Top 5 Most Memorable Moments of the School Year (thus far)

It is only late October so I'm sure I'll have many more memorable moments with my Kindergarteners but I'd like to take this opportunity to write down a few. These aren't necessarily the fun, happy moments that come along with teaching five year olds but they were definitely moments I want to remember.

I'll start out by saying that I love my class. I love them because they are my students and I spend all day every day with them and we do lots of fun things together. However, they are a challenge. They are the biggest challenge I've ever had when working in a classroom setting.

5. When one of my five year olds told another to "Shut the f* up!" after a disagreement over a crayon and a miniature cat fight ensued. Our little girls are so tough. Honestly, I think I could use a lesson or two from them sometimes. Pink crayons in our classroom are in high demand for some reason and two little girls were arguing over using the pink crayon at their table. This escalated to one of the girls making a comment about the others' hair, which caused the other girl to stand up, break the pink crayon in half, and yell, "Who cares? You just shut the f* up!"

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4. When we went outside for a special program that emphasizes the importance of play and one of my little boys lost his pants. They literally fell down and he was running around in his spongebob underpants. Now, these type things happen in Kindergarten. They just do. What made it so funny is that my class has a couple "runners." These are kids that don't come when you call them, run the other direction, and basically always think you're playing a game of tag with them. And this little boy is one of my runners so he was running around for almost five minutes in his underpants trying to make sure none of the teachers or students tried to catch him! What makes in ever more hilarious is that this is an urban school in the middle of a city so there are passersby the play area all the time and everyone who walked by saw a five year old darting around the field with three teachers calling him to put his pants back on!

3. When a student drew a red line down the seat of my pants. In Sharpie. Honestly, this isn't that big of a deal. Clothes get ruined when you work with small children. But I will definitely remember this day. The little boy is generally up out of his seat doing something he's not supposed to. On this day, he was sitting in his seat because the children were doing a math activity where they could use the dry erase boards and they love those! This little boy didn't want to complete the activity so he drew with his marker on the table, on the person sitting next to him's forehead, on the computer screen. Finally, my co-teacher took away his dry erase marker. She literally pried it from his hands. This really upset him so he went over to the desk, found a red sharpie, and waited until I was squatting down talking with another group and until my co-teacher was out of the classroom trying to find one of our runners. Then, he came up behind me and quickly drew a red mark right down the center of my pants. On my butt! By the way, to my knowledge Sharpie does not come out of the khaki editor pant by Express. If you know a remedy, please leave it in a comment. Lessons learned: be more aware of what's going on behind me (I seriously need six sets of eyes so that I can provide individualized instruction to the kids who need it but also monitor the classroom for potential Sharpie marker attacks.

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2. The time a little boy cut a little girl's braid off. This was a very big problem. We were creating a fall craft in response to the fall unit and writing sample we'd just completed. The kids were so into this and loving it and the lesson was going so well! Both my co-teacher and I were busy working with the different groups in our classroom. I had just left the group where the little boy was sitting. He wasn't exactly following directions but he was basically on-task and giving it a good effort. The next thing I know he is chasing another little boy around the room with scissors. This little boy has a history of some pretty violent behavior so this is a serious problem. Both my co teacher and I immediately try to intervene and get the scissors from him before he stabs someone but before we do, he makes a quick snip and a braid falls to the floor. He smiles and sits the scissors down immediately and the little girls is, understandably, in tears.

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1. The most memorable day of my job happened during my first week. It was also the same day my iPhone got stolen and destroyed and when I had a flat tire and waited for two and a half hours for AAA to come. Perhaps the little incident that started my day wouldn't be so memorable if it hadn't been a catastrophic day all around. We'd just had a classroom management workshop the evening before to learn some new techniques specific to urban school environments. What was memorable about that workshop was a.) when the instructor told us we just had to face the fact that some of our students were meant to go to jail and b.) ignoring problem behaviors and praising positive ones yields results. Afterwards, we were encouraged to start using the "ignoring" strategy with one specific student in our class who often caused disruption, and usually for attention seeking puposes. The next morning my co-teacher is teaching literacy and I am preparing for my own lessons and checking homework and parent communication folders. The student was not participating in literacy. He was walking around the room, pretending to call people on the phone, playing on the teachers' computer, dumping math manipulatives on the floor. Basically anything that would usually get him attention and disrupt our who group mini lesson. It was so difficult to ignore these behaviors because I really wanted to redirect him to make a better choice, however I was trying to take the advice of the management specialist. The child climbed under the table where I was working. He reached for children's books in their bins and starting bending the pages. He tried to climb into my lab but my legs were already crossed. None of these things were getting him any attention but he kept trying. About that time I thought maybe, as skeptical as I was, ignoring all these behaviors might be the right thing to do. Maybe it really was learned behavior for the purpose of attention seeking. Then, the little boy bit me!

While things are getting a little more stable in the classroom and we're starting to learn strategies that help  specific students, we still don't have the management down. I've never worked in a classroom that was so difficult to manage. Luckily my co-teacher is phenomenal and she has all kinds of strategies from urban school workshops and seminars that vary slightly from what I learned in school and what has worked for my previous classes. Its a journey and we're still working everything out but it is a struggle at times. Teachers - what are your best classroom management strategies?