In other news: Pumpkin Pie!

I got talked into joining some other kindergarten and first grade classes for a Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday. We're making, among other things, a no-crust, no bake pumpkin pie. I found this recipe and we'll mash it all together in a big ziploc bag and serve it like custard in little cups. Yummy, tactile, traditional. And fattening. I love it!

Sharing Is Hard, and other news from the Kindergarten Front

The weird experience of having the Official Teacher "volunteering" all week kind of threw me off. Generally, we get along well, and when I'm looking at it as a sort of team teaching venture it's actually pretty great. The class is large (though at 28 it's not the biggest kindergarten in either the school or district), so extra hands are always welcome. And of course she knows (mostly) what she's doing, so the kids will absolutely benefit. She got the "bucket of frogs" that is one of our math centers to actually straighten up and ribbit right! As a student teacher, I was shown all sorts of techniques that my cooperating teachers used, with great explanations of their purposes. Working with Official Teacher could be more beneficial in a way, because I've been trying a lot of things and will understand better what a new system can offer. She thanked me on Friday for sharing the room and letting her come in. I just answered that, hey, it's a weird situation and we might as well approach it as a team. If all goes well and she does return to work this year, I may be able to stay on in a team teaching position.

Everyone talks about how it would be hard for the students to get used to a new teacher. They are, after all, only 5 and 6 years old and I've been their teacher all along. I think the truth is that since Official Teacher is coming in a bit at a time, they'd do fine with her later. They'd get used to it. I'm not saying I'm OK with that. I'd miss the kids and the work a lot. And I frankly need the paycheck. So I don't really want her to come back. But it's out of my hands and if it's going to happen but as a team teaching or job sharing situation, well I think that would be just dandy. Then maybe something will open up for next year. Someone could retire, or relocate for a spouse's job, or whatever. I know a first grade teacher in our building has a husband who's getting a high-tech bachelor's degree in June and would certainly have to relocate to find work in his field. I'd be happy to move into her classroom! The bottom line is that the rosy picture that was painted of the profession when I started out working on my degree and teaching license is no longer accurate. No one's retiring. There are no open positions. When a position does open up, it's usually as a one year temporary job instead of a contract position.

In other news, I'm wrestling with assessment. Kindergarten doesn't have much in the way of papers to grade, and a lot of the assessing is through observation. The district now wants us to administer big math assessments in January for the next report card. The official assessment is eleven pages long. With our average class size of about 29 or 30 kids, that's HUGE! I like the idea of collecting good data on the kids, but I have no idea how to pull that off. These aren't third graders or older who can actually work on something while one kid at a time is pulled aside by the teacher for a little test.

Of course, if we're team teaching it'll be cake. ...always look on the bright side of life...

Job security stress

I'm having such mixed emotions. I met with the principal and the teacher I'm subbing for Friday afternoon to talk about her coming in as a volunteer a few (as in, 4!) days a week so she can start flexing her muscles a bit in preparation for returning to the classroom. The accident left her with brain damage that is mainly showing itself as memory problems. Lots of them.

The negative feelings: I feel threatened. My space and my authority with the students will be undermined or even usurped. She might get all the way better and I may then lose the job altogether. I'll have someone looking over my shoulder, which doesn't always lend itself to my best performances. It'll be like being a student teacher again.

On the other hand, she'd a great woman with tons of experience She taught one of my daughters a few years ago. She wrote my letter of reference when I was applying to graduate school. It's so weird and not right to see her as an adversary. We will probably work well together and the kids will probably benefit. She's got a nice sounding Thanksgiving project in mind, which I'm more than happy to let her lead since, as I've mentioned here, I have no interest in diving into what I see as a can of worms in teaching that particular history. The curriculum for kindergarten is so simplified, though, that it ultimately doesn't much matter. She tends to have a generally multicultural approach to most everything in the classroom, so it'll be fine. I'd still like to do the gratitude tree though.

I suppose this volunteer thing will go one of two ways. Either she'll prove to be significantly on the mend and ready to return soon or it'll show her what is still too difficult. We briefly discussed the idea of a job share down the line if she is ready to return during this year, since the kids of course see me as their teacher and the work load might be manageable for her if it were shared. My bottom line would likely be affected by that, but it would sure be better than unemployment, or than regular subbing with the constant question of "will I get called?", not to mention the chaos of subbing all over all the time, with little consistency. God I want a contract! I can't help but think that the uncertainty of this situation will serve me well in the long run. Someone's got to retire eventually, and I should be able to step in when that happens. It's just so hard to stay upbeat some days, feeling like it could end anytime, and then what? I've got some serious bills to pay!

This is not a typical first year teaching experience. But it's not a typical economy either.

Sometimes hugs aren't enough

A few days ago I was monkeying around with this blog and I added the phrase "Phonics, counting, singing, and hugs in a Title I school" to the sidebar. I had hugs on the list because little people are all the time running up with waist-height hugs. It's sweet, and it's a perk of teaching primary grades. Yesterday I really had to put my hugging skills to the test, though. My little guy who was just moved to a second foster home broke down at the end of the day. It's been a couple of weeks since the move, and he's mostly been just a slightly bouncier version of his normal 5 year old self, but as we were preparing to leave school for the day I noticed him sitting with his chin on his desk, all red in the face. I sort of told the class to talk amongst themselves (they're quite good at that) and called him over. Before I knew it, he was curled up in my lap, sobbing that he missed his sisters (one was moved with him, two stayed behind). All I could do was hold him and whisper to him that it will be OK, that lots of people are on his side and making sure he's taken good care of, and so on. I hugged him like I hug my own daughters when they're sad: a real, solid, I'm not letting go kind of hug. Granted, my kids get upset about things like a skinned knee or a squabble over a toy or frustration over learning subtraction. This little guy has the world on his itty bitty shoulders. The irony is, all his sisters are in our school. It's just hard to pull them out of class to get them together. I'll track down their teachers today and see if we can do something. In the meantime, I'm a good hugger. And I've gotten good (thanks in large part to my husband's influence) at being consistent and reasonably strict with rules. I hope that can help the little guy, as well as the many many others in my class who are in stressful situations. We're a Title I school, and with high poverty tends to come a high level of stress for a lot of people. Sometimes it's heartbreaking, but I'm grateful for the chance to be a spark of positivity (and source of necessary skills and knowledge!) for so many kids.

In other news, I think for Thanksgiving I'll just do a kindergarten version of a Gratitude Tree that my mentor teacher did last year with 6th graders. I'll make some sort of tree image to go on the wall and the kids will give me quotes about things they're grateful for that I'll put on leaves. There. That's done!

What to do about Thanksgiving?

On the one hand, the holiday generally delights me. It's secular. It's focused on those most important 3 F's: family, friends, and food (my three favorite things, really). We're supposed to be with our loved ones and think about gratitude. Nothing wrong so far. Oh, and we get a little time off. Always nice.

On the other hand, the prospect of teaching about Thanksgiving and its history worries me. I'm not one to buy into the whole Earnest Pilgrims and Helpful Indians thing. Not without mentioning the smallpox or the complex and pervasive societies that predated said pilgrims. Not without mentioning Europeans' treachery and general ignorance. Not without some sort of caveats.

And these are kindergarten students, so most of that would be frankly inappropriate and difficult to understand.

And the district apparently has an official Teach Thanksgiving policy, though how specific this policy may be I don't yet know.

And a significant portion of my students are Native Americans. And I'm not. And this is a politically conservative community. And I'm not. AAAAArrrrggh.

We made hand print turkeys, though. Can we call it good?

In which a first-year teacher survives her first Parent Teacher Conferences!

Well, we did it. After two 12 to 13 hour days, parent-teacher conferences are done. OK, technically I had a few no-shows, so I should be wrapping it up after school next week, but still, Whew! I learned a few things. Don't forget to let the office know when your own daughters' conferences are, so rescheduled appointments don't get piled up at all the wrong times. Block out a dinner break. And just plain go more quickly. I went a long way past the allotted times, partly due to folks arriving late in the middle of the day, which snowballed into everything running late after that, and partly due to me wanting to explain every last item on the report cards to the parents. Granted, my speech got quicker and more precise as I went along, and I got good at writing key benchmark goals upside down as we sat across the table from each other, but still... shorter and sweeter would have been good.
More pertinent to the children's actual education: in an effort to include positive feedback for every child I may have ended up sugar coating the news in some cases. I had our building's instructional coach sitting in with me for a couple of conferences, and when the parents left she seemed amazed at how they didn't register that so many "needs improvement" marks really means their child isn't up to par.
Good news: after going through each report card in detail (after, of course, having created each one less than a week ago) I have a good idea of where the class stands, what skills are commonly lacking, and what I need to emphasize. In addition to the daily routines that are already in place for phonemic awareness and letter recognition, I'm going to have to set up small groups to work with a paraprofessional regularly to drill on letters and numbers. And colors and shapes in some cases. Sheesh. If the kids with the lowest skills would just participate, I think we'd see some growth.
More brainstorming will ensue. In the meantime, I have a three day weekend and I intend to only spend it with my family! There's storytime at the library to take the three year old to, some area rugs to haul upstairs in the interest of warming up the cold cold loft, maybe some real cooking to do... Sounds pretty good!