Teaching on the Dark Side of the Moon

This one is from my first year in elementary school:

The first day of kindergarten I asked the kids to make a circle. They very obligingly stood up and wandered around the room like the wandering Jews roaming the desert as they searched for the Promised Land. I came home and said (cried is more like it) to my husband that it was like herding cats. In a music workshop I had taken previous to the start of the year, the facilitator said to make a circle and all the teachers made a circle. It didn’t seem like rocket science. What is wrong with my kids?? My husband said, “Well, did you tell them what kind of circle? Did you ask them to make a circle sitting down or standing up? Where in the room did you ask them to make a circle?” I quickly realized I had a lot to learn. I wanted that job that my coordinator said anyone could do. Clearly, not everyone can do this job and I was pretty awful that first year. I had annotated remarks after every lesson and at the end of the year I went through them. I had written, “WTF were you thinking? " “Well, that didn’t go well.” Don’t ever do THAT again.” Finally there was ONE lesson after which I had written, “That wasn’t a major disaster.” After my second year there were three lessons that hadn’t bombed and each subsequent year I have less bombing and more successes. But I’m still learning...and bombing.

Musing 2 Year 2

Today is a teacher work day, theoretically. We are supposed to have our 500+ grades entered by the end of the day, yet the entire staff has to sit through an all day workshop with a famous- in- her- own- mind discipline guru.

This year my school decided to "get serious" about discipline and character ed, so the principal formed a discipline committee to tackle this problem. Would it be axiomatic to say that committees are where good ideas go to die? The committee decided to hire____, the aforementioned discipline guru AND purchase her book for every teacher (I was busy calculating how many things I could buy for my classes with that same money), because she would NOT appear at your school for some undisclosed amount of money if you do not purchase her blather-filled book. (New motto: Never trust an educator who becomes incorporated or leaves the classroom after 2-5 years to lecture to other teachers about the classroom. New motto #2. Never trust an educator who uses names like Chelsey and Kaitlin as examples of students’ names. None of my kids have those types of names. Come on now. This ain’t Kansas.)

 Second work day: The discipline committee gave a presentation. They had come up with the "believer bucks" system that would allow the kids to amass a huge number of funny money chits if they behaved like humans for a few minutes and exchange this funny money at the student store for their bribery gifts. It’s actually not that bad of an idea, except that the student store hasn’t opened yet and didn’t appear to have any goodies to stock it with, meaning that at this point the kids have either lost or forgotten about the believer bucks. And now the discipline committee was going to present mini workshops on chapters from the discipline guru’s book. I was so glad to be required to attend this invaluable, life-affirming/paradigm changing experience.

The first workshop was in the Jeopardy format and it was all about multiple intelligences. (I don't know what this had to do with discipline. Maybe if you're missing more than 4 intelligences out of the 9 or debatable 10, then you're likely to develop a behavioral disorder). I didn't realize how competitive I was, but I had my finger poised on the imaginary buzzer, hovering in space like an impatient, albeit imaginary, gnat. Unfortunately I got distracted counting the misplaced apostrophes all over that classroom. I don’t understand this trend in grammatical illiteracy. The misuse of apostrophe’s (sic) drives me bananas.

The second workshop had a handout and was about, well, I don't know. I was too busy circling more grammatical errors on the handout. In a previous life iteration I had been a copy editor and a writer of flap copy (you know--the part of the book jacket that gives the reader a teaser of what the book is about).   I had found lots of errors including one of my favorite ones:  ALOT-- well, Allie Brosch says it better than I can: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html But I digress.

The last workshop was presented by the ASSistant Principal, the one who wrote this in my glowing, first year evaluation: "....Mrs Jove is not a very good teacher."  And that was the nicest thing she wrote.

 We were asked to come into a room filled with candles.  We were told to relax and sit silenty for 5 minutes.  I have a hard time being silent for 5 minutes, let alone relax in a room that smells like a Victoria Secret Outlet filled  with stressed out teachers.

There were different behavior scenarios posted on the wall, taken from the book from famous discipline guru lady.  We were told which posters to go to--micromanagement starts with the teachers, don't ya know-- and mine said, "A student pulls a knife on another student." 

So, how do you solve this behavioral dilemma?   My first thought was, "run away."  Second thought, "run away faster."  Third thought, " evaporate or time travel."

The answer was to GENTLY touch the knife-wielding maniacal student on the shoulder.  And say what, exactly? " How are you feeling?"  "What's up with that? " "WTF!"  I went home and drank a fifth of my beloved single malt, triple distilled, Irish whiskey.

 Musings 9 years later (2014)
Today was the first day of specials. Last class of the day (Why, Lord, Why do they schedule kindergarten at that time? Those poor babies are tired and antsy and have the attention span of a squirrel gone nut hunting. So in come the kindergarten kiddies, the grade that used to make me cry but now enjoy... most of the time.  We started off with Hickety Tickety Bumble Bee, will you say your name for me? I demonstrated (modeled, to use the educational term du jour—it seems like teaching is the one profession that likes to rename the same ideas bi-annually) what to do: say your name and we will echo you. We talk about what an echo is and how many times you echo in music class. Seems pretty easy but just to make sure we are successful, I start with one of the kids who seemed to be a little more "present" than the rest. He does it correctly. Then we go around the circle until we get to the little guy sitting next to me who softly sings, “bumbly bumbly bumble bee something unintelligible, bumble bee.” I say to him, “No sweetie. Say your name.” He repeats his bumbly bee refrain. I say, slightly louder as if I’m talking to someone hard of hearing, “No honey. Say your name. JUST say YOUR FIRST NAME, so unless your name is bumble bee, please say ONLY YOUR NAME. He sings “bumbly bee bumbly bumble bumble bumble bee” The kids say in unison, “Just say your name Quantavious.” “Bumbly Bumbly bumble….“Ok, thank you,”I break in and put an end to that game. At least he was using his head tone.