Happy pills.

It's NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), and I've been neglecting my poor blog for a while. Sorry! I'm back though. Here's today's post.


Today I had one of those moments where I forgot. It happens every once in a while. Sometimes the weight of all the non-child things that we deal with every day just gets so heavy...I started to feel like Eeyore always did when he'd walk around the Hundred Acre Wood and that little black raincloud followed him, raining on his head all day. Sometimes, it's all just overwhelming.

I went to go talk to my teammate, who sweetly went on a mini-quest for some chocolate to cheer me up (though all he ended up with was granola--it's the thought that counts, right?). And as lovely people are wont to do, he reminded me of the thing I momentarily forgot--my Reason.

The Reason I wake up at 5 every morning and stay at work til 5 most evenings. The Reason I can stand in the doorway at 7 am with a smile on my face. The Reason every day is filled with songs and smiles and random dance breaks. My Reason is my children. I love them more than anything. And no matter what happens outside of class time, no matter how dark or how heavy the cloud over my head sometimes appears or how hard that rain falls, all my children know is that their teacher loves them, they are awesome readers, writers, mathematicians and thinkers, and every day is one big dance party. And that's all they need to know.

When I remembered that, and looked into their sweet, smiling faces after lunch...the cloud lifted and the sun came out. So much better than chocolate--my children are my happy pills.

Crazy times

Today we were reading this great story about Minerva Louise, a very funny chicken. She leaves her farm one day and goes for a walk, arriving at a school. However, since she's never seen a school before, she just thinks it's a funny-looking farm. Everything she sees (a flag, blocks, cubbies, sweaters) she describes in farm terms. When she called the baseball an egg, I asked the kids to check for understanding (one of our CAFE strategies) by telling a friend what the story was about. Their response: "It's about a hen that's crazy."  

It's times like these when I have to mask my laughter with a question, like, "Why do you think that, darling?" ("Because she thinks the baseball is an egg, DUH, Maestra.") But what I really want to say is, BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! My kids are hilarious. 

Dancing.

This summer, my assistant and my mom accompanied my kids and I to the zoo for our field trip. Upon meeting my mother, he informed her that I apparently have "chronic dancing disease." This is probably true--given more than a few seconds with nothing to do, I often start dancing around (much to the amusement of my students). So whenever I can, I make dancing part of our normal classroom fun.

Yesterday the kids were working on some measuring activities. Actually, they were "working" on some measuring activities. I went through their work at the end of the day and half of them weren't finished. Disappointed by the amount of work accomplished in comparison to the amount of time I gave them to do it in, I decide that today's learning objective would be "I can do my best work in math class." 

I gave them my usual speech about how working harder makes us smarter, and we learn both by being good listeners and by getting our work finished (or as much as we can). And then I introduced them to the Smarty Pants Dance. If you haven't seen it, it's amazing. Arty Smarty Pants is a puppet from the reading show Between the Lions (a fantastic show if you've never seen it--totally worth watching with your own kids, or even your students) on PBS. Arty Smarty Pants is all about word families, so he pulls  these words out of his big red checkered pants ("Hot, pot, lot, popcorn!" And then popcorn also comes out of his pants. Random, I know, but highly amusing). 

We talk about what a "smarty pants" is (someone who works really hard at school and as a result knows a lot of stuff) and then whenever we have a day that everyone works really hard, we get to watch the Smarty Pants Dance. (And of course, we sing along.) 

On this particular day, not only did we watch the Smarty Pants Dance, but we also did a little dance every time someone finished their work. And whaddaya know, the more we danced, the more kids got their work done! 

Dancing is a magical thing. 

Oh--and here's a link to the Smarty Pants Dance! 

Rain.

I love waking up to the rain. It's so calming to sit in bed and listen to the raindrops falling on the street, the cars, the roof of my house. I love seeing how green my lawn is when it stops (even though that means I'll have to mow it again soon).

Training and things have started for me this week, and at first I was feeling like this:




but it turns out it's a blessing in disguise. I'm slowly growing more accustomed to getting up in the morning, without the shock of going straight from sleeping in to getting up at five. And today we picked up lots of goodies on the way out of our meeting!

Cleaning my classroom, clearing the walls, organizing my materials and documents has started to get me back in the mood.

Like the rain makes my mornings gets my day off to a relaxing start and brings life to the plants in my garden, I'm slowly beginning to feel refreshed and energized for a new year. It's going to be a good one.

29

Yesterday, for the first time since summer school (a whole two weeks ago), I walked into my classroom. As always, the engineers had left me a lovely present--a huge pile of furniture on one side of the room. Fortunately the sweet lovely fifth grade teachers came down and helped me move things. So now my room looks all nice and neat again, except the chairs. I'll do those later.

I have mountains of crayons. Literally boxes upon boxes of the things. So many, in fact, that at the end of last year I just got a bunch of plastic bags and told my first graders to go to town and just take them home. That worked out okay until someone took all the crayons at her table and left her little crying friend with an empty bag. I was shocked. Didn't we JUST read Compartimos todo (We Share Everything)? Has Robert Munsch taught you nothing?

Alright, alright. In hindsight, I should have distributed them in a bit more organized way. But I really just needed to make room for the millions of new crayons still sitting in my storage closet. Maybe they'll be prizes or something?

I went to the office to say hello to everyone. I decided (unwisely?) to ask our lovely office lady (what is her title again? I think Queen of Organizational Awesomeness or La reina de la oficina would work) for my class list. I know it's two weeks til school and I might not actually know for sure who I've got til Labor Day, but I just wanted to mentally prepare myself for what I'm going to get. And what I got was

29.

I know that for some of you, this is nothing. For some of you, you've had 30 or more before. But I saw that number and I'm pretty sure my hair stood on end.

29! My first year in first grade two years ago, I had 26. And I'm pretty sure that by November I only had 3 strands of hair left. (I've been wearing a wig ever since...shhhhh don't tell my kids!) Granted, those little darlings went on to second grade and bring joy to their new teacher's lives (and by that I mean they are all wearing wigs now, too. We look FABULOUS). 

Que Dios me de gracia, paciencia y fuerza...

So while I was bouncing with excitement (read: wallowing in my misery) at the news, I took a look at the class lists for the two fifth grade teachers--32 and 32. At first I thought, Meh, you have big kids...you'll be fine. And then I remembered that one is a first year teacher and one is a second year teacher.

Ouch.

I think this year will require lots of support (read: trips to happy hour).

Superteachers?

This video is amazing. Some great encouragement for this year -- let it make you!


The Myth of the Super Teacher from EdWriters on Vimeo.

Chatty Cathy

 

Anyone remember these Chatty Cathy dolls? The one on the left looks sleepy...I bet she goes to an early start school like mine (sorry sweetie!) The one on the right looks a little smirky...I bet she's trying to figure out if you saw what she just did to her neighbor (or her crayons).

My students LOVE to talk. Often times, I'm excited to hear the amazing academic conversations they are having or the ideas they are bursting with excitement to share. And then there are times when I look at them and grit my teeth to prevent myself from saying "BE QUIET, doggone it!! It's NOT your turn!" But then I have to remind myself that when I was in first grade, I drove my own teacher batty with my constant talking.

(You know what they say about karma...darn.)

But then again, look at me now. I get paid to spend the entire day talking to little people and big people. So now I look at my little chatterboxes and say to myself, "You're going to be a teacher, and you're going to be a lawyer and you're going to be a motivational speaker, and you're going to be the president..."

There's got to be a good reason for it, right? If my students have been blessed with the gift of chatter, I might as well embrace it.