End of the Year Blues

As the end of the school year quickly approaches, I find myself with a bad case of the end of the year blues. Usually at the end of the year, I feel a little heartache that I won't see my sweet kiddos everyday and I get all teary thinking about how far they've come. I really do get so attached to every class. This year I feel an extra little bit of heartache because I love my school and district so much. They are such a wonderful fit for who I am as a teacher and this has been a truly fabulous year. With all that being said, I must also say that I will not be returning next year.

I really neglected this blog while I was teaching innercity, which is kind of silly since the whole reason I started it was to write down the crazy things that happened in my room. My district really has a phenomenal reputation throughout our state so when I was asked to come on board as an extended leave replacement teacher, I didn't hesitate for a second. My husband may have thought I was a little crazy but I took a leap of faith and accepted my current position even though I would not have a renewing contract. It could have been just a one year job, which was a little scary. I said a prayer, took a leap of faith, and then worked very hard. I was so thrilled when I was offered a permanent position to teach third grade. The position would be tenure track with a renewing contract in what I believe (although I'm a little biased) the best school district ever. I would be changing schools but would remain in the district permanently and be able to stay in 3rd grade. Yay!

Then, my husband was offered a new job. An absolutely amazing new job. That amazing new job, however, is not in New Jersey. If you read my life blog, then you know I announced last week that he accepted to position and we are moving in June. We are moving to Charlotte, which is the area where I grew up. I am so excited to be closer to my family and closest friends. However, it absolutely broke my heart to turn down the most perfect job offer. I've started applying and interviewing for positions next year and I know I will be very happy with whatever position I am in next school year but I also find myself panicking as I think about leaving my district and never seeing the sweet kids and amazing families again and not working with my amazing colleagues, principal, and supervisors any more. I really feel like I have grown so much this year and I have absolutely loved every minute at my school so I really can't imagine not working there anymore. I am really excited to see what the next year brings, though. I will be in an area where there is a great need and I am really looking forward to the next adventure - even if it is a little heartbreaking at the moment.

When a Class Pet Dies

This post has been sitting half-finished in my drafts for over a year {oops!} and hails from my days teaching Kindergarten innercity. If you've spent any amount of time here at Lipstick, Lattes, and Lesson Plans then you know my time there was challenging to say the least, especially at the beginning of the school year when I was still working on routines and behavior.

I don't know how many of you know anything about African dwarf frogs but my kindergarteners would be happy to share a thing or two.

via google images

I was hired about a month after the start of the school year last year after the original Kindergarten teacher left unexpectedly. The African dwarf frogs (2 of them) were already a part of my classroom and my students had done some pretty extensive research on them. Did you know that African dwarf frogs live their entire lives underwater but have lungs so they must always come up to the surface to breathe? Or that they cannot be out of water for more than 20 minutes or they will dry out?

African dwarf frogs need exactly two pieces of frog food every other day. I read that in the wild they are actually scavengers and eat all sorts of things so this never really made sense to me. However, I was told to be very careful and make sure they were fed this specific amount of food. We picked jobs in my classroom every week so each week a different student had the opportunity to be the "veterinarian" and was responsible for the frogs.

It was my second month of school and we were working a lot on behavior. When I started in the classroom, it was common for the kids to bite each other (and me), throw chairs, and curse at each other. A day where these things didn't happen was considered a success. The African dwarf frogs were the last thing on my mind.

Then one morning my co-teacher was absent, making our morning routine a little more hectic than usual. We had a school wide assembly and I was getting my kids unpacked and lined up so that they could go to the gym. Then, one of my little girls yells out, "Look! The frog is dead!"

This caused a lot of excitement for my kiddos but seeing as how we were in a time crunch, I did the only logical thing I could think of at the time and positioned myself between their eyesight and the frogs. "Oh no, " I said, calmly, "I think he's just sleeping. I was working so late last night he is probably very tired. Let's go to the assembly and let him take a nap."

So off we went to the gym for our assembly. What I didn't mention was that there had been a little mishap with the frogs earlier in the week. My veterinarian was a real profession, feeding the frogs the exact right amount of food on the days they were supposed to be fed. Unfortunately, one of my little boys decided to dump some extra food in the tank to "help." I don't really know if he was trying to help the veterinarian or if he just wanted to see what would happen. He was not my top direction follower and was one of those students who liked to test the limits.

When we returned from the assembly, we only had a few minutes before our special, so I ushered my kiddos to the carpet for our whole group literacy lesson. Luckily, the frog tank was out of view. When I dropped them off for their special, I went back to the classroom to investigate. And sure enough the frog was still there in the tank and was now floating at the surface of the water, belly up.

The problem with this was that I am not really a frog person. If I had been able to choose my own class pet it would have been a singular beta fish. Or perhaps a floppy bunny because I prefer mammals. It would not have been an African dwarf frog. And it most certainly would not have been TWO African dwarf frogs.

My co-teacher liked the frogs a lot more than I did so I considered just moving the tank out of the kids view and letting her deal with the situation when she returned in the afternoon. This is a major benefit of team teaching. I sent her a quick text message to ask her expert frog opinion. She texted back asking me if I was sure he was dead. I said I thought so and she suggested waiting a little bit longer. This sounded good to me because I had no idea how I was going to remove him from the tank.

But I couldn't stop thinking about the second frog. So down the hall I went to one of the other Kindergarten teacher's rooms. I asked her if she knew anything about African dwarf frogs, which she didn't. Then, I told her I was pretty sure one of ours was dead. "Just dump the whole tank," she suggested, "Like you would a fish."

"But what about the other frog?" I asked.

She asked me if the poor second frog was still in the tank with the floating dead one. I embarrassedly admitted that I was. We decided I would somehow have to remedy this because this was probably contaminating the water and my class really didn't need to deal with the loss of two pets. She and I went back to my room and peered into the tank, trying to think of how we could get the frog out. Then, my principal peeked in and I told him about the situation, hoping he would offer to remove the frog, which he did not. He did tell me what an important teachable moment this was for my kids.

Thank heavens that another teacher came into my room right at that moment who had more experience with amphibians than I did. She used a net to remove the frog for me and we carried him downstairs to the faculty restroom for a proper burial.

After lunch, I broke the news to my kids. We talked about how he had been a special part of our class but that this was a natural part of the life cycle. Those who had lost grandparents or other family members shared their stories and they made cards for the frog during snack.

Had our school been located in a more suburban area, we probably would have taken a field trip outside and buried him together. However, being innercity, even our playground didn't have actual grass.

When my co-teacher returned in the afternoon, I recounted the day's events to her. By this point, at least since the frog had now been buried, I thought it was all pretty hilarious. I don't have a class pet this year, though, although I am tentatively considering a gold fish for next year. For the time being, I'm just sticking with plants.

Have any of you experienced the death of a class pet? How did you handle it? 

The Emergency Room

Well it seems I've kind of abandoned my teaching blog. I apologize - it seems keeping up with it is the last thing on my mind after work sometimes. I have started working at my new job and am so excited about the year ahead of us in 3rd grade.

Moving schools was such a great move for me professionally. I'm able to teach in a style that I feel is best practice. My school day is shorter so I have more time to plan my lessons after school and it doesn't cut into my personal life as much. I can wear nice clothes to work without them being ruined and I'm generally just in a better mood. With all of this being said, there are moments where I feel a little guilty.

On the last day of school last year, we had a staff meeting after the kids went home as kind of a "summer send-off." All of the administration spoke and our curriculum supervisor said something along the lines of...

If you were a doctor you could choose to work in a private practice where you could go home early and have a flexible schedule. Where you didn't have to handle life or death situations every single day and where you could have dinner with your family. Or you could work in the emergency room. The emergency room where you're always on call, where you never get a moment to sit down, where the stress level is high, and where you have to make life or death decisions every day. But you would be making the biggest difference and helping the people who need it most. By working here, you are working in the emergency room.

Which is true. In my school last year, I was working in a school where I was really needed. The kids needed good role models and dedicated teachers. Which felt good, but also took a lot out of me.

So at moments, I feel guilty for where I am right now. But at the same time, I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. My school now reminds me so much of the school where I worked immediately after I graduated in South Carolina and was so happy. Its a good fit and the kids still need me. They need me to be a good example too and they need my passion for teaching and my love for trying new, best practice approaches. And I feel pretty fortunate to have a job that several hundred other teachers applied for. It is going to be the best year this year at my new school but I can't help saying a prayer for the kids and my former coworkers in "the emergency room" that they have the best year, too.

Consistency: the key to classroom management

Where I have been??

I have so many pictures on my iPhone that I took for the purpose of sharing with you all. But the process of editing them all to stick a smiley face sticker over my kids' faces (for privacy purposes) has just seemed too time consuming. Maybe that will be a project over the next couple weeks.

It took most of the year but I recently realized that my class has finally settled into a good routine. Desks are not being thrown. People are not getting bitten. Braids are not being cut off. We've moved past all that. Yesterday, one of my students (she is being evaluated for Oppositional Defiance Disorder) was throwing a temper tantrum. She was knocking chairs over and hiding in the closet. It was then I realized that wow, this hasn't happened in ages.


She is not my only difficult student. Last year I had two. This year I have 10. And by difficult, I mean students that need constant attention regarding their behavior and constant redirection every single day.

Last year in South Carolina I worked in a Title 1 school in my hometown, a suburb of Charlotte. I had few behavior problems and was able to handle the ones that did occur in my classroom with no anxiety or stress. I knew a lot about classroom management from learning about best practices, studying Love and Logic, and hours spent reading The First Days of School by Harry Wong.

This year I've learned you never really know classroom management until you work in an innercity Newark school. A little background - my students are familiar with violence, gangs, and every one of them knows a family member or family friend who has been to prison or at least to jail. The attitudes and disrespect is something I never imagined but it is cultural - a method of survival within a difficult community.

When people ask what I do, I tell them I teach Kindergarten. Their usual response, "Awww." When they ask where and I tell them, they say, "Ooooh." To be honest, when I started my current job I was a little terrified.  Especially since I was coming into a classroom where the previous teacher had quit after only a week. At the beginning of the year, we had two students (one with special needs) who would literally walk out of our classroom whenever they felt like it. Our class has three doors so their are more doors than there are teachers to guard them. We have at least four students who didn't think twice about throwing furniture. Biting or hitting myself or my coteacher was not uncommon. Teeth sucking, eye rolling, and shoulder shrugging was the norm when we would give directions.

We've come a long way. I'm really proud of my students. They've shown SO much growth academically as they prepare to go to first grade. But what is really spectacular is the growth they've shown in behavior.

My co-teacher is awesome and she has a couple years experience working in Urban schools and has really been a role model for me in classroom management. When working with a difficult population you should think long and hard about your procedures at the beginning of the year and make a decision for what your consequences will be when they are not followed. This is important because your procedures need to become the "Bible" of your classroom. They are the law. And there are no exceptions.

This was difficult for me at first because I always believe in giving my students the benefit of the doubt. My class last year and I sat in a community circle and came up with our "class contract" together. And that was that. The consequences were consistent when the rules were broken but that rarely happened. This year, it happens every day.

We use a lot of songs as rituals in our class. We have a song we sing when we're lining up. When its over, the students are expected to be quiet in line. We have a song we sing when we move to circle on the carpet. When its over, the students are expected to be sitting quietly "criss-cross applesauce." These rituals are consistent and the students know the expectations when the song is over.

Whatever you decide what the consequences for poor behavior choices will be, you have to be consistent. If you expect your kids to keep their hands to themselves, there has to be a consequence for every child every single time they refuse to do this. If you expect students to be respectful, there has to be a consequence every single time this doesn't happen. Over the year, I've learned how important this is.

Building relationships with parents and families is key for consistency. If you tell a student you're going to call a parent and their behavior doesn't improve, you have to follow through. Part of consistency means never making a threat you can't keep. This goes hand-in-hand with having a relationship with parents so you have their support. I have a handful of parents that I can send a text to during the day if their child is not following directions or is being disrespectful and within a few minutes they will have taken a break from work so they can call and talk to their child. I've found that telling the parent you will call back at the end of the day to let them know if the behavior has improved is very motivating for the child. They're already in trouble but they know Mom or Dad will be much happier to hear they turned their day around. On more than one occasion, I've videotaped a student throwing a temper tantrum (hiding under tables, kicking chairs, etc.) and texted the videotape to their parents. While this may be extreme, I have learned that extreme time call for extreme measures.

While I'm so proud of how much my students have grown, I'm even more proud of how much I have grown this year. I feel like I can handle any kind of classroom management issues now. Its hard for me to even believe at the beginning of the year I felt a little intimidated by a group of five year olds. Children are strong willed and they can be stubborn. Part of being a consistent teacher is being even more strong-willed. The rules are the rules and everyone is expected to follow them. I'm proud of having these high expectations for behavior and I'm proud for following through on them. Teaching isn't just about academics. Part of teaching, arguably the most important part, is character development. This is especially true for the younger grades. Being consistent in behavior management is teaching skills that will make your children better students later on in school and more successful members of society, no matter how difficult it may be at the time.

What are your thoughts on classroom management?

Occupational hazard: Pencil Stabbings

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Who would have thought these were so dangerous?

Sometimes Kindergarten teachers get black eyes. Or one black eye. One very painful black eye. Or at least that was the case for me yesterday after I was stabbed in the eye with a pencil. Before you get too worried, I'd like to take a moment to clarify. This was not an actual stabbing per se - more of an extremely hard accidental poke.

Rewinding to yesterday morning about ten o'clock. Our literacy block curriculum is structured so that there is a mini lesson then the students either complete partner centers related to literacy skills or they work in a guided practice group, then after 20 minutes the groups switch. Both my co-teacher and I lead a guided practice group simultaneously. Yesterday, my group was practicing vocabulary words by reading a story, discussing their meaning and how they were used in a story, and then copying this week's words onto small index cards. The cards are bound by a ring and allow the students to have a "pocket resource" of words they need to know in Kindergarten.

While we were completing the activity, I was also taking time to work individually with each child. I am attentively listening to the child sitting next to me on my right as she shows me that she knows all of the words on her ring. Then, things got interesting.

I have a student who has some unusual tendencies. For example, he is extremely large for his age and very clumsy. His social development is not quite where we'd like to see it - he is extremely clingy with teachers but aggressive with other students, and cries anytime he is touched by anything (even if someone accidentally bumps him with their jacket sleeve as they're putting their coat on.) He also has a tendency to flap his arms and has an extremely difficult time controlling his body.

While I am working with the student on my right, this other student is sitting on my left writing down his Word Wall Words. Then, he flapped his arms. For whatever reason, his pencil was upside down so the point was sticking up. Well...he flapped his arms so that the hand with the upside down pencil struck me right below my eye.

Graphically put, he hit me so hard that the skin at the corner of my eye was bleeding and the pencil actually pushed inward, damaging the lower and rear of my eye. This caused immediate significant pain.

Had I been anywhere else I probably would have cried like a baby. But because I am in charge of eighteen five year olds, I was able to give my group instructions on how to finish the activity and get a worksheet for them to start. Thank goodness for my co-teacher because I was able to leave the room in under five minutes of the incident and run to the school nurse's room. She was able to give me gauze to stop the bleeding and an ice pack and I was able to take some time to rest for a few minutes.

My class was ready for lunch when I returned and after recess, they go to special. While they were gone, I put my head down on a desk and closed my eyes for a few minutes. My principal checked on me to make sure I was ok and we laughed about the incident. Not all Kindergarteners are ready for pencils!

I taught math when my students returned from their special. I'd had a headache but I noticed when trying to read a math riddle from our math big book that I was having trouble focusing on the words and reading them. They were super blurry and this is a big book - you know the special teacher books that are like a foot a half by two feet so the words are pretty large.

Corey was off work yesterday because he was sick so I texted him and asked if he could take the train to the city where I work so he could drive the car back. Luckily he was running a little early because while I was serving snack, I started to feel horrible. I had severe pressure on my eye and I was getting dizzy because everything I saw out of the right eye was normal and everything I saw out of the left was completely blurry. We have a special social skill building program on Wednesdays so another teacher comes into my class for the last hour of the day. It was only about thirty minutes until that time, so my co-teacher offered to lead the social studies activity I had planned and get the students packed up if I would run back up to check in with the nurse (we were out of band-aids in our classroom anyway and Kindergarteners love band-aids and need them for everything).

I hadn't looked in the mirror for a couple hours so I didn't know what my eye looked like. It was swollen and had already turned black underneath. My principal stopped in and told me I needed to leave and go see a doctor right then. Luckily, at this point Corey was only minutes away.

We called a couple optometrists who couldn't see me so late in the day even for an emergency but were able to get in right away at an urgent care center my principal recommended. I failed the vision test on my left eye (both are normally 20/20).  I have a scratch on my actual eyeball in addition to the cut on the skin below it. My vision should improve as the scratch heals and as the swelling decreases. A piece of carbon was removed from the skin below my eye and I'm taking antibiotic eyedrops.

I guess I'm lucky the point struck below my eye and didn't scratch my cornea or anything serious. A pencil in the eye is something that you imagine would be very painful but in reality, seems highly unlikely that you'll ever have to experience. I was in complete shock for probably ten seconds after it happened. Its still pretty painful and pretty swollen and very black but my vision is starting to improve. Having student taught in third grade, interned in fifth, and then taught first grade my students have usually been pretty proficient in using pencils and other writing utensils. They've even all been capable of using scissors in a safe manner. I definitely wasn't expecting to be struck by a pencil this year. But honestly it makes sense. I have quite a few students who still don't hold them the right way and a few others who have serious problems controlling their bodies. I guess I know some basic skills our class needs to work on - with an emphasis on safety!

Let's Play Catch Up

I have a couple half-finished posts in my queue dating all the way back to what my class did to celebrate Thanksgiving, which was super cute by the way. I'll have to make it my goal to finish and post these soon. On that note, does anyone know an online program that would make it easy for me to blur my students' faces in photos to post on the blog? I have some super cute photos from our Holiday unit but I also think its important to maintain my students' privacy.

Here's a photo of our class tree, books for our book exchange, and stockings to hold you over!

I have the cutest video of them from our Holiday celebration. Toys for Tots and a faculty fundraiser combined provided enough toys so that every single student in our school had a present on the last day before the holiday break. "Santa" came to our school, carrying his sack, and ringing a bell, and strolled down the halls to wish all of our students a Happy Holiday. Then when he left, he left 700 presents in the gym to be distributed to our students.

Blurry because Santa was on the move to get back to the North Pole and prepare for Christmas Eve ;)

Or that's how it seemed for my Kindergartners. They felt so honored that Santa came to our school and brought us presents a day early. In reality, a lot of hard work went in to making that happen (I was on the wrapping committee so I can attest to this) but it was well worth it. I videoed my kids with my iPhone and their reactions were priceless. Many of my students come from lower income houses and even those that don't, almost all of them are growing up in one of the most densely populated gang communities in America. They deserve something special. We had a book exchange where students brought in wrapped books to swap and a generous parent volunteer donated extras to make sure everyone got one. There were squeals of joy when they opened their books and Toys for Tots packages (a princess floor puzzle for the girls and Hess trucks for the boys) and one little boy looked right into the camera and said "This is everything I've dreamed of." It was SO cute.

On another note, we've had some changes in administration lately. Our curriculum director resigned unexpectedly due to family illness and it was effective immediately. With that came a lot of changes. Kindergarten has been restructured and the classes have even changed slightly. This is rare for the middle of the year, but was much needed. And I have fewer migraines and spend significantly less money without the necessary afternoon coffee run. We've been allowed to incorporate some play into our curriculum like most other Kindergarten classes. We added dramatic play centers, blocks, and a movement and life skill building block to the day. On Fridays we now do free choice centers, which include paint, sand table, puppet show, etc. This is much appreciated because our kids are only 5 and 6 years old and are in school without a break from 7:30 am until 4:15 and need more play than a 20 minute recess! We also added fifteen minutes of silent reading and quiet time after recess, which we substitute for silly Dr. Jean songs on Fridays.

I still have lots of fun and crazy stories to tell from my classroom. But things have definitely calmed down a bit. I haven't been stabbed with a pencil or bitten in over a month!

"He ate my cupcake!"

Source: sweetpeonyblog.blogspot.com via Elizabeth on Pinterest

In Kindergarten, we take our cupcakes very seriously.

Birthdays are a cause for celebration, especially when you've only had five or six of them. We had a birthday celebration for a little girl in my class last Wednesday. For birthday celebrations, we give the children a birthday hat to wear and a birthday card and pencil. Then, if parents want to come in and bring in a snack, they can come for the last half hour of the day. I'm glad our school still allows sweet birthday treats. While I'm all on board for making schools healthier, I can't say I'm a fan of limiting birthday treats to granola bars, fresh fruit, or muffins. When I was a child, my mom always brought in freshly baked funfetti cupcakes that we'd iced together the night before when it was my birthday and I loved it!

There are seventeen children in my class and the birthday girl's little brother came in to celebrate with her. That's eighteen children. There were eighteen cupcakes. One for everyone. Perfect!

Well, perfect until I look up from where I'm passing out baby wipes to wipe off sticky icing-covered fingers to see one of my students jump up out of his seat, fists clinched and shaking. Then he started screaming. Total, complete meltdown. And extremely worrysome because I have a number of students who have a difficult time controlling their anger and many of them, including this boy, have a tendency to be very violent.

I rush over, tell him to sit down and take a big breath and tell me what the problem is. Tears are streaming out of this child's eyes and he is shaking because he is so furious. He takes a big breath and then points to the little boy across the table and screams at the top of his lungs, "He ate my cupcake!"

I said, "Excuse me?" My co-teacher said, "Who did?" The little boy screams the name of the boy sitting across from him, his fists still shaking.

Sure enough, the little boy had licked the icing off of his cupcake, then gone to get a squirt of hand sanitizer and when he returned there was no cupcake on his desk. And the little boy sittings across from him was literally licking his lips after devouring another child's cupcake in one, swift bite.

My co-teacher escorted the cupcake-eater out of the classroom across the hall to complete a think sheet - where he draws a picture of what he did wrong, then discusses his behavior with an adult in another classroom and comes to a conclusion about what he should do next time, and then draws a picture of how he could have better handled the situation.

I do think the boy should have been removed from the "party" because of his behavior and that taking a moment to refocus was necessary but I don't feel like it really remedied the situation. This was a classroom management situation that had no truly successful outcome and no solution. Yes, the boy who stole the cupcake was punished. Would he do it again? Absolutely (this is the same child who bit me and drew on my pants with sharpie after all.)

Most importantly, though, the cupcake was gone. The other little boy never did get to eat a cupcake. There were no extras, not even one for me and my co-teacher that we could have given him. I offered him a leftover bite sized snickers bar from our Halloween celebration and that did seem to help a little and at least he got a treat with everyone else. But it was no cupcake. And in Kindergarten, we take our cupcakes very seriously.

Halloween Costume Parade & Quote of the Day

Oh how I wish I could post pictures of the costumes my Kindergarteners wore yesterday. Our school hosted a parade of costumes for the students. Since the community that serves our students is ummm...not the safest, our school hosted a safe Halloween event during the school day. Students in the lower school were able to change into their costumes after lunch and recess. They had a parade of costumes for the upper school, faculty, and some parents who were able to make it into school then went back to class for pumpkin painting and a Halloween party.

For privacy reasons, I will never post pictures of my actual students but I searched Google images high and low for photos of a couple of the cutest costumes from class.

Ladybug Princess

Lady skeleton

 Child pimp

I kid you not, one of my children came to school dressed as a pimp. Gold chains, hat, and all. I couldn't help but laugh out loud. I asked him what his costume was to see what he would tell me and all he could do was giggle. I wish I could share the actual picture I took - hilarious!

Quote of the day - I was signing in at the office when I got to school on Monday, loaded up with Halloween goodies and freshly baked cookies. One of the other teachers told me to expect some of my students to be out all week. I asked why - apparently it is gang initiation week in our community and some of the kids will be home with their parents doing those sorts of activities. I was also told not to stay late working at school this week. Sometimes I feel like I must be pretty naiive and like I have so much to learn about the "real world."

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?