Chicken Impossible Continues

Eggs Pipped Today: 10
Eggs Hatched Today: 4

One of the four chicks was so hot to get out of its shell that it wasn't entirely detached to the membrane and it bled a little.  By the time I left school, it had stopped.

Of course they started hatching as soon as school got out.  Another teacher taped one hatching while we were in a staff meeting, and I texted a bunch of parents to come and see if they wanted.  Some of my kids who are in after school came and saw two hatch.

Crossing my fingers they are dry, fluffy and alive tomorrow.  I have a 7am meeting, so I will see them bright and early.

And Again with the Life Cycles.

This was a banner life cycle week.  The plants in bags are doing great.  The kids were cute doing their little presentation for the school.  They made little crowns and went around calling each other Queen of Seeds and King of Fruits and Super Sprout and whatnot, but on stage they also had a mic and could be heard recounting the life cycle of fruiting plants.  I jerry-rigged a wet bulb thermometer for the incubator (this is not actually hard, but I will brag about it as if it is).  The eggs get candled on Monday and I am relatively hopeful that some of them will have promising dark spots inside.

On Friday I gave the kids a cut and paste apple tree life cycle to do as an independent table group.  If they finished early, I directed them to diagram and write about some other life cycle.  This time-filler was the kind of thing you teach Kindergarten for, in the end:

• one child recounted an oviparous cycle including the important step "the egg cracks".
• another child stated that the life cycle occurs over and over and then noted, "I agree.  Yes."
• one child drew a nine-part diagram of the human life cycle, including labels for "teenager" and "toddler".  The last human had a baby.
• another child went with human life cycles and helpfully gave the final human Xs for eyes and a frown, plus a label of "dead".

In closing, science rocks.

Life Cycle Land

The snails' ongoing egg strike despite their bountiful, warm terrarium in the greenhouse and ample food, not to mention my stalwart protection against the forces that would eat them is really quite a drag.

Still, the silkworm eggs are resting comfortably on the heating blanket and with any luck will hatch next week.

And then on Tuesday I received a gift of a circulating-air, automatic turner incubator.  It arrived unboxed during class, so I had to explain what it was.  What with the forces of cute present, I found myself committing to attempting a hatchery providing iron-clad, signed-in-blood "I will take these chickens off your hands on May 27th, 2011 without complaining" contracts enforceable by law, moral code, and so on.

It took less than a day for a child to arrange just such a contract.  Apparently the cute works at home, too.

I now have 30 fertile eggs sitting in my pantry and more or less managed to regulate the incubator temperature on Friday, so all systems are go for a Monday afternoon setting.

I have a bad feeling that the social studies standard I haven't covered yet is going to get really short shrift with all the science going on.  That said, we are doing a school performance covering the virtue of patience and will be using our life cycle knowledge and waiting waiting waiting to craft it.

In other news, I decided that appropriate souvenirs would include both a dress and an exhibition catalogue and ordered the latter in advance so I don't have to lug it around.  I also arranged some visits with grad school cronies and similar who are New York-based.  These plans will provide serenity/mindfulness moments during the next two months of being covered in paint, soil and incubator-temperature-regulation stress.

So, Those Administrators Got Their Contracts Yet?

Teacher layoff notices went out.  At least 40% of our staff is getting noticed.

I'll go ahead and predict that will put us toward the top of the list of most heavily affected schools.

I'll go one step further and predict that all of those top schools will be located on the southeast side.

It's not even a step to predict that those top southeast side schools would all qualify as "high needs".

Of course, this has no implication for equity and equal opportunity AT ALL.

And by making this an annual course of action, SFUSD does not in any way question its real commitment to radical, "Beyond the Talk" change.

...oh wait.  No, it actually IS inequitable and worsens the systemic problem of high teacher turnover at high needs schools.  And again, we receive annual proof that when it comes to the real tough decisions - the kind that take more than a press release and are unlikely to provide awards to Superintendents - are so far Beyond the Talk that we can't even talk about them (SFUSD Legal said so!  And they've never been wrong, nor has any other lawyer or court ever disagreed...which is why we don't actually need a judicial system.).

I haven't personally received a letter (or communication from the union, which is typically what I get first - I haven't actually picked up or signed for a layoff letter in the last couple of years.  I leave them at the post office to rot sullenly in a miasma of wasted certificated mail fees).  Looking at the numbers, I have to figure I finally have enough seniority to not get laid off until the 60 day window (hee hee).  Of course, if I'm not getting one, then I need devote less time to personal worry and more time to raising Cain for those committed to equity administrators leading our District in these sad times.

In other news, I have created a monster.  I have a student whose name has the same letter twice in order.  One day that kid spelled it with three of the letter and I commented on that, which the child found hilarious.  The student now always spells the name with five of the letter.  We occasionally pronounce it accordingly.   Now that kid's best friend's name, which has its own doubled letter, is growing exponentially too.

We are big into fish printing right now.  The girls who are in after school are mad at me presently.  They snuck away from the program and came in the room to find me testing out a craft project.  Sneaking away from after school to explore The School By Late Afternoon is not allowed, so I sent them out, thereby selfishly hoarding all the good toys and games for myself.  As they see it.

I have an official request to make west African-inspired masks to go with the maracas and tambourines that will accompany our promotion performance.  I need to think on this one for a little bit.

What with the space heater oscillating luscious air, the organic and delicious diet from the school garden, a soothing playlist of international love songs and some delightful egg shells, the snails finally started to ENGAGE IN THE LIFE CYCLE ALREADY.

Alas, they decided to engage in it at the time when the recess assistants and I were cleaning the terrarium.  On the plus side, this made for some excellent science lessons and we got to show our buddy class next door (they are also raising snails and we do silkworms together, too).

On the downside, I am afraid we interrupted the process so badly that we will not get eggs in a few weeks and our snails remain prudish.

Also on the upside though, I have now gotten every kid in the class to decide to hold a snail.  And the one with the broken shell has eaten a mess of chalk and eggshell, leading to shell patches.

Perils of the Early Start

Were we a late-start school, I would not have needed to walk to work in driving rain and hail.  I was very glad for the new space heater.  While my coat was too drenched to dry out in a day, my shoes were only damp by afternoon.

Whenever we get a heavy rain, the drain in the main schoolyard is overwhelmed and we get a neat lake: a giant puddle that can get to be six inches deep.  It has wind-waves and everything.

Yesterday I taught my class how to fold a paper boat.  We made some predictions and went sailing on Lake Elementary.  Then we wrote about it (new vocabulary word: "waterlogged").

It was awesome!  By nine o'clock it was sunny outside, and the breeze came from different directions so the boats sailed all over the place before taking on too much water and sinking.  No one stepped in the lake but one child mostly on accident (well, and then me and the yard teacher doing boat retrieval).  The kids' writing was really good, too; some of them wrote about the process of boat-making, some of them about the experiment.

In short: good times.

Favorite Craft Projects of Children

 Craft Projects Kids Lurve and Adults...Tolerate.
Fireworks.  Even though I have an amazing selection of glitter painters, chip glitter glue, a few glitter crayons and some glitter paint, there is apparently something deeply satisfying about this project. Anyway, each child needs

• a large sheet of black construction paper
• a bottle of white glue
• glitter
• optional pencil

Optionally, children may draw with a pencil on their paper first.  Whatever the case, the kids "draw" with the glue by squeezing with one hand.  This is important to emphasize, since two-handed approaches often lead to disaster.  Usually I suggest they focus on abstract designs, firework explosion stars and whatnot and I will write names in pencil using fancy lettering for them to glue-trace.  Once the glue is applied, children can liberally shake glitter all over the paper.  I shake the resulting work over the trash, the glitter adheres only to gluey sections and children are amazed.

Just Give Me Some Paper Already.  After ten years in the classroom, I have at long last discovered the "draw the top of a 2" method of heart cutting.  It helps for those children who really really really really want a perfect perfect perfect perfect heart.  For the other nineteen, explain that you don't have to pencil anything first!  Each child needs

• small pieces of any paper
• scissors, preferably ones that will indeed cut hair (the kids have more control over cutting with these).

Demonstrate the amazing property of symmetry and let them loose.  The kids will cut some pretty impressive things; one of my girls cut out a ringer for this jacket.

Kids will need some method of displaying their cutting prowess.  I have each child decorate a 12X15 envelope for their Valentines, which is an excellent canvas for their project.

Paper Plate Terraria/Aquaria/oh, just call it a Diorama.
We did these last year with blue cellophane and they were portholes into the deep ocean.  This year, we made snail terraria.  The snails were woodsies (not these awesome Woodsies I had as a kid, these, painted by the kids) with cut-up Silly Bandz tentacles and rhinestone eyespots.  The soil was dyed rock salt (the kids blended several colors to make brown soil, which they enjoyed greatly).  They also added foam lettuce stickers for food, collage leaves for coverage and flowers and plants of dyed macaroni.

All of this is glued to a paper plate, which is affixed to another paper plate that has its center circle cut out and replaced with cellophane, acetate or duralar, thereby serving as a porthole into the magical world below.

This week I also did pinch-tearing construction paper (see here) art with the kids.  Most of them were into it but a couple were not so much.  So I brought out the heavy artillery: KINDERGARTEN MUSEUM.  Specifically, I had each child title his or her artwork and wrote the title and the name of the artist on a label, which I affixed to a corner of the art.  Through this magical process, all projects are validated in some way that makes them more exciting.  Also the titles are often worthy of the finest cutting-edge works ("Two Robots Play a Game with the Little One's Head", "The Hopping House", "Ballerina Zoo", etc.).

My classroom craft projects tend to prioritize the materials I can get and the things I know how to do from my own childhood and adult crafting (for instance, I quill, so I have a set of plastic, child-safe slotted tools and needles).  Sometimes I am gifted materials that I haven't used and require experimentation.  For instance, I was given twenty sheets of shrink plastic and it's been sitting around for about a year.  So I brought it home this weekend for experimentation.  It is my intention to make this.

Arts and Crafts Things Kids Like and Adults Lurve

1. Child Mondrian.  Just as a term, "neo-plasticism" seems very evocative of our mountainous piles of disposable geegaws, no?  Anyway, letting the kids loose with thin strips of black matte paper, white paper, tempera in the primary colors and q-tips or brushes make for a cool project.  It goes nicely with a unit on primary colors and hue.
2. Child Pollock.  A very nice project for the end of the year: make sure to recommend that children wear clothes that can get dirty.  All you need is a big space, an old bedsheet and a mess of brushes and paint.  Kids enjoy seeing the impact different movements and distances.  You can read Action Jackson in advance, too.
3. Paper Plate Aquaria/Terraria.  Bonus points for using blue cellophane on aquaria.

There are also plenty of projects that kids love and adults can take or leave.  These can be very fun; I need to make a list of some of the ones that have gone really well so I can get the materials to do them again.

Something else that is very fun is showing fifteen minutes of The Muppet Show as a five day of excellence whole class reward.  I provided fifteen minutes of the Harry Belafonte episode (because the performance of "Turn the World Around" is going to be EPIC and I am experimenting with using Mr. Belafonte as our lead-in to some of our social studies unit (working together, social change, all that)).  When we got to the outside door, I invoked my magical teacher skills to turn them all into Animal having a drum off with Harry Belafonte.  So they ran out the door beating frenetically on imaginary drums while screaming.  From my perspective it was kind of awesome.  That perspective would be "waving from the door".

Art for Art's Sake

Thursday afternoon I got delivery of most of a Donors Choose grant that was entirely extremely fancy crafts stuff:

• flower rhinestones
• wikki stix in large enough quantity for making things to take home
• stamper markers
• fabric shapes
• shiny things
• class pack of scented stix markers (I haaate scented markers, but oh do children love them.)

Anyway, on Friday I put out many of these things and let the kids go to town.  It was a bit more than a half hour of creative exploration with no goal other than making stuff.  I mean, this is Kindergarten, so there was motor development, cooperation and language stuff embedded simply through supply manipulation, having to work with a couple of kids in one's group and describing what you were doing.  But there wasn't any strict content integration, thematic purpose, BIG GOAL or any of that kind of stuff.

It was really quite marvelous.  In fact it was the kind of period where the kids get into little competitions about who can come up with the best description for how great a teacher I am.  I'm not going to lie: a little self-validation by happy five year olds is a great thing.  Beyond that, everyone deserves the opportunity to go to town with a sheet of acrylic gemstone stickers, a sentence strip and some paint.  We all need the opportunity to be creative just for fun.  Everyone should have the chance to use materials that are beautiful (I assure you: acrylic gemstone stickers are beautiful to five year olds).

In other news, I wore a new coat on Friday and no child complimented it.  This was disappointing.  Also this week, a first grader I had last year asked me why all of my clothes are always too big.  Apparently he does not understand why one buys a 100% cashmere coat at a thrift store even if it is a couple of sizes too large (and a swing style at that).  In what may have been some kind of self-subliminal response, the next day I wore a skirt suit with a shorter skirt than I typically wear and was very, very popular with the Princess Society all day long.

We Saw It On Tee Vee.

I am one of those irritating, superior pinkos who does not own a television.  In my own defense, I don't really mention my lack-of-television status and am not opposed to watching television shows on my computer or something.  I forced friends, family members and neighbors to turn over their television for my World Cup viewing pleasure.  When I am not really feeling like working out, some "Countdown" on the gym television can get me piqued enough to get going (True story: I got so aerated reading about Tom DeLay in Mother Jones a few years back that I had to stop exercising and calm down).  I read recaps on Project Rungay.  Etc.  It's just that, what with the ADHD, I have a real problem sitting through entire shows.  Even with the commercial breaks and something to do with my hands, I get distracted.  Then I am irritated because I have missed key plot details.  Also, I am incapable of being home when shows I might want to watch are on and even less capable of recording them proactively.

So spending the money on a television and cable set up seems like a big waste.  I mean, over the course of a year that would put a big crimp in my shopping budget.  Indeed, it might keep me from purchasing new boots.  That would be catastrophic.  Hyperbole is good for you.


Of course, the kids in my class see plenty of television, and from an amazing cornucopia of genres and historical periods at that.  Invariably, 50% of my class is familiar with Chucky.  I do not know what it is about the big, ugly, badly-dressed misogynistic doll with a knife that is so appealing to five year olds.  Having seen maybe twenty minutes of a Chucky movie, though, I know I disapprove.  Sponge Bob is invariably popular; this year my class has a number of Barney fans.  The latter is something of a surprise; usually the dinosaur is "too baby".  Perhaps they skewed the show to attract a new demographic; I no longer try to keep up on Kindergarten Fandom Crazes.

Television has led to some funny events:

1. I have a kid this year who, prior to running, waves his arms in circular motions as if he is in a Warner Brothers cartoon.
2. I had a kid who used to cross his feet, point with both hands and wink as if he were doing the Madison whenever his picture was taken.
3. One kid a couple years back used to make little fists, drop his head back and scream "REVENGE!" whenever irritated.
4. He would also, after teasing a peer or getting in trouble, holler "You'll never take me alive!" and run around the room.
5. Another child makes the "Home Alone" face whenever something untoward happens in a story.

Children's literature is good for this, too.  Mr. Frimdimpny gets imitated a lot, and many cafeteria items require the occasional muncha.  As a last day in 2010 treat, I brought some sugarless bubble gum in for a little Trouble Gum action.

In other news, today's big task is the DMV.  Exciting!  I successfully found glasses I can tolerate, so I am waiting to pick these up.  I got prescriptions refilled, had my old boots fixed and owe the dry cleaner $100 for cleaning (and an alteration on a fine, if salvaged Alberta Ferretti dress, one I am technically capable of doing but far too lazy to actually do).  I need to finish report card comments, but they're done otherwise.  This means that I should be able to get District-printed 8.5X17s, as opposed to classroom-printed 8.5x14s.  All in all, I've been fairly productive over the break.

Mad Crafty.

Winter Wreaths
You will need:

• packing peanuts (12 or so per kid)
• green fingerpaint
• chenille stems
• glitter (optional)

1. Give children a pile of packing peanuts and a dollop of paint.  Encourage them to paint the peanuts using their fingers as opposed to dipping them into their paint.  Mention in grave tones the Dread Project That Never Dries (totally works).
2. Once children have amassed a pile of green packing peanuts, direct them to impale their packing peanuts onto a chenille stem.  Peanuts should be placed closely together.
3. Once the stem is largely covered, take stem and send children to nearest soap and water.  Remind them to avoid touching walls, floors, their faces, their jackets and other items until they are less green about the hands.
4. If you have been smart enough to teach color word metaphors, at least one child will inform you that his or her hands are in fact the green eyed monster.
5. Curl the chenille stem so that it makes a circle and wrap closed.
6. Invite children to select a glitter color.  Note that glitter looks best when used sparingly.  Note that if we use up our glitter supply in December, we will not have any in January, February, March, April or May.  Resign self to epic glitter shortages by early Spring.
7. While projects are still wet, allow children to sprinkle glitter on both sides.  Glitter will adhere to the paint.  Cough theatrically from spendthrift glitter use.
8. When the projects are dry, a small bow can be made using another chenille stem (half).
9. Affix wreath to yarn loop or suction cup hook.

These actually come out pretty cute.  The kids are always terribly impressed.  I didn't do them last year, but we did them today.

One More Day!

Oh my goodness, these children need a break like you wouldn't believe.  The teachers, too.

Sadly, it's a bit of a collision course in that almost all the teachers are at various stages of this year's Nasty Fall Cold, while the kids are all over it and are absolutely wired and excited and hey, do I know Christmas is coming?  What with all that and the weekend rain, you can be assured twenty-odd peppy, if not very motivated children and one grumpy and not very motivated adult.

So we mucked around with primary and secondary colors via Insta-Snow, painted and got out the smart body supplies: maze balance boards, scooter boards and Body Sox.  This went okay, as did being very explicit about my personal level of energy (low), Kleenex consumption needs (high) and desire to manage behaviors that everyone knows are unfriendly to others (nonexistent).

Still: ONE MORE DAY.  We are having a potluck tomorrow evening schoolwide and I have a lot of no-knead bread dough rising for that.  Since I just this weekend got roped into cooking a Thanksgiving meal I am refusing to do any shopping for it (except for possibly a fine new outfit to wear), and that shopping is supposed to magically happen whilst I munch potlucky dishes.  Yum.

Buy in Bulk, Part Two: Teacher Esoterica

While Teacher Hoarding Disease often blurs my thinking, there are some things that are worth having in quantity.  Some of these are obvious: copy paper, folders, pencils.  The utility of some materials in bulk, however, was not immediately apparent.  It was only after a few years in the classroom that I committed to keeping a stock of certain tools.  I strongly recommend maintaining a large supply of the following:

1. Hole Punches: The teacher who has only one will be overwhelmed by students waving their newly-decorated nametag necklaces, demanding they be hung.  The teacher who has seven can set her class lose on them while cutting ribbon for hanging.  They also come in useful for flash card rings, papel picados, introductory sewing and lacing projects, developing hand strength, confetti and all kinds of nifty things.
2. Flour Sifters: I have three of these.  Used together, my class shaves minutes off baking prep time with these.  They also make for good grip training.
3. Stickers:  Stickers are cheap.  Kids love them.  Why hold back?  I assure you: if you are worried that children who get a sticker one time will expect them every time, this is not the case.  Indeed, you can even tell them that.  However, I should note that my class goes through more stickers for math and art than we do for rewards, since sticker-fidgeting and sticker horse-trading drive me nuts.  (I prefer to give out books and to draw on kids' hands with dry-erase markers.  I can turn out a ghost, happy face, heart, star, bat, cat, spider or similar doodle as quickly as I can put a sticker on a hand to be transferred to the forehead/ear/shirt/friend's hand/friend's back/oops out of sticky on the floor for me to pick up later.)
4. Craft or telephone wire: Useful for art projects, tying bundles and fidgets.  A spool of ethernet cable at SCRAP is cheap and it's only a couple of hours with an X-acto to unearth lots and lots of colorful wire.

What else is worth stockpiling?

Why My Job is Awesome.

1. I get to blow minds with science - by dyeing a flower using colored water, by blowing up a balloon with yeast.
2. I get to blow minds with arts and crafts - with water resist painting, with suncatchers, with oil pastels.
3. I get to read all of my own personal favorite children's books, including my all-time childhood favorite story The Journey (one of the Mouse Tales) and the gruesomely fascinating, hunger-causing Zeralda's Ogre.
4. I get to do daily ab exercises as part of my instructional routine.
5. I don't have to sit at a desk.  In fact, I don't even have a desk.