Crazy Week

It was proabably my craziest week ever. Between the full moon, snow in the forecast, and just really needing to get away from each other, my kids were WILD this week.

Monday half my students had to clip down after library because when the librarian asked them to put there crayons away, push up their chairs, and line up they didn't! The flat out kept on working trying to finish. I HATE the fact that my students are in special classes for less than 25 min and the librarian and guidance counsler can not keep them entertained for that short of time which results in me getting handed 20 pieces of coloring sheets that are messy and don't have a name on it. I am sorry but paper is an issue for me and it KILLS me to pick them up twice a week and get handed coloring sheets. Really you can't involve them for 25 minutes without giving them a ditto sheet. Aaaaarrrrrrgh! I am never happy on Mondays and Thursday when I pick them up! Ok went off on that tangent now Focus!

Tuesday, I go to meet a bus driver to schedule a field trip and she is having a talk with the entire bus. I wait only to find out that 4 of our kinders are the last to get off the bus due to their bus behavior. I tell the driver that I will have a talk with the K students (we have 12 on this one bus) about how to act on the bus. I go back into school and put a note on the asst principal computer to call me ASAP. As soon as announcements are over, I get kinders that ride this bus into the hallway to discuss their bus behavior, and how they need to apologize to the driver this afternoon and when I check back with the driver I hope she tells me that the kinders are behaving better on the bus. The asst. principal calls wondering what I need and I ask that when he gets a chance I want him to talk to ALL kindergarten bus riders and refresh their memory about how they are suppose to act on the bus. He says he will this afternoon.

When I pick my kids up from the cafeteria to be told that I have 3 girls who will be getting assigned seats because they do not know how to behave in the cafeteria (oh wait this happened Monday) cause I put them in assigned seats today! Sorry right now my days are all confused.

After special classes, the asst principal pulls all k bus riders into my room and together we discuss bus behavior. I know it's hard for them to do what they should be when the older students are misbehaving, but still it frustrates me, cause I take care of the k bus riders making sure they are where they should be and I don't want them in trouble.

On Wednesday, my kids went to art and gym today, and as I am there to pick them up the Coach is fussing about the two classes, mine and another K class, behavior in gym. My thinking "really they are struggling today". We go back to class and discuss why we should be listening to ALL adult not just Mrs. Shelton!

Thursday, started off rough for me. As I am walking down the hallway to make a copy for something I need for class that morning I realize all the other K teachers have our recent winter animal research projects and either an art activity or writing samples up in the hallway. This is disturbing me due to the fact that our local school board is going to be in the building today, and I know for a fact will be down my hallway to see our early intervention classes. So I rush back to class, I grab the students writer's workshop folders and start pulling something from each student to quickly tape up in the hallway. Talk about true work samples! I am so happy I did, sure enough, we are in the middle of a heart activity where we discuss 1/2 in math, talk about feelings with the crease you put in a piece of paper to cut 1/2, and cut out the heart when in walks three board members. They just step in the room while I am showing students how to draw the line to cut to get a heart. After we cut the heart we take them back to carpet and discuss how when you say something negative it's like causing creases in that person's heart. And no matter how hard to say sorry and apologize, the crease never goes compeltely away. It was a very good lesson. The kids were wild and crazy like they had been all week, but nothing too bad.

So glad that Friday had finally made it. I expected to have a great day. I have 19 kinders now and had 4 out so a day working with 15 kids. I was very excited! Too bad there was snow in the forcast, because even though I had less kids I thought I fussed all day about something. At lunch I found out the asst principal got a note from a different bus driver about one of my kids bus behavior (Wait!!!! Really did we not just have that discussion two days ago!) I told the asst prinicpal I do believe I have fussed at my kids more this week than I have taught them:( WE did have a few very good points on Friday. I introduced a few new games, and while we were working in writer's workshop the teacher I share a bathroom with gave us a compliment on how quietly and on task we were working. I was super happy about that. She brought her kids over a table at a time to look at us working so well! I also had the sweetest parent. The school is selling candy grams for Valentine's Day and one of my parent's whose son has been out most of the week sick, stopped by to purchase a candy gram for every student in the class. He said he wanted it to be anonymous but that he was afraid some kids wouldn't get anything and didn't want that to happen. WOW! Don't you wish we still had more parents that cared like that. Needless to say that inspired me and hopefully next year when my daughter enters school, I want to do something similiar for her class. We ended Friday with our 3rd grade reading buddies and I had jazz music playing and everyone was reading and talking about the book, pretty good way to end such a roller coaster week.

Don't you love being a teacher and knowing when there is a full moon and snow in the forecast! In TN we have had an extremely mild winter with upper 50's in the past two weeks. They did call for an inch of snow this weekend, but I only got a dusting! Last year at this time we were already getting close to running out of our alotted 15 snow days. This year we have used 1! I know we get President's Day off next Monday, but the kids are crazy and acting like it's closer to Spring Break or the end of school. I promised my kids I would come in ready to go on Monday and that I hope they came in ready to learn. We will see how it goes.

I so wish we had year round. 9 weeks on 3 weeks off! I would love it! Does anyone go year round? What are your thoughts on year round school?