What We Eat

Sitting around the lunch table yesterday with my little ones I could not help but laugh at the interesting lunches being enjoyed. First, I would like to point out that a preschool lunch is a full contact sporting event and that it is not for the brave of heart of queasy of stomach. It is never pretty and quite often what enters the mouth comes back out partially chewed after the child decides it is too hot, too cold, too big of a bite, or too yucky, or just funny to spit it back out. We are so classy! So yesterday the lunches caught my attention, probably because half of my class was absent due to illness (the only things we share willingly are germs) and I could actually sit for a moment with the kids and notice what they were eating. My little ones range from a child who is completely dependent on a g-tube to a child who wll eat anything that is pureed or soft (including spinach!) to children who bring the stereotypical American School-kid lunch (sandwich, juice, fruit, snack). What made me smile yesterday was the lunch of my new little one who seems to have autism. Her lunch consisted of choclate milk, pudding, a few slices of a mandarin orange, potato chips, and cheetos. It was the first lunch she really ate all week, other than the chips she filched from the other kids who did not want then when the school lunch had chips and salsa as a side. Somethings are worth fighting, and some are not fights to battle. Right now, I am more worried about finding functional langugage for her than I am worried about if she eats enough variety of food. I am more worried that she not continue to try to drink our paint like prechool shots or walk off the edge of the playground equipment as if she can levitate than I am that she eat vegetables. Really, I am not even concerned if she keeps her shoes on in the classroom because I have greater plans for her and if she wants to learn barefoot while eating potato chips and oranges I am willing to go along for that ride. But her lunch - it still makes me smile.

Quick Pictures

I am once again running a bit late for work. technically i do not have to be there for another hour, but if I wait that long there is no time to get the classroom ready for my 9 little ones who seem to expect toys and art materials and lessons all planned. So demanding! :) So I am just putting a few recent pictures up here that I took at two different state parks. I am having so much fun exploring both the parks and my photography. It makes me wish I had a decent camera, better photoshop, and real talent! Oh well!

Welcome to Bedlam

I may not be a genius at classroom management, but I am able to have 9 three year olds, including 7 who have special needs, walk in a line down the hallway using a guide rope (ok, so two roll). I can have 8 of them sit at circle time for as long as I want to keep them there - 1 wanders away and 1 will wander but sits each time I request so he counts with the 8. I can have them all follow my directions to open the door to outside and sit on the stairs, within visual distance of the playground, until I have reached the bottom of the ramp and signal them to join me. So why oh why is my class a disaster of total chaos and destruction when I release them to center play? Because for center play I am not in control, that falls under the domain of my "assistant". I may end up getting myself fired before the school year is over. If there is one thing that tap dances on my nerves more than just about anything else on earth (besides the obvious ones of prejudice and discrimination and calling me honey/dear/sweetheart) it is complete incompetence. The assistant that the school in their infinite wisdom hired this year to work with two classes of preschoolers who have developmental delays and disabilities has apparently never before seen a child. She is not only lacking in the skills of an assistant - how to work with groups of children, how to do crowd control, how to engage children in play that is both fun and educational, how to redirect undesired behavior- but in basic survial skills. How many times does one need to be reminded not to leave a child unattended on a changing table? I mistakenly though that was a one shot lesson. And who on earth would put on gloves to change a diaper and then use those same gloved hands to touch a child's lunch? After I gagged I quickly removed that portion of the lunch for a better location - the trash can. Today one of my little ones was screaming for an extended period of time for an unknown reason, possibly because it was the child's third day of school and the room was in chaos and the child has no means of communicating anything to us. I found that after 45 minutes of screaming my assistant is ready to do anything to get rid of the child, includng insisting that a perfectly healthy child is sick and must be sent home. Um, anyone would be sweaty and red in the face after screaming for 45 minutes. Try it sometime and see for yourself. So I am beginning to wonder if children are just a little too complex for her and we need to back up and begin with something a little simpler. Perhaps we should start with a houseplant and work our way up. In all honesty I bite my tongue so many times a day and usually at least once a day something slides right on out that probably should not have because I am so frustrated. I want to be the absolute best teacher possible for my little ones and instead of having an assistant I feel like I have another child. At least I don't have to change her diaper. I guess I should be thankful for that! But otherwise, I am basically teaching 7 children with special needs and 2 (soon to be 3) inclusion peers solo. Welcome to Bedlam where we literally climb the walls!! Hell, soon I may surrender and join them as we climb the walls and paint the floor! Hee Hee, Haa Haa, Ho Ho, Hooo Hooo!

Almost a Two Horned Day

This title is explained n a previous entry - refers to a picture that reminds me that my worst days are probably not anywhere near as bad as other poeple's bad days.

Condensed version because I have to be at school early ths morning:
* Bumped a parked car - not my fault, police officer agreed, suggested I petition department of transportation to correct the dangerous situation of the road
* covered both preschool classes yesterday because pm teacher was sick, without any break, which wul dnot have been bad but I was frazzled before I ever got to school
* new little one in class screamed (not cried, screamed) for the first 90 minutes of school; the parents did not feed the child anything that morning and did not consider this important to tell me - I found out incidentally while answering a call from them about transportation
* new little one screams any time you try to put shoes on their feet. SCREAMS like you are trying to cause serious bodily harm. I am considering a new "shoes are optional" policy
* new little one likes to drink the containers of paint like preschool shots
* the children in the afternoon class can smell weakness and by then I was worn down by the day - they were wild children
* I had a list of things I needed to do yesterday, none of which got done because I was late to work because of the car incident and because my afternoon of prep time was squashed

Redemption however came in two huge gifts:
* the owner of the car I bumped called and asked what happened. He then told me not to worry about it because he was going to have it painted anyway and that it would take a lot to damage his car. I thanked him over and over. Poor guy not only had his car bumped but when he called had to listen to my little one screaming. Anonymous sir, you are my hero!

* diet cream soda!! I have been searching for diet cream soda for over a decade and the only version I found was Faygo diet cream soda in a 20oz bottle that you have to buy individually and that is carried only by select gas stations and party stores in Michigan. That does not help me much here in Virginia, and not even very much in Michigan because they tend to sell out quickly and there is no way of knowing when they will get a new order. Yesterday at the grocery store that I use I found cans of diet cream soda - Jones diet cream soda. I bought all that I could and now know that they will be stocking it! Life is sweet again!! I am so easily swayed! :)

Return to Spender

I often find myself wondering what I could do with all of the time I have wasted in my life. Like the hours I have wasted standing in the wrong line in stores – the line I choose confident it will move faster than the other lines only to have the person ahead of me pull out a check book or the cashier be unable to read the barcode on a pack of gum and be required to call for a price check in Tibet. Or perhaps the days wasted on hold calling doctors offices, companies, and other places that really should answer my telephone call crisply and cheerfully because I am paying them for their time. Then there are the useless months spent in classes through school that I have somehow erased from my entire memory system. Apparently I spent a semester in high school taking a course in communications and all I can remember is watching My So Called Life in class each week. I also spent three years taking German and the great extent of my vocabulary is the ability to sing My Hat Has Three Corners and to ask for a beer and a cheap prostitute. So if I am ever lost in Germany I can tell you how many corners are on your hat and spend the evening in interesting company. I can not ask for the bathroom, for help, for a taxi, or for the American Embassy but I can get beer and a prostitute. But not a high quality prostitute, because apparently that was above our standards, but a dirt cheap prostitute who is likely to leave you with a parting gift you will carry for the remainder of your life. Not that I need to worry, because were I to need a prostitute it would be only in the hopes that one would speak English and be able to translate for me so I could get back to whatever demented tour group had abandoned me. I find myself wishing that this time had been better directed – perhaps on learning things that actually pertain to my life. For example, no matter what we try to tell children I have yet to use the Pythagorean theorem outside of high school yet I could have really used some instructions on how to maintain a car – like opening the hood. Perhaps a peer tutoring system would have worked – you teach me to open the hood of my car, I teach you whatever academic skills you need that my nerd brain has made an abundance of connections for while skipping over things like gas is necessary to drive your vehicle. And those German months would have been better spent in Spanish or Sign Language or Farsi or Urdu or anything other than German. As I struggle to communicate with my families that do not speak English as a first language (or as a language) using translators and creativity, I wish that I had a brain for languages. Instead I have a brain for details and English, for memory and synthesis of information. However, I have a hard enough time retrieving the right English word in mid-conversation that trying to pull another language out of my over-packed mind is like trying to find a diamond lost in a desert at night. I want my time back to reuse – to learn functional topics rather than obscure mathematics and languages that will not help me unless I want a night in Berlin that I would rather forget, to make memories rather than to fidget way in lines and on hold, to live rather than to spend on pause.

Rambling in the first real Autumn Evening

This morning was blessedly, wonderfully, amazingly cold!! I was able to wear my favorite black zip up sweater that should be retired to the donation bag but is much too cuddly and beloved to be surrendered. It is so comforting and warm and easy to wash (hey, that is a way to score huge bonus points with me) that I really don't care if it makes me look slightly like a disheveled bag lady. :) Yes, I am that pathetic. My wardrobe 98% of the time is blue jeans, a basic shirt (polo shirts are common or a "nice" t-shirt in warm weather and I love sweaters and long sleeve t-shirts in cold weather), and whatever shoes I can find in the closet that match. I am teaching children who leak, who like to decorate the teacher as much as the art project, who love to dig in the dirt and crawl on the floor and I don't want to have to worry about my clothing being damaged. I want to be able to be a hands-on, full contact, in the trenches teacher not a pretty-in-a-dress teacher who never plays with the kids because they might get messy. I have taught my kids that everything in my classroom is washable - the tables, the toys, the floor, the kids, and yes - the teacher. Have fun!! Learn, discover, make a mess!! Follow the rules, listen when I ask you to do something but let's have fun!! Shaving cream on the table is great and if you want to get it up to your armpits that is wonderful. Fingerpainting is messy but awesome - if you want to try it on my table or the chairs I am not going to yell but please do not paint your friends. Digging in dirt is fun but we never throw what we find at others. Lets see what we can learn from painting different surfaces - the textures, what colors we make, requesting, exploring, participation. What can we learn from shaving cream - sensory fun, communication, participation, shapes (drawn in the cream), parts of a face (same), so much more. If you are afraid of a mess, you miss so much. Now today when my blue eyed boy somehow overflowed his diaper and soaked both of us as we were swinging in the awesome fall weather that was not a fun mess. Thankfully we are both washable. He found it hilarious and laughed when I complained about being wet. Boys! I laughed when I had to send him home in girls pants because all he had at school were shorts and it was too cold for them. He thought about it and then laughed too. Thankfully, washable me also keeps a change of clothes at school. My little ones also had a great time today wearing monster masks (Roar!), singing 10 little monsters and waiting for me to "scare" them by roaring, and playing a game that I loved as a kid - Don't Break the Ice. I managed to keep the attention of 4 three year olds for 20 minutes and convince them to take turns and share materials with this game!! Awesome!!!!! That is like convincing four countries who are all at war with each other to cease fire, meet together, declare peace, and trade their best resources for a century. I will most definitely remember that this game is valued more than gold in our room and will be used during desperate times and when we are working on our attention spans and our sharing abilities. Right now we are working on our "Hands are not for hitting" abilities. I love that book. I also find it intersting that one of my kids completely gets time out and hates it while my peer model, my typical peer who is supposed to demonstrate proper behavior but ends up hitting the other child back, does not care a bit if I resort to time out. I am sounding like my mother too - "I know he hit you but you can not hit him back. Tell a big person that he hit you. Go play with a different toy. Tell him no. But do NOT hit him." Gee, that sounds familiar. She cursed me when she told me that some day I would understand everything she said - I so understand it and now i am saying it not to a child of mine but to ten children that are "mine". But my brother still has the real payback in my spitfire of a niece. Little Bit is paybacks for anything either one of us ever did as a child and more. She is 30 pounds of solid attitude. I miss my Little Bit. And now that I have written a completely free flowing, good luck trying to connect the dots entry I am going to go enjoy the first real autumn evening with a cup of hot tea, my favorite fuzzy blanket, and an old favorite book. Autumn is my favorite season.

Two Horned Bad

I have a new frame of reference for a bad day. I was looking through a magazine that I picked up at the store recently because I have been too lazy (actually, too busy is a better description) to mail back my books to receive new ones. Inside was a picture of what I would describe as a true bad day. It involves the running of the bulls in Spain which has never made any sense to me, and I almost always cheer for the bulls to take out as many people as possible before they are brutally slaughtered. Anyway, this picture made me feel the pain of the stupid people that decide that running in front of an armed and angry animal might be a fun way to spend a morning. This awesome bull caught the best hit of his life and managed to stick two guys on his horns at the same time and got them both by ramming his horns up their rears. Now THAT is a bad day to be skewered onto a bulls horn by your rear end and then to look over and see that on his other horn, that's your brother. That is a two horned bad day. I may have to deal with the occasional rampaging preschooler or tempremental parent, but the odds are greatly in my favor that I am not going to end up with a horn in my rear. It will take a lot to make it a two horned bad day. For the bull, well it was the worst day of his poor cud chewing heart. I bet there was a great BBQ somewhere shortly afterwards and I wonder if those guys at least got a piece of him in return.....