Search results matching tags 'preschool' and 'frustration'

the boy who doesn’t know how to play with blocks

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:37:44 GMT

One of my developmentally delayed sweethearts is a little boy who knows all the letters, and a lot of sounds. He knows numbers, colors, shapes, and that sort of thing. It’s obvious that he has difficulty with verbal communication — he will repeat what you say, or repeat one phrase over and over, and he doesn’t always know how to answer a question or tell you what happened — but it didn’t seem like he was that behind in other ways.

But this week, I started watching him in blocks. He doesn’t know what to do with them! They hold a real fascination for him — he picks blocks almost daily. But he doesn’t know how to build anything. He can’t make a plan (“I’m going to build a bridge!”), he can’t copy what I do when I build something, and he can’t clean up — he doesn’t know how to find where particular block shapes go, or put them in place with the correct orientation. He seems to be lacking creativity, planning skills, problem solving skills, and spatial relations.

So now my jobs are to help him learn in the block corner, and to have a diplomatic conversation with his mother about the importance of play. She does a lot of drill with him, is proud of what he knows, and thinks that he will be “caught up” by kindergarten or first grade. ( I’m thinking he might start to crash and burn in kindergarten.) Apparently there is no playing and no mess at his daycare, and I need to find out what he is doing at home.

an insult to preschool teachers (and working mothers) everywhere

Anonymous — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:54:34 GMT

I like the fashion blog She’s Still Got It, so I visit it at Cafe Mom fairly regularly. While there this morning, I stumbled upon this article: “6 Lies Parents Tell Themselves About Preschool,” by Amy Reiter.

Here’s what she had to say, prompted by the story of the little British boy who left his nursery school and walked home alone:

Here are six lies we tell ourselves each day before we drop our toddlers off at preschool or daycare: 1.    He’ll be totally safe: Probably, sure, but of course, we cannot know that. Anything could happen: He could run out of the building, like Alfie. He could get left behind on a field trip. There could be a fire. A teacher could have a psychopathic ex-boyfriend. Unlikely, but who knows?

2.    He won’t miss us: He will miss us, terribly, even if he’s not the type to cry about it. Perhaps especially if he’s not the type to cry about it.

3.    We won’t miss him: We will miss him, terribly, even if we’re not the type to cry about it. Perhaps especially if we’re not the type to cry about it.

4.    He’s happier at preschool than he is with us: Possible, but unlikely. Most kids prefer to be with their moms (or dads), no matter how bedraggled, sleep-deprived and short-tempered she (or he) may be on any given day. Then again, it is probably a fair rationale to remind yourself about the benefits of socialization.

5.    The teacher will treat him as if he were her own: She may be good to him, very, very good. But she’s got a whole room of kids to look after. She may not take the time to remove the crusts of his sandwich for him the way he likes it. Then again, that may not be such a bad thing. (See socialization, above.)

6.    There really is no other option: There is always another option – though giving up your day job and falling behind on your mortgage may not be a terribly appealing one. But perhaps by acknowledging that we all must make the choices that work for our lives – and that those choices inevitably involve tradeoffs – can help us forgive ourselves for making them.

Boy, was I ***. If you’re interested, you can scroll down to read my comment, and the comments of others.

I am preschool teacher, hear me roar.

oh the noise noise noise noise

Anonymous — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:09:03 GMT

I love my class, but boy are they loud. One child with special needs talks really loudly but has no idea that he does. When I ask him to speak quietly, he looks either blank or confused. I guess his voice doesn’t sound loud to him. Little One is pretty good about using an “inside voice,” but when she loses it, she SCREAMS. And at least half the class shrieks or uses their “outside voices” when they are excited or having fun.

It is driving me crazy, and it is very disrespectful of the kindergarten class next door. (We have a door between the rooms that is usually open, because my class uses the bathroom that is right on the other side of the door. That’s another problem — my kids go to the bathroom and start shrieking in there, and then it is REALLY loud to the kindergartners.) Yesterday, when we were in the meeting area having a quiet discussion about Halloween costumes, the kindergartners got loud for the first time all year.

I seized the opportunity. ”Shhh,” I said. ”Listen.”

We all listened and could hear the kindergarten class being really noisy.

“Do you hear how loud they are?” I whispered.

“Yeahhhhh,” my class whispered back.

“That’s not very nice. It’s hard for us to have our conversation when they are being so noisy. Now think about it; that’s what you guys do to them ALL THE TIME.”

My class looked at me blankly. Then they started raising their hands.

“We should tell them to be quiet!”

“Yeah, that’s not nice to be so loud.”

“I don’t like that.”

I stopped them. ”Guys, they have only done that to us once. Think about how it feels. Now think about how it feels to them when you are loud in here every day. We need to be more quiet so they can do their work.”

Another child raised his hand.

“Yes, honey?”

“Let’s go tell them to be quiet.”

Cue Mrs. X. bonking her head against the wall.

**************

Any advice for me?

breakfast can be terrifying

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:29:21 GMT

It’s like Lord of the Flies downstairs in our cafeteria every morning. Last year was the first year that our school breakfast became a madhouse, and it’s even worse this year.

The kids get off the bus, come in the door that’s closest to my classroom, and pass me on their way to the cafeteria. I used to just wave my breakfast eaters on, and have them go straight down without stopping at their cubbies. Last year, though, breakfast became so overwhelming that I had to get 8th grade helpers to gather up my little ones and escort them down. Last year’s breakfast helpers were awesome. This year’s helpers are always a little late, which means that by the time my breakfast kids get downstairs, the lines are long and crowded and crazy.

One little girl went down to breakfast on the first day of school, maybe because she thought she had to. When she came up, she was sobbing. The next day she arrived at school and started crying. I asked her if she wanted breakfast, and she nodded yes, so I sent her down with a teacher. The day after that, she was almost hysterical when she arrived.

“Honey, are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Did you eat breakfast at home?”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“Then you don’t need to go downstairs to eat breakfast again! Come on in the room and sign in.” She brightened up immediately. It took a few more days of emails back and forth with Mom (who was wondering, why doesn’t my daughter want to go to school?) and lots of reassurance to my fearful one that she did not have to go to breakfast in the cafeteria.

My tiniest boy (so small I have to lift him up to drink from the water fountain) came up from breakfast crying one day, because he had gotten lost in the crowd and separated from the 8th grade girl who was helping him. I brought him back down and was appalled. There were two lines for the two sides of the breakfast table, and both lines had kids pushing and shoving. Lots of kids started budging ahead, so there was a crush at the front, and kids yelling at each other. Some were even fighting. I ended up taking one miscreant to his first grade teacher, once my little guy was safe at the table.

Why is there no adult keeping order with the lines?! I asked the Princess, somewhat more diplomatically, and didn’t get much of a response.

If all my little ones become traumatized by the cafeteria, I would not be surprised.

Dear parents

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 19:19:30 GMT

Dear parents,

Thank you for sending me such a sweet bunch of kids. They are very smiley and seem to like coming to school. They giggle when we read silly stories, and they already have favorite books (“The Pigeon!” “The Chicken!”). They love recess and Gym class, and they are learning our school routines, day by day.

I do have a homework assignment for you, however. Could you please teach your children their names? And could you teach them that when someone says their name, they should look at that person and listen?

Thanks!

Mrs. X.

the perfect number of kids is not nineteen

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:19:11 GMT

The afternoon teacher only had 8 kids yesterday, on the first day, in part because her busing was all screwed up. That was hard, because it was too few kids.

I had 16 yesterday, and 19 today, and it was kind of too much. One of the three new ones has special needs, and spent most of the morning crying, screaming, hitting teachers, or collapsed on the floor. (She seemed extremely tired, and kept moaning about being hungry, even though she ate breakfast at school. Maybe she doesn’t have enough food to eat at home, and maybe she doesn’t get nearly enough sleep? If so, and we can work with mom to get those issues resolved, maybe her behavior will turn around.) The other two new ones were fine, but 19 kids all trying to learn school routines, follow rules, listen to directions, and try to freakin’ understand English …..well, they struggled.

We opened up the art center yesterday, and today we had puzzles at the games center, and playdough at the art center, so only 3 groups of four were with me on the floor playing “Doggie Doggie Where’s Your Bone?” They had gym class, and I think that went pretty well. They loved round two of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and they enjoyed hearing Jez Alborough’s Hugfor the first time. They tried to draw self-portraits, and they loved going out for recess. (They didn’t love so much coming in. It took 10 minutes to round everyone up.)

The high heat and humidity today certainly didn’t help. I sweated so much my lanyard was wet for the first time I can remember. I went home and collapsed again. It will get better. It will get better, right?

rites of spring

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 22:54:02 GMT

*I am going over the winter pre-reading assessment results and trying to focus on all the kids who were in the red zone for rhyming, alliteration, vocabulary, letter names, and/or letter sounds, and spending one-one-one time with them. So is every other adult who works or volunteers in my room….There are always kids being pulled aside to work on something.

*The spring assessment starts in two weeks. AUGH. Will my babies be ready? Have I prepared them? Did I do a good enough job?! I keep rolling my shoulders and taking deep breaths so I don’t get daily migraines from stress and worry.

*I had a meeting in the principal’s office today to talk about the spring preK registration for next year’s babies. I look back to some of this year’s kids when they came to visit last spring and they were TINY.

*We’re learning about plants and seeds and planted grass (the boring kind) and radishes, plus a few marigolds, carrots, and alyssum. The window sill is crowded with little cups. On Monday if something has sprouted the kids will be over the moon with joy.

*We’re learning about spring, and today read Old Bear, by Kevin Henkes. The pictures were beautiful.

*The kids have spring fever. They are being quite difficult, for them. (For another class, they would probably still seem like angels.) The loud voices and lack of listening are tiring me out.

*The weather is terribly unpredictable. When it is very cold out, they come to school with no jackets. When it is very warm, they come to school in their winter jackets. The parents are apparently unable to find out (tv, radio, computer) what the day’s weather will be. Meanwhile, every morning I stand in my closet and my brain fritzes out while I try to figure out what to wear. After changing clothes three times I’m late for school and have to settle for whatever it is I’m wearing. Winter was easy — classic turtleneck sweater (I used to wear cashmere, but I’m not quite as young as I used to be and find cotton works better now), bootcut jeans, Dansko clogs. Summer will be easy — crewneck tee, cropped pants, Dansko sandals. Spring clothes? No clue.

Counting to three

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 01:06:13 GMT

You would think that wouldn’t be so hard, right? I mean, this class counts the days of the month, every day, in English and in Spanish. They count the days we’ve been in school, every day. Okay, so lately I’ve been lazy and we’ve been counting by tens to 80, and then by ones after that (it takes a long time for this class to count to 80). But we do count, every single *** day.

As I mentioned, Monkey can’t count to two, let alone three. He’s a special case, so I’m not going to beat myself up about that. But several other kids were having trouble with it yesterday and today, and it is blowing my mind and bumming me out.

There is a boy in my class whose mom likes to dress him in really preppy clothes; he turns up each day all crisp and cute in a colorful polo shirt, ironed jeans, and bright white tennies. He loves to play games; if the Matching Game were high-stakes poker, he’d be rich. Let’s call this boy Squirrel; he’s quick and smart and tricky. Squirrel and two other boys sat down at the games table with me at centers time yesterday to play a makeshift board game I will call “Count to Three!”

I set out plastic color tiles in a long meandering path across the table, gave each of us a plastic teddy bear counter in a different color, and got out my number cube. We started at one end of the path, took turns rolling the cube (which had only the numbers 1, 2, and 3 on it), and moved our bears as many spaces as the number said.

This was much harder said than done. Repeatedly, one of the children would roll a 3, crow “three!” excitedly, and then move their bear two spaces. Or roll a 2 and move ahead one space. Or they would count the space they were already on, or they wouldn’t count the tiles that already had a bear on them…

Squirrel alone could do it. However, his luck ran out and he rolled mostly ones. Since he could tell he wouldn’t win, he gave up halfway through and moved to the writing center, leaving me to ponder how I could have failed so miserably in the simple job of teaching all my students to count to three.

art with Monkey

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:36:13 GMT

At art class today, the children were asked to make bugs out of a variety of construction paper shapes. They did pretty well with it, and the resulting mural is just lovely. I hope the art teacher puts it up in the hall near our classroom so we can enjoy it.

Monkey struggled with it, without ever knowing he was struggling. He found a circle for his “ladybug,” then started trying to figure out how to put legs on it. He wasn’t really sure what to do with the glue stick, so I showed him how to put a stripe of glue along one side, and then put the little legs on top of that, sticking off the body. Then I went to help other children.

While I was gone, Monkey got some legs stuck to his fingers, instead of to the bug. When he tried to get the legs off his hand and onto the paper, he got more glue stick goo on his fingers. He added more glue to the body of the bug. Finally he gave up on the legs and just smeared glue on his hands.

By the time I got back, the bug was covered in glue stick goo, had two legs, and Monkey was crowing, “Look! Sticky!” and holding up his hands for my inspection.

I sent Monkey to the sink to wash hands. Then we worked on the legs together.

“How many legs do you have so far?” I asked.

Monkey looked blank.

“Let’s count,” I said. ”One….”

Monkey didn’t respond with “two.” He just grinned at me happily.

“What number comes after one? One, …..”

Nope. No “two.” Monkey cannot count to two.

But he sure had fun with the glue.

meaningful differences

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:40:29 GMT

Wow, yesterday’s post certainly touched a nerve. That was the most hits I ever got on my blog, and the most comments. So thank you, everyone, for being part of the conversation.

So the question is, how do preschool teachers strike a balance between helping their disadvantaged students get a great education and a leg up, and remaining true to early childhood principles without pushing an inappropriate curriculum on them? At least, I think that is the question. It’s a little hard to put into one brief sentence. Or maybe that’s the glass of wine I had with dinner…

The whole thing brings me back to my favorite book on education, Meaningful Differences, by Hart and Risley. I’ve written about it before, here (referring to an article about the book), here (talking to my 1 year old niece and nephew), and here (talking with my nephew at age 2). Here’s what the publisher has to say:

Their painstaking study began by recording each month — for 2-1/2 years — one full hour of every word spoken at home between parent and child in 42 families, categorized as professional, working class, or welfare families. Years of coding and analyzing every utterance in 1,318 transcripts followed. Rare is a database of this quality. “Remarkable,” says Assistant Secretary of Education Grover (Russ) Whitehurst, of the findings: By age 3, the recorded spoken vocabularies of the children from the professional families were larger than those of the parents in the welfare families. Between professional and welfare parents, there was a difference of almost 300 words spoken per hour. Extrapolating this verbal interaction to a year, a child in a professional family would hear 11 million words while a child in a welfare family would hear just 3 million.

Did you get that one amazing sentence, about how the vocabularies of the three year olds in the professional families were larger than those of the parents in the welfare families? When the kids then get to kindergarten, the poor kids have vocabularies of about 2,000 words. Pretty good, huh? Well, not when you compare that to the vocabularies of the professionals’ kids — they go to kindergarten with 20,000 words at their disposal.

That makes me sick to my stomach. Then it makes my blood boil. And after that, I roll up my sleeves and determine that MY students will have as many rich experiences and conversations as possible. I do all I can to talk to them and listen to them and teach them about conversations, questions, answers, and discussion. The inequality they face as a result of their families’ economic circumstances just gives me more reason to do everything I can to get them ready for kindergarten on an even ground with the more advantaged kids they will meet there.

So please keep in mind that I do not teach in the suburbs. I don’t teach rich kids. My view of preschool is shaped by my experiences in my urban district. If I were to teach the kids of college-educated parents, I might have a different view entirely.

Although, knowing how opinionated and stubborn I am, maybe not!