Whining

A rabbit's "But I don't wanna!" face.
My usual arsenal against whining consists of jokes, sarcasm, and acknowledgement. Usually any one of those, or a combination of them (along with persistence) quells the whine.

Yesterday, one of my really cute - usually well behaved - kids whined her head off. It might have been the rain. It might have been the soda her mother allowed her to bring, and sip, in art class. Whatever it was, it took all my will power not to slap the kid upside in the head to make her stop.

It really brought down the rest of the class too. It only takes one bad orange to ruin the box right? Well, that last half hour of art class was one of the longest I've ever taught. I went home exhausted from keeping up the energy level and keeping down the discord.

Kid, if you have enough energy to whine more than the cellar of a high-end French restaurant, then you have enough energy to pick up that pencil and draw. Redirecting that energy is the tricky part.

Media Mondays (on a Tuesday): FAIL

see more Epic Fails
(It seems like you have to click on the photo in order to read what the bottom of the note says.)

I have some pretty strong spiritual beliefs. Typically of the non-fundamental kind, even if I do agree with some of the details presented in this parent's rather angry letter.

However, if I were the teacher of the student who's parent sent this letter in to me, I would:

- first, be rather pissed off.
- second, sorry for the kid.
- third, laugh it off and throw the note in the trash.

I'm also tempted to return a note to the parent saying, "Thank you for wasting my time by making me read your long note about your beliefs, which really have nothing to do with the logistics of the field trip. Which is what I mainly care about right now."

Seriously. If parents have the time and energy to write long, irrelevant notes to teachers, then they have enough time and energy to come to school and volunteer in the classroom.

So there.

MLK Day

My Sunday school students and the Operation Christmas Child project, 2009.
I'm not sure when exactly Martin Luther King Jr. Day became "Day of Service." The website said it was established in 1994. If it was, I wonder why I had never heard of it before last year. Was I living in a cave? Because that would be plausible.

At any rate, I like the idea. One day of service in an entire year isn't nearly enough - like how people generally celebrate the true meaning of Christmas - it's better than nothing.

Although I shouldn't say that ANYTHING is better than nothing. Good intentions are only good actions when the resulting action doesn't blow up in your face. Just like hope is only wishful thinking if the expectations are not followed through.

I've already discussed the idea of taking students to the local park with large orange bags and trash pokers. What are some other ideas? Kid-friendly ideas I mean. Ideas that doesn't send the principal into a panic, shouting "oh the liability!" at strangers in passing cars.

I already know I want a buddy class for my room. The students can read, play games, mentor other kids.

I like painting murals, removing gang graffiti and installing street art (guerilla gardening, any one?).

I like doing things for the elderly and people in convalescent homes. Students can read to them as well.

Well, in the end, I like many community service activities. I'm planning out some of the logistics in my head now, before I actually have my own class, so that I get most of the work done beforehand. Which increases the chance that I'll actually implement my plans.

And that's the catch, right? At least with me. I can plan and plan until kingdom comes, but it'll all be nought if I don't do anything about it. It doesn't have to be perfectly executed. That's something I trip up over too.

Standards Sundays: Grade 5 natives vs. foreigners, fight!

For all the fighting, the world is slowly turning fusion anyway.
From the California standards on history and social studies:

5.3 Students describe the cooperation and conflict that existed among the American Indians and between the Indian nations and the new settlers.

Competition and cooperation is a prominent theme in the fifth grade. Developmentally, it makes sense. Fifth graders are good at competition. They are also good at cooperation. These are very tangible things to them, which make this type of history pretty appropriate for them to understand.

Now, I know there's a whole bunch of political, unrecorded history on Native Americans and their interactions with Europeans. That's the nature of history - any history, not just of North America. I know I'm interested in those things, but not every fifth grader will be. In teaching, I have to remind myself that I can't teaching it all in one year. There are so many stories that don't get told in the classroom.

Which makes me think one of the purposes is to have students feel it is worthwhile to do the research themselves. Such a simple, straightforward purpose. Why do I forget it so often? And more importantly, how can I remember it more so I can teach better?

The class "Emotionally Disturbed"

Mental states are elsewhere.
Some teachers say that all kids are emotionally disturbed nowadays - just like how many special education teachers like to say all students are "special ed."

I'm on the fence regarding both these sayings. Just for today, I'll write about the emotionally disturbed students I've worked with.

This kid was my favorite. I have pretty self-involved reasons for thinking she is my favorite, but she really is a sweet kid. I sometimes wonder how she's doing now. She's in the third grade this year.

Another a student was in a horrific car accident with you younger sister. They both survived obviously, but some of their family members in their same car didn't. It affected the younger sister much more than the older one - at least in outward behaviors. The younger sister would cry and run away from her classroom. CT#3 would track her down while I taught, and bring her back to our room. Her older sister would help calm her down. Once she was calm, she would sit in the back and look at the lizard. She could sit there for hours, playing a staring contest with Harvey the Chinese Water Dragon. Eventually, she learned to stay in her own classroom without freaking out. It took the better part of the fall. She taught me the value of having a pet in the classroom.

Another student had an ingrained habit of what CT#2 called, "Alpha male" behaviors. CT#2 would know, he was an alpha male too. The student in question got really tense and anxious for seemingly no apparent reason at least twice a day. His story involved gang activity, both parents in jail, drugs, homelessness, and having been abandoned at the mall with his little brother. His behaviors included stealing, breaking things, defacing school property, intense bullying, swearing, and shouting out inappropriate comments at any given time. He would not pay any female teacher any attention at all. There was a staff member on campus, who's phone number was taped in bold print next to the phone, trained to specifically restrain this student. One day, under my watch, he ran out of the classroom and wouldn't come back. He was found in the boy's bathroom, digging holes out of the plaster walls with a compass.

All three students went to the resource teacher and saw the school psychologist on a regular basis. With the exception of Car Accident Girl, these students had IEPs and would most likely be tracked in special ed classes for the rest of their public education careers.

There isn't much else I want to say regarding emotionally disturbed students. I know I'll probably meet up with more. I definitely need more practice and training dealing with these students - the second example especially. He was highly volatile. CT#2 didn't teach me how to handle him, other than say I needed to be male. I did learn (on my own) that power struggles are not worth it.

Dress for the job you want, blazer edition

I'm not a big fan of blazers. I like the way they look, especially on guys, but wearing them during teaching isn't the most practical thing on earth. Most blazers are heavy, hot, the sleeves are too long on me, and most of them require dry cleaning, which I haven't gotten into the habit of doing. Probably never will.

However, I do own two blazers that I wear on occasion:

This one is a brown tweed material. Short-sleeved so I don't get too hot in those little tin-can portables that are either freezing or burning up. It keeps my core body warm, but ventilated as well. I like how it fits on me. Also the fun, puffy cap sleeves. Downside = it doesn't have pockets.



This is a more traditional black blazer that was meant to be part of a suit set. I didn't buy the pants because at the time I already had a pair of black pants. Now those black pants have died, and I'm realized that I don't really like plain black pants of the Dockers style, so I usually wear it with my dark grey pants, or a skirt. It has HUGE pockets, fits my keys, phone, post-it notes, random things I take away from students, a pen, pencil, AND eraser, with still enough room to put my hands in them to keep warm during yard duty. Downside = shoulder pads add heft and weight.



I usually wear these on days when I'm meeting parents, being observed by the principal/my supervisor/someone else important like that. Or for job interviews. If I ever get a job interview.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

Going behind other people who are waiting, that's a line.
I think teaching has made me a much more confrontational person. Or at least unafraid of it, when it arises. I try not to seek it out myself, but sometimes, it is necessary. Not to mention rather fun.

Case in point:

Wednesday, 12:46 PM

Despite waking up only two hours previously, I have had a productive day so far. I fed the rabbit, cleaned his cage, and played with him a little. I drove over to my bosses' house to pick up some supplies for my extra classes. I had gone grocery shopping. I bought Hagen Daz, a brand name that I ALWAYS have to google before I can spell it correctly, at 2 pints for $5.

And finally, I was going to gas up my car and drive home.

The setting: grocery store gas station. One of the cheapest places to get gas, thus, one of the places where there's always a line. Today, I was rather lucky. Just as I turned into the gas station, the line ahead of me moved forward and I was able to pull up to the pump.

A blue van with a rather scruffy looking, slightly past middle age was hanging out in the driveway between the pumps and the station parking spaces. I had seen him drive into the station before me, going the wrong way in the one-way driveway. His windows were down.

"Hey! What are you doing? I was in line!" he shouted.

"What are YOU doing? See that black Escalade?" I shouted back, pointing to the teenager behind me, who being a kindred spirit, gave a cocky wave. Some teenagers are cool like that.

"And then see that spot behind him? If you were there, you would be in a line. See how you are in the middle of the driveway? That's NOT a line. My fifth grade students would call that 'cutting' and would have told on you to a teacher. The teacher would then probably give you some sort of consequence for taking someone else's turn inappropriately. But then, you look smarter than a fifth grader, right?. You should have already figured that out, accepted you were not in a proper line, and fixed your mistake by now. Fifth graders know how to do that, you see, so I'm sure a grown man can do it too." I concluded.

Blue Van Man cursed and drove around to the next set of gas pumps. He got out of his car when he found a free pump and commented in an extraordinarily loud voice about how he was in line, and that an Asian bitch cut in front of him. Passive aggression at it's best and most mature.

If he was a school boy on the playground, he would be the one sulking, whining his head off at how unfair everyone and everything is. And no one on the playground would be paying him any attention.

Which was just what happened. Several of the gas station customers gave him weak smiles, but they all just turned away and went on their business. The guy on the other side of my pump whistled, grinned, and gave me a wink. I suppose that encouraged me to walk up to the blue van man after my car was full and say:

"Sir, it is indeed a grave injustice when some people don't agree with your concept of what a line is. I hope you feel better about it. Have a good day."

I could feel all the other customer's eyes on me as I walked back to my car - except Blue Van Man. I knew he was still sulking, as children do, but this time a little less loudly.

Three years ago, I would never have done that. It's so uncomfortable to witness these types of scenes. I always hate watching a harassed parent dealing with their tantrum throwing child in public. Most of them allow the kid to get the upper hand.

I'm glad I can I do this today. People have really got to get called out on crap like this more often.

I know it shouldn't be, but I can't help but feel rather satisfied when I've humbled a student by turning their own words back at them. In a caring way, of course. After all, one of my goals is to help my students to NOT become adults like the Blue Van Man.

Health sciences in education or, "How to break a CPR dummy"

Can you identify the high fructose corn syrup?
This marks the round dozen-th in official posts describing the process of becoming certified by the California Commission on Teacher Credentials (the CCTC, or what I like to call, "The Great Wise Board of Educators Not Actually Teaching Anybody Anything," TGWBENATAA).

Hold on to your hats, folks, there's going to be another dozen to go before I'm done with this tag. At least.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's first recap. You've now:

~ obtained a BA (or BS) in something. If you've long known you wanted to teach, the something is probably child development. If you decided to teach half-way into your undergrad years, it's communications or economics, or more likely both. If you knew from the very beginning in the womb that you wanted to teach, you probably already have your credential along with a major in education. Possibly you are on your way to an M.Ed. Which makes me wonder why you are reading this in the first place.

If you were (and are probably still) waffling around, changing your mind from law to accounting to architecture to the medical field to ::insert occupation here::, you would have a math degree. That's me. Go mathies!

If teaching is only a stepping stone to what your eventual goal will be, you would have studied the fine arts. Or English.

People with engineering backgrounds won't become teachers for another 15-30 years. By then, this guide will be obsolete. However, you are used to things going obsolete, so don't worry. You'll be able to wing it.

In any case, whatever your own education background is, you have one, which is really all that matters in this part of the process anyway.

~ You've taken the CBEST and CSET.

~ You've worked with kids. And liked it enough to consider spending 3/4 of each year with them.

~ The FBI and DOJ has deemed you a non-pedophile.

~ You've applied and been accepted to an accredited university's teacher preparation program for pre-service training.

~ You're now taking this series of courses, and these courses, and then there's this one, as well as this, oh and don't forget this lovely pair of courses either.

~ You've passed that damn RICA.

Congratulations! You are now ready to.....no, wait. Actually, if I remember correctly, you should have done the following step somewhere between getting an undergraduate degree and passing the damn RICA. It doesn't really matter when, although some programs will make it a mandatory pre-requisite before entering the field work component.

Because it's useful to know CPR and emergency first aid when, say, one of your students is having an asthma attack and he doesn't have his inhaler on him.

Or if something goes wrong during a lock-down.

Or when a student insists on eating thirteen hamburgers because he was traumatized by a year of homelessness and is taking the Scarlett thing too far, and you have to explain to him why eating so much is actually just as bad as not eating at all (note: see Educating Esme).

Not to mention the fact that 4th/5th/6th grade teachers are in charge of explaining sex ed.

So take that health science for educators class. Mine was mainly about cancer, nutrition, car accidents, and sitting through 40 presentations on healthy living.

It will probably require you to become adult and child CPR certified, which can be done through your local American Heart Association or Red Cross.

I got mine at a fire station in the seedier part of my town. I got yelled at by a fireman because I wasn't compressing hard enough. That it's better to break a rib than to have the rubber torso die of asphyxiation. So I pumped that dummy with ten times the energy of my tennis kill shot.

And made the head pop off its hinge.

I turned to the fireman and said, "Is this any better?"

C.L. Elementary

Haven't had one of these tags in a long time.



I would LOVE to have a model skeleton in my room.



The classrooms are newly remodeled.



It's nice to see solid classroom furniture. Although this room was still in a portable.



It's pretty typical that music, science, and art gets shoved all higgledy-piggledy together in the same room like this. Sad, but better than nothing. Although that in itself is a pretty sad sentence too.

Media Mondays: Educating Esme

Not exactly a book for little kids, but older kids might enjoy it.

I finished this one in five hours flat. Four of which were the night before, staying up until 3 AM to finish it. It's not a big book. It's not a classic, or terribly profound. Still, I really liked it. Me - who usually doesn't like books of this nature: self-help, autobiographical, inspirational-under-horrible-circumstances stories. A lot of those books seem so fake, so self-applauding.

Madame Esme may be a little self-applauding (she's a teacher, she HAS to applaud for herself because no one else is going to do it), but she's certainly not a fake. Just like the cover description says, she hangs the clean laundry out with the dirty - her accomplishments and failures out there for all to see.

Which is refreshing. I totally believe in taking the failures along with the successes together. One can't happen without the other.

Two things stuck out to me:

1. Esme's principal at the time used to call her late at night for "pat on the back" conversations. One day, Esme got so sick of it that she let her phone ring until the machine answered it. She woke up again at 3 AM to call her principal back, saying, "I'm so sorry. It's just that you called me so late. I knew you wouldn't call me so late if it wasn't terribly important. So I thought I had better call you back."

The late-night phone calls stopped there. Or I assume it did, the book doesn't really mention it again, either because they did stop, or because the principal started doing other, much more annoying things than late-night phone calls. Which he did.

2. The principal nags Esme about her insisting that the students call her "Madame Esme" rather than the more conventional "Miss/Mrs/Ms." After a huge confrontation, she refuses to talk about it anymore with the principal and storms out of his office. An older teacher colleague stops her on her way to resigning and they have a little conversation. The older teacher says, "You call that a fight? You wait until you've been teaching in the city awhile. See if you can stay here after you come up against the fight. The fight that will prove Mr. Turner's just the captain of a sinking ship. The fight that's bigger than two people in a room. It's a fight that you can't win even though you're right, because you can't win it all by yourself."

Esme asks the older teacher to clarify about "the fight," but the older teacher just shook her head, smiling. Esme decides to stay, if only to find out what "the mysterious Bigger Fight" is.


If the first situation above happened to me, I'm not sure I would have handled it like Esme - before I read her book. Now, I would handle it EXACTLY like Esme.

The second situation has been brewing in the back of my head since March. There is a bigger fight that the governors and the boards of educations and all that crap of two people in a room. It's so big, that it's all around us, and inside every single person in this nation, in the world. Where the "being an educated person" is less of an adjective and more of a characteristic.

It's a pretty disarming book for the reader. I recommend it to anyone who is brave enough to face the truth of what education is really doing to children.