Elbow, knees, dreams

the first two days of school

There are two boys in my class who know each other from last year and are giving me a run for my money. Let’s call them Max (as in Where the Wild Things Are ) and David (as in No, David !). Max has a face like an angel and also likes to screech. Read More...

Walking in the halls

Perhaps because I started out teaching in a high-poverty school, and such schools tend to be law-and-order places, I am fairly strict about my students’ hallway behavior. Now I work at a school where people are pretty lax about the halls, and my Read More...

When the cat’s away, the mice will play

We had the best time today. The entire school and almost the entire staff went to a big celebration in a park, and we had the school to ourselves. Three kids were absent today, as was Ali, so it was me, Jan (my para), and 12 preschoolers. We went on an Read More...

Tears

There is a boy in my class — we’ll call him David, for reasons which should be clear to fans of David Shannon’s No, David! books — who is always getting into trouble. He is a sweet boy, actually, and I’m always happy to see Read More...

The Little Things, part 3

When I taught preschool at a daycare center, during my first official year of teaching, I had a big classroom with a large area where we could sit on the floor for circle time, in an actual circle. Now, many years later, I am teaching preschool in a public Read More...

The little things, part 2

Perhaps because I really started out teaching in daycare, before I taught kindergarten at that inner-city school, I still obey the rules about licensing and ratios and proper supervision. I never want to have my students out of my sight, because if something Read More...