Penguins on Parade

Two days in a row in one class...now that's kinda nice.  My day today had much less drama in the getting-there than it did yesterday.  No snow, or pushing cars up hills for me!  The day at school was much the same as yesterday although there were more kids here today.  I worked on a painting project with the kids in the morning while the assistant ran the literacy time (since it's all done in Spanish).  I got paint all over the table - yes, I did - the kids were relatively neat, but I spilled a container of paint - again - I did almost the exact same move yesterday!  Granted, the kids never actually touched the paint since they were just rolling a marble around in a container that I put paint in.  As well as getting paint on the table, I also got it on my shirt!  Thankfully, it was just tempera so it just washed right out.

In the afternoon I worked with the kids on the completion of a writing project.  They wrote a poem about penguins earlier in the day on a template the shape of an egg.  The egg shape eventually was to become the white stomach of a paper penguin.  We made the penguins.   This resulted in LOTS of paper bits all over the floor.  This was probably the most chaotic part of the day because all the kids were at different points of their project, and lots of them needed additional pieces of paper, but since I wasn't just letting them come and get whatever they wanted (because sure as anything they would take way too much and waste three-fourths of it), they were all crowding around me yelling out whatever they wanted as well as exclamations of "Teacher! Teacher!!".  I kept having to shoo them away trying to get them to sit at their seats and raise their hands!  This scene happened three or four times at least.  They were very excited though because when they finished their penguin with the poem I was giving them new colors of paper and letting them make a baby penguin to go with the big penguin they made.  And when you're in first grade, making a baby penguin is like, soooo much more fun than making a regular-sized one!  When I first told them they could make a baby penguin when they finished their poem I was meet with a chorus of "Awwwwwwww!"s.  You'd think I'd just brought a wagon full of puppies into the room with the reaction they game me!

After the penguin madness I had a hour prep, but it was completely taken up (to the last second) by a little project I imposed on myself to get ready for ELD (English Language Development) which is at the end of the day.  I was cutting and pasting and drawing to make a couple visuals of suitcases of clothes so we could practice talking about singular and plural words.  I was really glad I'd done it though because it made ELD go much smoother than yesterday and kept the kids engaged.  I left my creations with the teacher though since I thought she might have more use for them than I would.  Hopefully they just don't hit the recycle bin right away!

Winter Wackiness

Well do I have some tales to tell today!!  So this morning I got up and started to get ready as usual.  I saw roommate and she said she hadn't heard anything about a delay or school closure.  I then remembered that the weather people had said we might have snow last night.  I then asked her if it snowed last night.  She said the radio said we had some but she hadn't looked outside yet.  I then went to my window and looked out.  I believe my exact words were, "OH my!"  There were nearly two inches of snow on the ground and the street and the cars.  But for some bizarre reason the Salem-Keizer school district did not delay school (which I think was particularly nuts.)

So I got ready to go...trying to be quick because I'm factoring in at least 30 minutes for my drive that would normally take 15-20 minutes.  Roommate has a job to, but she has a big heavy car with no traction tires.  She has to leave about 30 minutes before I do because her school today has an earlier start time.  Well, she can't get out of our driveway, which is a pretty steep uphill climb.  She calls me from her car and asks me to come push.  I'm dressed for

 school already but I put on my snow boots (thank you again mom, for insisting I bring those with me when I moved last year), my coat and went out to try to help.  Once out the door I meet our neighbor girl who's probably in the 3rd grade, who's usually very chatty.  She launches into about how cool the snow is and chatters away as I attempt to push roommate's car up the hill.  However, not even my incredible strength can accomplish this feat.  I am soon joined by 2 of our neighbors (on of them the little girl's dad) who help push the car.  With our powers combined we managed to push that behemoth boat all the way to the top!  Unfortunately, somehow during our quest I ended up behind the passenger side wheel - which did a lovely job of spraying my all over with slushy driveway snow.  Once roommate was on her way I returned to the apartment and wasted about 10 minutes in the bathroom using the hairdryer on my pants.  Then I had to run around like a mad woman grabbing my lunch and my coat and getting new gloves (my previous pair was soaked) and changing shoes and the like.  Then it was my turn to attempt the hill - solo.

Thankfully, my car has studded tires still and despite a little bit of floundering I made it up the hill with no problems.  The drive to school was insane.  All the roads were covered in slushy yuck except for Mission Street which is pretty much the biggest main drag in town besides I-5.  I made it to school and the drama for the day was mostly over.

After that it was smooth sailing.  The kids were actually very under-control considering the wild weather.  The assistant who spoke Spanish was there to run the morning, and the jobs I had to do were easy.  The afternoon was taken up by a lesson from the counselor, Library, and PE.  The only bad things were that the last half-hour was filled with chatty kids and I gave myself a paper cut while trying to pass out papers.  The kids were quite intrigued with that.  I made a hissing ouch sound (you know, like when you suck in air through your teeth) when I did it and then they all begged to see it.  Because apparently a paper cut is exciting news when you're a first grader.  Forget the snow, the sub, the art project, the sub got a PAPER CUT!!  My life's complete.  

Guisaxitars and Drumbaphones

The evening has gotten away from me, so I'm going to try to make this short.

I didn't have to do much teaching today because the kindergarten assistant did the majority of it.  I had some kids read to me and made running records.  I also did some coloring, stapling, and sorting for the teacher.  At one point I made a spreadsheet.  I mostly tried to stay awake.  You see, I got the call for this job at 5:30 this morning (a most ungodly hour of the morning).  Then I remembered that this class was the room with the pet bunny.  So before I headed out the door at around 8 I took a couple Benadryl to ward off any allergy attack.  Forgot that one of Benadryl's side-effects is drowsiness.  Yeah, they mean that.  I was REALLY sleepy and the room was warm and I didn't have a lot to occupy myself before the kids arrived, so I was fading fast.  But I didn't have an allergy attack, so I guess it was worth it.

The title for this blog was chosen because the kids had made pictures of Seuss-inspired instruments - lots of parts of normal instruments connected together to make something new and crazy.  Today they named them.  Those are some examples.  I laughed a lot at this project.  They had some crazy sounding names!

There Is No 'But...'

Last night, after spending two mind-numbing hours watching the Bachelor, I got on to the sub site and found a job for today!  It was for a second grade at one of the few schools I haven't been to yet.  I believe this brings my total to 37: been to, and 10: not been to.  Impressive, no?  Add in the 3 schools in Astoria and one in Warrenton and that brings my total of schools taught in to 41!  Yahoo!

Anyways, the school I was going to today is like on the complete other end of town, so I had to leave kind of early this morning.  I arrived to find all supplies and schedule laid out nice and orderly and an attendance list of 24 kids - 18 girls and 6 boys.  The morning went pretty well and we sailed through the schedule without any problems.

However, after lunch, music, PE, and a lesson from the counselor, they were all pretty wound up.  We tried to do math, something they've apparently done before, but about half of them needed my help and were not very patient and would resort to getting up and following me around after a while.  The other half was just loud.  I had to keep stopping every 5 minutes to tell them to sit down and work quietly.  It was frustrating for them to have to wait so long for help, but it was also frustrating to me because I just couldn't get around fast enough!  After a while of this I noticed two girls in particular who were bickering with each other.  One would push the supplies container in the middle of the table closer to the other, and then the other would push it back with increasing force and dirty looks each time.  Then one girl started to reach over and scribble on the other's name tag.  That girls would erase it, and the scribbler would reach over and do it again.  So at this point I stepped in.  I asked them what the problem was and they both launched into some story about who did what.  I told them to keep their pencils on their own paper and to just leave each other alone.  Well, it had not been 2 minutes later when I see these girls just shooting daggers at each other with their eyes.  I mean they had the nastiest looks on their faces!  Then girl A grabs the supplies container and puts it on the floor, which just makes girl B even more mad.  I told girl A to put it back, and now I can see she's starting to get frustrated with me.  So I went over and talked to them again!  (Meanwhile I've got like 10 other kids with their hands raised who need my help and I'm being distracted by the bickering girls - so I'm getting pretty irritated with them).  I told these girls they needed to knock it off, and since they obviously couldn't get along they were not to talk to each other, look at each other or touch each other for the rest of the day.  They were also to keep their hands on their side of the table, and to not touch the supplies anymore.  At this point girl A made the mistake of trying to argue with me ("...but she...!").  Bad idea.  So then I said in my loud-enough-for-everyone-to-hear-me-voice, "No.  There is no 'but...".  There is 'Yes, Miss Barnes.'  There is 'Okay, Miss Barnes.'  But there is no 'but...'.  So lets try that again." (A set of phrases I learned from another teacher this year on how to prevent kids from arguing with you.)  Girl A did not apparently think I meant it because she attempted the, "...but she...!" again.  So I repeated myself again.  Pretty much everyone is listening to us now, so she decided to quit trying to argue and give it up with the phrase I was looking for, "Yes, Miss Barnes."  After this point the girls continued to look like someone had force-fed them lemons for lunch but I didn't have to deal with them again.  However, I did give one of my timeless lectures to the class on how, "In life you are going to have to sit next to, work with and probably live with people who make you crazy.  Best get used to it and learn to deal with it now."  Oh so many pearls of wisdom for the day!

Puzzles

I have so little to say today that I almost forgot to do an entry at all!  

My day was pretty easy.  The kids were fine and the activities we did were nothing out of the ordinary.  They had a "homework celebration" at the end of the day where all the kids who'd turned in all their homework for the week got to play games for a while.  This week everyone got to participate.  I brought some of those metal puzzles with me - the kind with lots of loops and shapes connected and there's some piece that you're supposed to try to get off.  They had lots of fun trying to figure these out, although no one could actually do it.  Unfortunately, I hadn't done them for a while either so I couldn't remember the right way.  Next time I'll be sure to practice the steps so I can really wow them.

Simon Says...

This morning I was quite crabby. Why you ask? Well, last night I saw a job on the sub site that I wanted but I didn't get it because my computer was too slow. Then I did not get a call or see a job listed all morning. I sat by my computer and hit refresh. Roommate slept, then got up and sat downstairs and ate breakfast. Sometime during this time she did get a call for a full day today at a nice school. Even though she worked the same amount this week as me and she has jobs for each day next week. So I was peeved.

However, the day did take a turn for the better later. I got a call for an afternoon job in a bilingual 5th grade. They had a student teacher and she did all the teaching. I did some cutting and pasting (I'm quite gifted at this). I also did recess duty. And right after recess we had a surprise fire drill...which for some reason I read the roll to make sure none of the students were trapped in the imaginary burning building. None were. I was surprised they wanted to me read it though - the student teacher and the assistant were both there and I know they both knew the class better than I did - I thought they'd want to do it. However, I am also quite skilled at calling out names loud enough for all to hear - it's called "projecting your voice", not yelling - a skill in which many are sorely lacking.

Anyways, on the way back in from the drill we were locked out of the building. Something to do with the card reader locking all cards out during a drill. So nobody had an actual key - we just had key cards and they didn't work for about 5 minutes. One of the student teachers started playing Simon Says with the kids -which worked mostly well, until "Simon said" to "cry like a baby". In order to get them to stop she had to blow her whistle, which, unfortunately was the *exact* same loudness and pitch of the "crying". You get the picture. Eventually they stopped though, and the card reader worked again and we went back inside and I resumed my gluing.

Tomorrow, it's back to my bilingual 3rd graders from weeks prior. It's afternoon only, so I'm sleeping in! :)

Allergies

This morning I arrived at school to discover that I was not subbing in the class I thought I was!  I was subbing a half-day in kindergarten, but it was for the other kindergarten class.  Somehow I had just not realized this.  Anyways, so I set out for this new kinder class and couldn't find the plans anywhere in the room.  I walked up to the office to check the teacher's box, but all I found there was the attendance folder.  So I brought this back and looked some more.  I knew there had to be plans, because this was an absence planned long in advance.  I eventually concluded that the assistant must know where they are, so I patiently waited for her to arrive.

A few minutes later the teacher blew into the room and she delivered the plans to me.  Turns out the assistant was going to do a majority of the morning, and I'd just work on some projects as well as pulling kids over one at a time and having them read to me.  (They were an amazingly advanced group of kiddos with their reading!)

Throughout the course of the morning, and during the time I was reading with one of the kids (about an hour after I'd arrived) I came to the realization that yes, I am in fact, allergic to rabbits.  The class has a pet rabbit, and although this bunny wasn't there today (it was at the teacher's house) the room's memory of its presence was enough to set me sniffing.  Pretty soon my nose was running, my eyes got all watery, my hands started feeling swollen and itchy and I couldn't stop sneezing.  I finished up with the girl who was reading with me and went to find my purse and my Benadryl.  Took it about a half-hour to kick in, so I was a sniffly mess until then.  If I ever go back to this class again I'll remember to drug up prior to arriving!  Other than that it was good though - easy and the kids were sweet.  I'm just glad I carry a container of Benadryl with me everywhere I go!