schools with 2 teachers for every student.

So when I heard Donors Choose was hooking up with the makers of Teachers Hate Children So Much or whatever the latest pro-privatization propos* is called, I gave my computer monitor a good hairy eyeball teacher look.  Sadly, it did not cower as expected; nor did it alert Donors Choose to hook up with an education ally, not some destroyers.

This did not, however, cause me to stop writing Donors Choose proposals.  I got four funded over the summer.  I had two projects still up this morning, when a donor funded all 2,200 projects in California.  My school had the most projects posted of all SFUSD - fifteen.  All fifteen got funded.  We're getting a curriculum kit, a mess of leveled libraries, cozy furniture for classroom libraries and Peace Places, basic supplies, storage carts and shelves, sensory integration and fine motor equipment, play therapy equipment, a DVD player, math games...

None of these are provided by SFUSD or the state.  Heck, they can't even get classroom mats or cots so the Kindergarten students can rest comfortably.  If we want our students to have what some kids get, we need to buy it ourselves or find someone who will.

I suppose this is a case of trampling on principle for daily reality, a pose I generally do not favor.  Still, standing on principle in front of twenty one students who already aren't getting a fair shake doesn't sound so hot, either.

*Guess who just read Mockingjay?