Kindergarten

The other night we had are son, Brandon, and one of his long time friends, Josh, over for dinner. Now that these guys our grown up it is nice to sit around talking to them. I love hearing their perspective on life. I know Brandon had hated school. He struggled academically, got in trouble for silly things and never really fit in socially. What I didn't know was that Josh hated school as well. I always thought he liked school. After all, he got good grades, the school never had to call his parents and him seemed to have a full social life. In fact in high school he and Brandon grow apart and I always thought it was because of their high school experiences. Both boys did admit that they had liked kindergarten. This is not the first time I have heard comments like this from young people or children, so started to think about why kindergarten is so different for the other grade levels. Besides the fact that kindergarten is only half day it seems that the main difference is the attitude of the teaching staff and the forgiveness of the other students.

Kindergarten teachers stand by the door and greet each student as they come in the room. Often, they shake each hand and ask how the student is. This doesn't happen in the later grades, in fact in older classrooms students are expected to come in on their own and start some kind of busy work that is designed to keep them in their seats not interacting with others. Kindergarten teachers encourage students to interact. These teachers feel it is their job to teach students how to interact with each other. Kindergarten teachers encourage play. These classrooms come equipped with play house, block, puppets and other toys designed to get students to interact with each other. The students sit in large groups that promote working together and socializing. Because socializing in encouraged, students work and learn together.

After kindergarten we begin to encourage independence. Students begin to develop skills at different rate which is when some students begin to feel bad about their abilities. Groups of cliques start to form. The students who can't sit still for the six hours of school start to stand out as somehow different or even bad. If you are slow to learn to read you begin to feel left out. If you are not good at athletics you begin to lose social standing. These pressures grow all through elementary school. When student get to middle school, physical appearance becomes important. Kids with eight issues begin to get ostracized or even picked on. Wearing the right clothes becomes almost paramount to survival. Teachers become frustrated with the students who do not fit the mold and the other students know what students are easy marks for trouble. Kids break into more finite social groups. There is no changing your social status in middle school. If your a trouble maker you are always ion the office with the other trouble makers. The kids who get in trouble have to miss socials and field trips. They see each other in Saturday school, leaving together to go to the mall. The lines are drawn. many kids just try to go unnoticed. They stay out of extracurricular actives and hope that the bullies or popular people just leave them alone. if they are lucky the find one or two other students they have common ground with. Even many of the so called successful students I have talked to find that fitting in is painful. many of these students do things they regret just so they can hang with the in crowd.

How do we fix this. First, we need to focus on connecting with each student. It would be nice if every child got a handshake and a nice to see you before they enter the classroom each day. Second we cannot drop social training in kindergarten and we cannot continue to segregate students who need to learn more social skills. All students deserve to be included in the fun activities school has to offer. Last, each child needs to feel valued for who they are regardless of their abilities.

So to Josh and Brandon; Thank you for sharing your stories and feelings with me. I promise to remember how you felt in school and will always try to reach every child.

I love when I come up with a plan for my students and it works!! My plan to help the students with the transition time between an educational assistant and myself is a success. The EA has to leave before I get there and the students were having a hard time with the free time. The students could not get focused for our 15 minutes together. I spoke to the EA and asked her to get them started on their independent work. She did this, but as soon as she was gone the students would loose track of what they were supposed to be doing. I decided the problem was that they are kids and left untended they are going to loose track of what they are doing. After all the are only first graders. So it was time to come up with a way to mold their behavior. I am a firm believer in using positive reinforces to change behavior. Fortunately for me first graders love stickers. I laid out the routine and their choices and explained that each day they are on task when I come into the room they each earn a choice of 2 stickers. Right from the start they loved this idea and have been on task every time I get there.

Part of being a special education teacher is working with and/or supervising other people. In one situation, at my student teaching placement, I share a small group with one of the SPED Educational Assistants. The assistant in this position is here as a long term substitute, covering for another assistant who is on leave. She’s a great person, the children like her and she works very hard. The one problem we are having is transitioning our shared group from her to me. She works with them on spelling and handwriting for a half an hour and then I come and continue to work with them for fifteen minutes. The group contains three students who, earlier in the day I have for seventy-five minutes of reading. Two of the students also have ninety minutes of math in this resource room. Basically by the time she gets these students they have had a full day of academics and are getting tired and squirrely. Because of the way the schedule is written she has to leave to supervise other student’s right at 12:30 and I often run a little late getting to this group because I am leading a math group in another room. There are other adults in the Resource Room, but they are running groups, however the children are safe because they have some peripheral supervision. Another complication is that we have different styles of instruction and different behavior expectations. So the problem is that when I get to this group they are off task and inattentive. It’s hard when I only have fifteen minutes to work with them, which is cut down by three to four minutes because I come in late, and then I can’t seem to get them back on task. The best solution to this situation would be for one of us to stay with the group for the whole forty-five minutes, but because of scheduling that isn’t going to happen. I also feel like they have spent more than enough time away from their peers and the last fifteen minutes would be better spent back in the general education classroom. This is also not an option because the time is written into their IEPs. So the only option is to come up with a plan so that the students keep busy and engaged.

I feel that the best plan for this transition time is for the students to reread the story form the earlier reading. They need to practice independent reading and rereading the story from earlier in the day will help cement the words and or sounds from that lesson. I have asked the assistant to give the instruction for the students to reread the story and I have left the books on the table as a reminder. For some reason I cannot get this to happen with any kind of consistency. She has been fairly consistent with having them read a book off the bookshelf’s but one day last week, Thursday to exact, I came into the room and the students were all doing things that they did not have permission to do. When I got to the group I had a hard time getting them to put up the things they were playing with. They were not the least bit interested in working on reading, spelling or handwriting and I was frustrated because the assistant had let them play with things that they should not have been playing with. Needless to say the group was not enjoyable for any of us. Later, when I had the opportunity to speak with the assistant, she explained that she had lost track of time and had to leave the group in a hurry. I told her that it had made for a very stressful time for both the students and I and that she really needed to make sure they knew they needed to be reading when she left. She said she would make that clear to them in the future. This week hasn’t gone much better. They are back to reading books off the bookshelves, but they are still not rereading the story from earlier in the day. I had another conversation with the assistant and she informed me that when she leaves they are rereading the story for the lesson. So, the problem is that the students change what they are doing after the assistant leaves. Now I had to come up with a way to motivate the students to reread the story. I am going to try using stickers. I bought some new more exciting stickers and I am going to tell them that they can have one every day they are rereading the story. On top of the stickers we will have game time on Fridays (Thursdays on four day weeks) if they reread the stories the other four (or three) days. Tomorrow I will introduce this new plan to the students.

Some days just seem to be more stressful than others. Today was one of those days. I can’t say for sure why it was more stressful than other days just that it was. My morning groups ran great. My first grade math students are progressing well. They have been introduced to new concepts in the last few days and are catching on quickly. My first grade reading group is also doing great. The students are making very few errors when reading the stories from the lessons and they are getting better and better at their sight words. I am not having any real behavior problems. One student, who is impacted by Autism, is having problems with his eyes. He is continually complaining because he feels like there is something in his eyes. I think maybe he has allergies and the itching makes it feel like there is something in his eyes, but it is really hard for him to function with this going on. So far all I can come up is to give him a wet towel. That helps with the itching, but it gets in the way of him completing his work. My most challenging student, behavior wise, has been working really well since I started playing the student teacher game with him and he wasn’t even there today. The weird thing is that I was not the only teacher who felt this way. When all the students were out of the room, one of the other teachers said, “Wow that was a hard day.”

Ok. It was a hard day. That happens, but as the grown up it is my job to stay even. The students need to depend on me to treat them with kindness and respect no matter how I am feeling. I can’t be short with them. They need to feel safe with me always. Some things I can do to help keep my stress from showing; Have a plan but stay flexible. Today when I got to my afternoon reading group and they were not doing what they were supposed to I needed to relax and move us toward the plan. If we didn’t get all the way through what I had planned, no harm would have been done. It is a short amount of time and although my mentor teacher wants us to keep it academic sometimes that just isn’t possible. I do however need to find a fun way to work on rhyming with this group. I want it to be fun and it needs to be quick because we only have fifteen minutes

Halfway through my student teaching and completely finished with my work sample. I will spend the next six weeks enjoying my time in the elementary students without the pressure of going home every night and spending two hours working on my work sample. I feel great about the way my groups are going. The students have become accustom to me and my expectations and they all seem to bee making progress. Each of the students that I am working with have had an impact on me. I love the diversity of their personalities and needs. It is rewarding when you find something that a child can enjoy while learning. One of my math students, who is impacted by autism, will work very hard if at the end of group he is given time to make math problems out of building blocks. Not only does he make the build the math problem with the blocks, he also write the number sentence to go with it. He thinks this is a reward and I think he is gaining more math skills. In the same group I have another young man who is easily distracted, but has made such great gains this year that he can do most of the math independently. This student often finishes his work ahead of the other two students. One of my concerns for this student is that he write many numbers and letters backwards. So when he finishes his work I give him the Stamp and See from Handwriting Without Tears and he practices writing his numbers. He thinks it's fun and I think it will help him with his letter reversals. The last young man in this group is highly impacted with ADHD. His attention span is about ten seconds, but he is the kindest, sweetest little boy. The best thing about this guy is that he wants to do well. He often says thing like; "But I want to follow directions," or "It's hard to pay attention," or "This is hard." The truth is he really is doing his best and he doesn't understand what we expect from him. So, to help him understand exactly which of his behaviors need to change I have started using the teacher student game. Each time he talks out, stares off or does not follow my directions I take a point. Each time he exhibits proper student behavior (asking when asked, staying seated, writing the answers in his book) he gets a point. If he looses (which should not happen more than once in a two week period) he owes me a minute at recces. For every point he earns he gets that number of color spots on he prize incentive sheet. I don't really like taking recces time away, but that is school policy so I feel that I have to use it. This student really struggles with subtraction. He can count backwards from twenty, but when you ask him to cannot back one time from five he cannot do it. I take a little extra time everyday with him and really work with subtraction. This group often feels like three separate groups and it is very challenging to keep them all occupied at the same time, but that is what I live about this job. That and their sweet little smiles.

Today's lesson went really badly. I tried to present a lesson that was fun and interactive for the students, but that is not what happened. First, only one student was there and that makes it hard to have an interactive lesson Second the student who was there doesn't like the feel of Play Dough, so he really didn't like making letters with it. That was suppose to be the body of my lesson and take about ten minutes, but because he hated to feel of the Play Dough under his finger nails this part took only about four minutes. I really thought making the letters out of Play Dough would be a fun way for the students to review the two letters we have learned. Next time I try to make letters with the students I will try wax sticks or noodles. Third, The poem Twinkle, Twinkle little star was too overwhelming for the student. I thought seeing the letters in a poem would be a fun assessment. But I was wrong. The student took one look at the poem and was overwhelmed. Looking at it now I can see that the letters are too close together and there are too many of them. One line from the poem with the letters spread apart may have work. Something I may try in the future is to have the whole poem to read, but just a word or two from it for the students to work with.

Today I finished my fifth lesson in my work sample. That is half way to being finished with what I think is the hardest piece of the graduate program. Working with two kindergarten students is fun and challenging. They seem to understand something one minute and not have any idea what you are talking about the next. The nice part about this work sample for me is that with kindergarten students it is still acceptable to play games and have fun. I believe this should be true for all ages. School is hard for students with learning disabilities and in order to keep their interest and keep them coming. I had a really great conversation with two second graders today. They are both behind their peers in reading and today they said they couldn't wait to read like the other students. I want these guys to except themselves for who they are and still work to improve their abilities. but it does them no good to see themselves as less than their peers. I then I shared that I couldn't read in the second grade either and that I was in a class much like the one they are in. I explained that to become a great reader you really have to find books you enjoy and then spend time reading. I also explained that learning to work hard now will give them an advantage when they were older. I had seeing second graders already becoming defeated. They have so many years left in school. The one student said that at her old school other students made fun of her because she couldn't read. In a society were we are suppose to honor diversity have a learning disability is still a stigma.