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behavior (RSS)
Today while my kids were suffering through art (a topic for another post), I went to a first grade room in my role as a mentor teacher. I sat in on a math lesson, and couldn’t believe how restless and distracted the kids were. My four year olds
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Once upon a time there was a teacher, a mom, and a wonderful, adorable little girl. One morning the mom called the teacher and said, “Some boy kissed my daughter on the bus going home yesterday!” The mom was very upset. She couldn’t
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The weather was wacky today. Started off warm and steamy, then the temperature plummeted. Rained all day. Perhaps it was affecting the children, as a few of them had a rough time. One child — who has never acted this way before — started acting
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Yesterday was David’s last day with us. He was hardly in the room at all; Nan kept taking him out to “take a break,” and she told me she wasn’t going to push it, as she could tell he wouldn’t be able to handle being in the
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Lola went to art today, on Black Day, to draw pictures with white crayon on black paper. I had stencils for city buildings with window cutouts, so she made a lovely picture with lots of buildings. Then she cut it into lots of small pieces. Was this frustration?
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Our school psychologist, one of the many people who helped make the decision on David’s placement, stopped by today after the children left to see how things were going. It was a rough morning, of course, with Nan having to give David and Max all
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The worst is behind me. I’m pretty sure about that. This week is a short week, to fit in parent conferences. That always helps. I will finally have an assistant teacher — hooray! She starts Tuesday, and I can’t wait. She was so awesome
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David will go to another school, to a classroom better suited to his needs. I learned some things about his personal life, and felt like crying. I feel like crying anyway, since I was unable to help him, and it will hurt him to have to leave us. But I
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David kicked Max in the face as hard as he could, twice. Nan managed to grab him as he was trying for a third attempt. He has been suspended and won’t be back until Thursday. We are having a meeting to discuss the situation on Friday morning, and
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Alas, it was another difficult morning. Most of the hour I had before school started I was at a tech meeting in the computer lab, where we learned how to do a behavior screener on each child. I got all mine done — which was good — but only
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Actually, things went okay today, on this, our eighth day of school. On Friday I passed out the Friday folders to the children as I was lining them up to go out in the hall to get their jackets for recess. They started opening their folders, dropping
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Here’s the text of the email I sent my husband today, after I sent my kiddos home: When is this going to get easier? I feel like I’m just barely treading water. I thought I was supposed to be a good teacher, and I don’t feel like it!
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David is struggling. He came off the bus angry today — I found out later that someone at home had yelled at him. I was trying to line up my class to go to gym and he got off the bus late and started laughing and running through the halls. I let
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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.
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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
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