Monday, Monday

Hola amigos,

Today was an exciting Monday in Room 29.  We began our study of non-fiction texts, learned a math card game called Odd/Even, practice cursive, and the 3rd graders finished their second round of MAPS testing.  It was an extra special day for me also because my parents stopped by to meet my students and visit my school! They brought in my niece and nephew and stayed for about 45 minutes.  It was nice to have my two favorite worlds collide. 

The biggest "incident" of the day today was one that I didn't even realize was occurring in the classroom until a student told me about it afterwards.  I was up in the front of the room reading a non-fiction book (at his level- thumbs up for quality, leveled non-fiction texts!) My CT was in the hallway finishing up some reading assessments when this happened.  A student came up to me a while later and said, "Ms. T.  Do you know what P did to me?  She had stole one of my books and then yelled at me and then pushed my head like this (he used three fingers and pushed his head to the side) and called me "boy" and I didn't do nothing."  I then asked him when this happened, because typically, I can see and hear whenever there is a moment like this in the classroom.  He told me that it happened during the last rotation.  I retold the story the way I had heard it to ensure that I had his side of the story straight. I then said, "You know, C, I'm really glad that you told me about this.  It's important to let teachers know when things are happening in our classroom that make kids feel unsafe.  Next time, it's important that you tell me right away so I can help you fix it."  C nodded and then asked if I was going to talk with P.  I said that I would.

At the end of our reading time, I asked P to come into the hallway with me.  I said, "Hey P, can you tell me about what happened on the carpet during reading?"  P began to tell me about an incident that happened with her and another student during morning meeting.  So then I said, "I know that we had some problems during morning meeting today and if you'd like, we can talk about that another time.  Right now, I'm wondering about something that happened on the carpet that might have made C feel bad."  She then told me, "Well, the two are related to each other."  I had her explain further and it turns out, as I suspected, that they were not indeed related.  Sometimes I wish I could get inside a kid's head.  She immediately knew what I was talking about and said, "Oh, yeah.  Well I was sitting on the carpet and he just came over to me and said, "Hey, that's my Gingerbread Man book!" and took it.  I told him to stop because that was my Gingerbread book. Then I went to check and see if it was in my book box and it wasn't so I knew it was mine.  I told C that it was my book."  I replied with, "So what did C do after you told him that you thought it was yours?"  P said, "He wouldn't give it back so I said I was going to go tell you about it.  He didn't want to get in trouble so he gave it back to me."  I repeated what she said in that last statement to make sure I had it correct.  Then I said, "Did anything else happen after that?"  P said, "Yeah, A told me that we made a rule not to call people "boy" or "girl" anymore."  It was then that I remembered we had a conversation about that last week while P was gone.  I needed to catch her up before I moved onto what she should've done instead of what she did.

Last week, our students got really bossy with each other.  The sass they were producing towards their peers was over the top.  During these times, students would go at each other and say things like, "Boy, get out of my face!" or "Don't touch me, girl!  I'll mess you up!"  and so on.  My CT got fed up with it and stopped the class before lunch one day.  She told them that referring to people as "boy" and "girl" was not respectful because people have names and that they needed to stop the bossiness.  When I recapped this with P, I added that calling people just "girl" or "boy" is like me calling her "kid or "student."  I said, "How would you feel if I wanted to get your attention and I just said, "Hey, kid!  Come over here!"  or "Student!  What do you think about that?"  She said, "It wouldn't feel very good." 

Essentially, P never admitted to doing any of the things that C said she did.  He asked me later if I had talked to her.  I told him that I had talked to her, but also reminded him that he needed to tell me right away when there was a problem he couldn't solve with another student.  I was torn because both of them acted like the storm had blown over and they had already forgotten about it.  I didn't want to keep pushing and accuse P of something that she may or may not have done.  There are so many issues like this coming up on a daily basis.  Things can be handled on a case-by-case basis, but so many times I find myself listening to both sides of the story and then moving on.  We do have behavior referral sheets to document serious incidents as well as support staff to help us with behavioral and social issues.  In general, though, I feel like I have the hardest time dealing with the minor issues that arise.  Nobody is hurt physically or feeling awful emotionally, but I know that little things like this take dips out of their buckets.  Even though I know kids are resilient, I also know that they sometimes have a hard time articulating their needs and feelings and they need the help of teachers to problem solve.  How far should teachers go?  How can we make sure that all of our students are being supported socially and emotionally?

In social studies, we have been working through a series of approaches that encourage students to be advocates for themselves in problem soling.  We have talked about how to observe what is happening before evaluating, like saying "She pushed me" rather than "She was mean to me" which has been somewhat helpful.  We aren't quite through with it yet, but I am hopeful that it will help students to independently problem solve as well as be kinder to one another overall. 

Whew.  Had to get that one off my chest.  I'm off to work on my TPA stuff... informative writing lessons, here I come!

Mucho amor,
Brittany