My family came & visited the classroom over Thanksgiving Break! Kel, Sammy, Joey, Dad, & Mom all let my students read to them throughout the room, while I worked primarily with my Spanish group on comprehension strategies. I also had Dad teach the kids a lesson on the thankful turkey we always have hanging in our home every Thanksgiving (listing a blessing on 5 fingers traced). They loved & very much needed the visit; I fear I can never properly give them the strictly individual attention they desire.
They performed a Reader’s Theater on Thanksgiving after lunch for the kindergarten & sixth grades; I was pretty proud of them, overall! Then they got to have their root beer float party (for good behavior)--they all wanted thirds! And they were doing the strangest things, like pouring chocolate & caramel on top of the ice-cream floating in the root beer. SUGAR overload.
Many new developments arose today; I’m not sure why I thought coming back from Thanksgiving break would be relatively smooth. First there was discussing with one of my favorite troublemakers his bad decision to take another student by the collar & push him down to the ground on the way out of school Tuesday (escaping before I could properly discipline him for it.) Later on, after giving him a copy of the write-up to take home & get signed, when he should have been working on his math self-start, I found him forging his dad’s name on the form where a parent’s signature is required. I realized in that instant that he’s been forging his dad’s name on his reading logs & occasionally in his planner as well; this could develop into a pretty serious problem later on in his life, especially because he’s tried to be so deceitful about it. Yikes!
Then the assistant principal stopped in to talk to me about a boy getting bullied in my class, mainly because of his girly looks & shy nature. His mom has been in close contact with the office & wants me to be on the look-out for instances when he might be bullied; I spoke with him privately about how he needs to come to me & let me know when such instances occur. The assistant principal said the school counselors are working with Bailey to try to help build up his confidence & teach him how to be more assertive; I can’t imagine they’re going to have much success in that endeavor, however. He’s a painfully shy kid & his mom allows him to skip school every Friday because it’s been difficult for him to adjust to public school (since he has been home-schooled in years past.) The assistant principal really feels like he’s being babied by his mom overall, & I’d have to agree.
Finally there’s the situation my student who has serious behavioral disorders. He was really “on one” today & he was out of seat almost every time I turned around, distracting or bothering other students. He was also especially defiant to me, especially when I pointed out that he needed to stay in for some of his recess since he lied to me about getting “yes’s” on his behavior scorecard (a mechanism I've implemented to help him stay on-task during instructional time.)He wanted to get a green card pretty badly, I guess (primarily because the counselor will reward him with something like a Transformer toy if he gets enough positives or green cards from me, which, if you ask me, is a pretty messed up system anyway, since it's based around bribery.) He also told me he’d had enough in my class, since other students are always telling on him, & that he would be moving to the other 4th grade class promptly.
He kept saying there were things he needed to get off his chest, but then never said anything particularly enlightening as to why he was acting the way he was. That child is a mystery to me.
The principal came in & observed me today as well (for my ECAP observation.) She mentioned to me in a note she left that she saw some good things & that we’d debrief Thursday. It really wasn’t too stressful having her there during my nouns lesson (as I had supposed it might be.) The kids were pretty engaged for most of that lesson though, & that makes a big difference. I love it when they get excited about learning & it's personalized for them!
