The Never Ending Search for...

Writing Implements in my classroom.

I don't remember much about the routines of my elementary school days. I know that in middle and high school we were meant to bring our own supplies. I don't remember any routine being as difficult or frustrating as it can be to find a pencil in my classroom.

Alma De La Rosa serves a predominately low income population and we are school wide Title 1 due to our high free and reduced lunch numbers. One of the tenets of the school is that kids don't have to have any of their own supplies. We provide everything from winter coats to backpacks to breakfast to pencils to uniforms for all our students in need. To provide all this we depend on the community around us. The church that adopted our school for Thanksgiving and Christmas can always be counted on if we know of a particular family in great need or we need a set of uniforms. The city runs school supply drives that we often reap the benefits of.

And the pencils. Back to the pencils. The pencils are the bane of my existence. The kids can't keep track of them. There have been weeks I've started with 100 of them and ended with less than ten. It's like the children eat them. (hmmmm yummy) I've tried so many different things to keep enough of these yellow buggers in my classroom and sharpened.

I've tried giving all the kids a box with two sharpened pencils, a big eraser, two cap erasers, a box of crayons, a small box of colored pencils, a pair of scissors, a book mark and a glue stick. On top of the two sharpened pencils, I also filled a cup on my desk of sharpened pencils and when kids needed a sharpened one, all they had to do was bring their old one to my desk and trade it for a sharp one. The boxes were soon taken apart, stuff strewn all throughout their desks instead of neatly arranged in their boxes. The pencils began disappearing and so my sharpened pencil cup pencils dwindled, even as I tried to keep up with the sharpening of them everyday.

There also was a time that I allowed the kids to use the electric pencil sharpener that I had. We went through two in three months time. We couldn't use those hand crank ones because we didn't have any walls to attach them to.

I tried giving each kid a pencil with his or her name on it and collecting it at the end of each half day so that the kid would have it for the next day. There were numerous problems with this plan; the name would rub off the pencil which would provoke children into fighting over the pencil with more eraser at the top, the kids would take forever to get their pencils from the cup, the kids would wait to get their pencils until I was in the middle of teaching the lesson, the kids would lose them before I could collect them and so on and so forth.

Then I tried sharpening pencils as they needed it, that was a terrible plan, a week of complete awfulness.

Then I decided that I was done with the pencil sharpener, it was on its way out anyway, refusing to make a point on a pencil, it's gears slowing and the whrrrring sound becoming more and more ragged. I went to Target (I know, I know, not really much better than Walmart, but I'm working on it!) and shelled out 20 bucks for some mechanical pencils, hoping that something with a little more permanence would help. This the end of the second week and it's going well. It can still be frustrating at times, but so far it's proven better. I've gone through a bunch of them, a bunch of them have been broken and I'm going to keep needing lead but all and all, best week for writing implements yet!

Velco: I love you.

Orientation went well this morning at ADLR. It was the regular run of the mill stuff. Going over the handbooks, standards, other policies and such. The new people seem eager and excited, which is always nice. Johanna was one of the speakers, she went over the Needs Assessment she did for us at the end of last school year and I'm pleased to say that are kids really are improving. This is heartening. Our hard work is starting to show in their test scores.

During one of the insurance presentations (that is most certainly a scam and that I've seen three times already) I started to put my classroom back together. I put up my new calendar system and I got the cursive letters up above the white boards. I love newly laminated things. There's a sense of satisfaction with newly laminated things. It was really just those two things I got done, which doesn't sound like a lot for two hours, but I'm using velcro this year!

The walls of school are cement painted over, which means that tacks don't work, but as the cement isn't smooth tape (of any kind) doesn't work either. Last year, I was coming to school early to re stick things up that had fallen during the night. I figured there had to be a better way and I found it! While I was at Target getting some other things I came across velcro! So after everything was laminated I started putting velcro on everything. All the numbers stick to the calender with velcro, all the candles stick to the birthday cakes with velcro and so on and so forth. At first I was just going to use velcro for those sorts of things, but today while I was sorting things out in the classroom, I realized that I could use it actually put the calendar system up! Light Bulb! It was a fantastic moment.

So here's what I did; I peeling the backing off of the fuzzy side of the velcro and adhered it to the thing that was going on the wall. Then I peeled the backing off of the rough side of the velcro and stuck that onto the fuzzy side. Then I could walk up to the wall and slap it on. Perfection. A little time consuming, but will probably save time in the end because I won't have to constantly re-tape stuff to the walls. Genius. Genius I say.

Here's hoping that all the stuff I put up today will still be hanging tomorrow.

A Little "Smell" of Home!

Trees have a smell. A fantastic smell. This was not something I realized until my first spring in New Mexico. I was substituting at the former sister charter to our ALDR in a third/fourth class.

I was walking them to the bathroom and the walkway took us through a tunnel of trees that I marveled at because you rarely see that many in one place here. I inhaled and stopped. Stopped dead. Children ran into to me I stopped so suddenly. I inhaled again. It hit me. The walkway smelled like the road in front of my house back home which was uncanny because my house is surrounded by beautiful tall majestic trees, tall weeks, ferns...everything that New Mexico doesn't have...yet there was that smell. I turned around and instructed all the students to "smell in" (love English language learners, inhale was a little advanced for them.) They did. "What Ms. Knitter, what are we smelling?" "This is what my street in Massachusetts smells like." I informed them. Blank looks. None of them was anywhere near as impressed as I was. We walked on.

Three weeks later, The Boy and I rode our bikes to campus. Which also has beautifully lined pathways with trees and it happened again. The Boy and I discussed it and we discovered that the trees hanging over us were Beechnut trees, the same trees that lined the eastern side of my road!

As I was riding my bike through campus today, I smelled it again. How I love it. It really was 'a little smell of home." I never really realized what my own street smelled like until I was 2000 miles away.

Moonlighting!

Today and tomorrow, I'm giving presentations on Standards Based Checklists for a lady I love working with. I'll call it Moonlight Consulting because hey, that's what I'm doing, moonlighting!

I've done some longer presentations for her before, some in state, some out of state, but these two are only about the one topic and will last two hours each. I really look forward to these opportunities because it reminds me that teachers are versatile and I don't HAVE to be in the classroom for the rest of my life if I don't want to be.

Today I'm speaking at a BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) school. It's always interesting going there because the cultural education those students receive is more intense than the one that the students at ADLR receive. Which in turn is completely different from the what I received in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. I always feel a little nervous addressing these teachers because I'm so young and so anglo and so blonde and we're coming in and "helping" (though more often forcing because the principal has made a certain decision) them change the way they do things.

I remember the first long presentation I gave was in Arizona and it for a school that was completely changing their tracking (yes, tracking in an elementary school) and report card systems. I was on my own that day too. (Usually, the owner of the company is with me, which is the case for today and tomorrow.) The teachers didn't want the change, but the principal made the decision and now they were being forced to stay after school and learn this new way of doing things after using the same old (bad) system for years. I was so very nervous. I began by talking about the states that I personally knew of that were making these sorts of changes; Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. They looked at me skeptically, but when I said Vermont they perked right up and took me a little more seriously. That was such a nerve racking afternoon for me. But each one after has gotten a little easier.

Off to make some notes!

*Also, have discovered that I love going to the gym first thing in the morning.

Aaahh, the sweet smells of summer!

I'm so glad its over. So very glad. The last day went relatively smoothly. In the morning I sent some of the kids to the first grade classroom to help that teacher pack her things (first graders aren't very good at that!) I had sent kids to Kindergarten the day before as well. Then, they watched a bit of Monster's INC and then we joined up with fourth grade to go to the park.

I brought my towel for a blanket and camped out on the grass with Sophie for the three hours we were there, every twenty minutes or so I would get up and make sure my nine students were still inside the park. It was sunny with clouds and not too hot, there were trees, grass and shade so it was very nice. Some of the other teachers had brought kites, balls, bats and frisbees for the kids to share. The organized chaos was quite bearable. The Boy brought me lunch on the motorcycle. Twas lovely.

We got back to school with about two hours to go and watched "The Amazing Panda Adventure with the fourth grade. Cosmo had been giving me trouble day, disrespectful comments, whining, refusal to follow directions, the works. But it came to a head during the movie. He had been sitting quietly watching the movie for about an hour next to Allen on one side of the room. Cassie and Fiona were on the other side of the room reading books and picking their heads up only at the action parts. One second I look over and Cosmo is next to Allen, the next he's shoved himself up next to Cassie and Fiona and has started talking to them. I asked him nicely (even used the word 'please') to move back to where he was sitting for two reasons; 1, he has been smothering Fiona lately and 2. Everything was quiet before he moved. He refused and I asked him again, he refused, then said he would and then didn't move. I tried one more time. Nothing. Sophia popped up and said, "That's it. You stand up right now and come with me." And out of class he went for a stern talking to.

I know that Fiona said that she talked her mother into letting her go to ADLR next year for seventh grade but I'm afraid that she'll change her mind over the summer and I won't ever see her again. So after every one was dismissed I gave her my email address and told her to keep in touch and that I was really proud of what she had done this year. She gave me a big hug and promised to get in touch. I hope hope she does. I would hate to lose track of her.

It really was great to come home that day. Wheww. I'm really looking forward to classes starting this summer. I can't wait to be on the other side of the desk for a change. I hope the summer camp with Sophia goes off without a hitch. We have one trip planned for the end of the summer and perhaps even a drive to Roswell (no alien stuff without you Grant, I promise!) to see my first roommate from college, Ben's parents are coming down to visit and revel in their beautiful house. It should be a really nice two months.

Next week I'm working with an education consulting firm that I love. I was introduced to the woman who runs it, Marta (not real name) during my E.A. year when she hired me to write some of the Social Studies curriculum that we use now. These workshops are going to be a Standards Based Checklist that she created for teachers to easily track what their students know according to the state standards during the course of a year. I love them. I really wish ADLR used them. On Monday, I'll be speaking at a pueblo school and on Tuesday for two other charter school in the city. I've done five or six workshops for her now. I'm almost not even nervous!

These are the days of Hell.

The last days are always the worst.

Last year at about this time the Sr. Callejo was putting together last minute field trips for everyone to go on. I think I went on one of them with my class. Refer to this post for why field trips with ADLR are terrible. On Monday night Ben said, "You know, tomorrow morning Sr. Callejo is going to hand you some permission slips at the last minute and you're going to have to go." I was sort of hoping that because he said it, it wouldn't happen. No such luck.

Tuesday was epic before that however. My class had Performing Arts at nine. So we did some simple math and I sent them on their way. Now, a little history. The performing arts teacher is seriously a trip. Ms. Tours is a great dance teacher, but that's really all she is. She has zero control over the students who want nothing to do with the dancing. She'll work with the girls and leave the boys to their own devices in the very back of the large cafeteria.

On this particular morning, she took them to one of the smaller conference rooms to watch a movie on African Dance or some such thing. About forty five minutes later, Cassie came running into the office where I was organizing and filing paperwork to tell me that "the boys are fighting!" So I shoved my paperwork aside and sprinted through the hallway trying to decide the best way to break up a fight between boys that both bigger and stronger than me. Luckily by the time I got to the room they had already been separated by the other kids (note; not Ms. Tours who look completely frightened.) Fonzo was sitting at one end of the room and Cosmo and Allen were at the other sort of shouting insults back and forth.

After listening to everyone's shouting accusations of who had started the fight and why, I pulled Monte, Fonzo and Cosmo out of the conference room, asked Ms. Tours to keep my kids a little longer and headed upstairs with them. We spoke to Cosmo first, but while we were talking to him Fonzo flipped out. I mean; flipped out. He start screaming hysterically, making suicidal statements, pounding his fists, sobbing, slamming the desk and the chair he was near; flipping out. We had to call the cops, they came spoke with him, calmed him down, got in touch with Child Protective Services (who said when we called about him that there was nothing they could do) and get contact with Fonzo's sister.

I left the office to deal with the fight at 9:45 (I remember looking up at the clock on the wall before shooting out of the room) and didn't get down winding up lose ends with the police and paperwork until 1:30 in the afternoon. It was crazy. Monte and Fonzo were suspended for three days (i.e. the rest of the year.) Cosmo was let off the hook because it turned out he was trying to break up the fight and keep Fonzo from beating Monte's face to shreds.

That afternoon we spent organizing and packing up the classroom. I noticed that Cosmo and Allen were all of a sudden not in the classroom. I went out into the hallway and around the corner and found them talking to Sr. Callejo and Ms. Tenny, the fifth grade teacher. They were trying to wiggle their way onto the fifth grade field trip to Santa Fe the next day. Sr. Callejo then looked at me and said, "Well, can they go or do you think that's not fair to the other students?" I said, "That's completely not fair to the other students." So he asked I wanted to take my whole class. I said, "No, I don't want to take my class." He looked at me a bit surprised and said, "Remember, years from now that these are the things your students are going to remember." I don't remember exactly what I said next, but I shooed the boys back into the classroom and said to the principal, "Look, the day before isn't enough time for me to organize chaperones, I have a lot of things left in the classroom to do and I just don't trust these kids, I barely have control over them in the classroom. I don't feel safe going on a field trip to Santa Fe." He agreed. Jeez, I thought, if they can't even stay in their own classroom they certainly shouldn't be running around in Sante Fe. I was really annoyed that he asked me in front of the children, that's the third or fouth time he's done that and made me look like the bad guy because I'm the one being practical.

He did pass out permission slips for a trip to the park for the last day of school. So there are no plans, just that we are going to the park. I didn't even know until the last half hour of the day. I'm hoping for organized chaos, but I'm betting it's just going to be chaos.

I think though, that I'm the only teacher who has everything done for the year. Paperwork filed, reports finished and passed out, classroom packed labelled and ready to go. That makes me feel good. When I leave school tomorrow, I will actually be leaving school. It's going to feel good!

Marianna's Mother's Decision, Fiona, Paperwork

Marianna's Mother's decision finally came in yesterday afternoon. She has decided to retain her, no word on testing or not however. Interesting. She has also promised to bring Marianna back to Alma De La Rosa. I don't think she was planning on getting back to us however. She picked Marianna up from school early on Thursday and I asked Janice, the admin. assistant who came to get her out of class to ask her mother if she had a "letter" for me. Twenty minutes later, Sr. Callejo called me out of class to discuss situation. The letter also states that Marianna will not be back for last week of school. (Grr. I hate it when parents do this, it looks really bad on our attendance reports that are sent to the state.) But at least we have a plan for her for next year.

Fiona will be coming back to ADLR next year. For awhile her mother said that she was going to have to go to a city middle school if we had to leave our current location. It seems like she has relented however, which is very good news. I would have been so sad to see her go after these two years. I'm going to pass my email to her anyway, just in case her mother changes her mind at the last second.

Cosmo had his last day of in school suspension yesterday. That morning Sr. Callejo buzzed into my room to ask if he could be let out early because he had done all his work and had behaved well for Janice. I said that I didn't think that was fair to all the kids who had served all of their suspension time well (like Denise and Marianna and Allen.) Cosmo is always saying that he doesn't think I'm fair, that I treat the girls better than the boys (wonder why? umm...the girls rarely have to be told to do anything twice) So I sat down directly across from him and got right in his face and said in a low tone, "This is an example of me being 100 percent fair. Did I ever let anyone else out of in school suspension early? No, I did not. It would not be fair if I let you out." He grudgingly agreed but I think he was still pissed about it.

I've realized the last few times that he has been that angry, that he looks like an angry gangsta, like someone off of law and order. Like someone who feels like not only the person he disagrees with, but the whole world is set against him. Not just an angry kid pissed off because he's sick of being a kid. He looks like an angry gangsta. It takes me a second to remember that its still a child I'm looking at (a child that is bigger than me, but a child none the less.) He's so smart and so caring, I really hope that side wins out as he continues to grow.

Five Days Left! And a forgotten favorite lesson!

There are only five days left of school. Last night was the Indigo Girls concert, so I'm not at Alma De La Rosa today. However, yesterday was a doozy.

Everything went alright until the afternoon, which is about par. Cosmo has started playing football. Everything is about football. He loves to regale me with how many times he had to run up and down the hill during practice the night before. Yesterday at lunch he told me that he couldn't get in trouble for the rest of the year or he wouldn't be able to stay on the team and I said, "Wow what great leverage to hold." Then he asked me if I thought he could throw an apple (he had one in his hand) from the inside of the cafeteria where we were sitting across the driveway of the school, across the next street and hit the house on the south side of the street. This was a good long distance that perhaps Tom Brady could have made. But not my dear Cosmo. So I said, "No, I don't think you could make that throw and even if I did think you could make it, I wouldn't let you try because that's totally not allowed." He gave me a sly smile continued to beg which I mostly ignored other than to say "You better not," about three more times.

Well. He did it. And than had the gall to be upset when I wrote him up. He was given in school suspension for three days. At first I felt a little guilty because of what he told me about his football team and then I snapped out it. 1. He was dumb enough to tell me about it in first place and then 2. He was dumb enough to be so directly disobedient that he had to know I was going to write him up. I do not feel guilty.

Oh and while I'm out Teacher Rhonda is substituting for me. Awesome. Tomorrow is going to be rad! (so. not.)

A forgotten lesson: Before the election, I signed the school up to do an online election. I thought this would be it, but no, I got totally into it. My friend Brigid was working for Tom Udall at the time and I invited her to come speak to my fourth graders and give an unbiased perspective on the two candidates! The kids asked some good questions as well as some inane ones. (One of the fourth graders, Lacey is obsessed with knowing what happens to a person's property and financials after they die, she has asked each speaker we've had about it.) I created Voter Registration card based on the one I received from the state of New Mexico. The Boy used the computer to actually make it a card, with the school mascot on it and Sr. Callejo signed it as the Registrar. It was totally rad.

When the big day finally came, Sophia taught our class all day, so I could go around to all the classes and help them through the internet voting program! There was even a map that popped up (like the one on CNN) so that the kids could see how kids in other states were voting. Only seven voted for John McCain, one of the girls, Brita doing so because "Well, the other one kills babies." (Awesome.) After the election we had an all school assembly and Sr. Callejo asked me to talk to the kids about it one more time. So I stressed that in this election more young people had voted than in many years past and that when they turned 18 it would be their turn to vote for real. I really hope they remember that.

Eight Days Left

Eight days left. Solo ocho. I can do it!

I did finally get an update on Allen, the boy who had professed suicidal thoughts during class. He was admitted to the hospital, placed under observation, put on antidepressants and was released today. So, with any luck I should see him tomorrow. This is good because he is only person left that I need to administer my end of the year tests too.

Also, we had the last SAT (Student Assistance Team) meeting of the year. The little sister of one of the students I had last year was up for today and my former student, Azul showed up as well. Every time I see her, I just want to strangle her.

Each year, since starting at Alma De La Rosa, I've had one defining day. During my E.A. year with the kinder class it came the day I was substituting in the third grade. We were working on a math lesson, I think it was measurement conversion. Anyway, I was interrupted when I heard one boy say, "Oh my gosh, this kid just said that instead of teaching you should just take off your clothes and strip!" I think he was just so surprised by what the other boy had said he couldn't keep quiet. I didn't know what to do. I explained all this to Ms. Hernandez when she returned later that morning and the boy was told to report to the Sr. Callejo's office. The mother was called, he was suspended...it was a big day for me having never been in that position before.

The next year, Azul decided pretty early on that I was too white to be her teacher and made it clear that she didn't like me. I didn't realize until to late that she had it in for me. One day as the year was coming to an end, I think it was March. I was leading the class out to recess. I left my Nalgene water bottle and my computer (this computer acutally) on the reading table that was just inside the "door." (I use the term lightly as we didn't really have really walls.) While I was leading the class out, Azul convinced Fiona and another girl Heather to put hand sanitizer all over the outside of my computer and INTO my drinking water. Before I sat down to eat with them half an hour later I added some water to my bottle. I drank some at lunch and I thought it tasted funny but I chalked it up to the custodian just cleaning the water cooler spout. Then the third graders came over for Science class and as I began the lesson, I took a large swig of water. Three of the third grade girls shouted that I should stop drinking the water. They explained that Azul had been bragging about what she had done at recess and that they were scared I was going to die. Azul blamed it all on Heather and Fiona and neither of them had the gumption to stand up to her bulling nature.

This year was perhaps the most embarrassing. I had only been working with the sixth graders for about a week. They were in groups, working on some word problems when smoke started coming out of the heater! I got everyone out of the classroom, told one of the male teachers to pull the fire alarm and the entire school evacuated. It turns out that a CRAYON had been shoved into the heater. I couldn't believe it. It took about two hours of standard military rule teaching but I was able to get the culprit to confess. Allen.

Anyway, those are my embarrassing stories. Must get back to tying up lose ends for the end of the year...eight days left after all. More on SAT later...that's a good story too!

And the stories continue...

So I knew that Lucia has had an awful childhood, there have been hints from other teachers that have worked with her. I know that she was taken away from her mother a few years ago because her mother was on drugs and put with her father here in the La Pasa. She certainly had an a hard time with me a few weeks ago. I'll tell that story first.

A letter was passed around during performing arts class in the morning that said that Lucia was the class slut and that she went out with all the boys and that (the person writing the note) wanted to kill her (Lucia.) The letter was ripped up and put in the trash, but after hearing about it, I rescued it and put it back together. Upon looking at the handwriting, I deduced the author. The students were unable to meet with Sr. Callejo about the letter until the last hour of school. However, I saw the student I thought was the culprit, Marianna hung around Lucia all day, trying to comfort her.

That afternoon, after a long conversation with Marianna in Sr. Callejo's, she finally copped to the note and was really upset when she realized she was going to have admit to Lucia that she in fact had written it. She along with another girl, Denise who had gone along with the note, received in school suspension for three days. Lucia was devastated. After the ordeal was over, I shared with her my story of losing faith in my high school "friends" my senior year and how things like this stick with you. I talked about how there comes a time in everybody's life when they feel absolutely alone and that when that time comes you learn to depend on yourself and think about what you want and what you want to be instead of what your friends want. She took this in and agreed that it might be nice to focus on what she wanted to do for a change.

Today, I learned a little more about her life before she came to Alma De La Rosa. She handed me a story she had written and asked me to read it and tell her what I thought about it. The pages in the worn notebook she handed me told how in Oklahoma they had had no place to live, so they had lived in her mother's car for a few days before finding a shelter. Living in the car made her sad. The shelter was better but there was nothing for kids to do there. Her mother was diagnosed with diabetes. There was a time in an elevator when her mother collapsed because of her diabetes. When she fell over a crack pipe rolled out of her pocket. This started the process that ended with Lucia being taken away from her mother. A bit of a happy ending; the court decided a few weeks ago that her father could have sole custody and she really enjoys spending time with her step mother and her little step sister.

And I wonder why I have problems sleeping...

Field Trips

I have noticed of late, reading back over the last few blogs that have to do with teaching that I have not sounded all that positive. Forgive me. Believe me when I say, I feel like this is the only career I was made for and I do love it. I don't mean to sound so negative.

Ready for more negativity? I don't like field trips. Especially with Alma De La Rosa. Going on field trips with my students in Bennington and with campers at BDC on the cape were fun. I enjoyed it. Field trips at ADLR are extravagant 'ventures where rules forgone for fun and what's easiest by all involved, teachers, parents and students alike. I think what drives me the most crazy are employee parents that don't do their job that day because they "have" to be with there child, parents that come to help that go off with their children without saying anything, parents, children that bring money and the list goes on, educational assistants that are assigned to a class and then wander off without telling anyone.

The main rule about field trips is that it has to be educational. Totally agree with that rule. So we go to the state fair every year under the pretense of "education" but the kids never want to spend time at the exhibits where they can learn things about energy or animals. They want to spend their time at the insurance and health care booths where they get cheap pencils, paper fans and other free stuff. So frustrating, because that trip if done properly could be a great learning experience.

Today we went to see the "Earth" movie. I think this is a great idea and I've done a lot of preparation for it with my students. We've talked about photography in nature, watched some of the BBC's "Planet Earth" and so forth. However, not once has a student asked me what the movie is going to be about. All they want to hear is how much candy they get to buy and whether or not I'm going to buy it for them. It's ridiculous.

In other news, we have quite the love quadrangle going on my class. Fonzo, Cosmo, Raul are all head over heels for Fiona. Those boys are always trying to find ways to show her how much they like her. What's funny is the lengths they will go. After Fiona won the Science Fair she was standing with Fonzo gushing to me about excited she was about it and he turned to me and said, "She won because she's so perfect and pretty looking." He was trying to give her a round about complement. Fiona turned to him and said, "I'd rather think I won because I'm intelligent." (I had Fiona in my class last year and I'm so impressed with how she has matured and become so confident. She is constantly showing me that she really believes in herself.) Cosmo was sitting next to her at lunch and she had a sick look on her face. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "I'm hot." I said, "So take off your sweatshirt." "Right!" she said. Cosmo looked at me and said, "She's hot because she's sitting next to me!" So obvious. He's going to be a real heartbreaker.

Fonzo came in this morning in tears. He wouldn't tell anyone why. he just sat at his desk and cried. It's odd to see a boy-man sob. They sob with their whole bodies. I tried to coax out of him whatever it was that was making him so upset. I asked about his dad, where he was living with his sister, if anything had happened last night that had made him upset. He refused to answer and just continued to cry. Then later on the field trip as we were walking to the movie theatre he tossed a piece of paper which I picked up. It was a picture of a heart with tears coming out of it, eyes and a sad face. At the top it said, "Can you help fix me?......" There are weird drawings at the bottom, something that looks like a wrench and a screwdriver. The wrench has 7/14 on it. It smells like some sort of cheap cologne, perhaps he has been carrying it around for awhile. I'm going to turn it into the principal this afternoon. I know Fonzo tried to throw it away, but being a mandated reporter and all...It makes me so sad.

Back to the Basics

When I was working on my Master's in Teaching, one of the main tenets of my program at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont was reflective teaching. This meant quite simply that we were to spend time writing about what we did that day, what worked, what didn't work and think of ways to fix it for the next day. While I was teaching my fourth grade class, I was very good at this...I had to be because it was all going to be incorporated into my final portfolio project. This project called "Knit One, Purl Two: A Guide to Knitting Knowledge" which was the inspiration for the title of the blog. Also, as anyone who knows me will tell you...I live to knit!

When I moved to La Pasa in the Fall of 2006, there was not a full time teaching position here for me at Alma De La Rosa (a 50/50 Bilingual school), but the principal assured me that if I stuck it out as a paraprofessional, he would give me a class of my own in the fall of 2007. So for a year I didn't eat much as paraprofessionals are barely paid...but that was alright with me, I was waiting for what was next.

As I began the 2007 - 2008 year, I dived into my class and the curriculum. I had a four/five combo class. On top of that, I taught third grade science for an hour in the afternoon. Think about that: three grades to plan for each week, three different sets of standards to become familiar with and on top of that, English was the only the second language of most of my students (Espanol was the first). It was daunting. I spent most of the time with my head buried in the curriculum and not trying to think outside the box. So, I was not very good about reflection (like, at all.) It was a very stressful year (as any first year teacher's would be.) Epic might be a good descriptor. By February, there was barely any sleep to be had. I ended it, ready to put it behind me, take what I had learned and begin the next year.

I had a better situation for 2008 - 2009. I was going to be teaching ONLY the English component of the fourth grade (my FAVORITE) and I was going to have a Co - Teacher to teach the Spanish component. I was so excited to be working with a partner again the way I did when I was teaching in Bennington, but mostly I was excited about only teaching one grade at a time. It was amazing. My Co - Teacher, Sophia was a constant source of support and I was getting back to stepping outside of the box with my lesson planning. We had a great crew of fourth graders, many of them I had known since I began working at Alma De La Rosa. I was happy!

Why the past tense you may ask? Because at the end of January I was pulled from my fourth grade classroom and put into the sixth grade classroom! The sixth grade teacher at the time, we'll call her "Teacher Ronda" (not her real name, but it is true that she has the kids call her "Teacher _______ ," which I think is absolutely ridiculous, but that's not the point right now) was so incompetent the principal Sr. Callejo could not let her continue in that position. I was asked to take over because I was in one of classrooms with two teachers and because Sr. Callejo knows that I like to teach with a strict routine...which is exactly what he thought these kids needed. My fantasy world came crashing down!

As my stress level over the past few months has begun to rise again and the hours of sleep a night continue to dwindle, it dawned on me that it had been three years since I had written about my daily life as a teacher. In the past, after nights of no sleep it has been suggested very nicely to me by amazing boyfriend of two years from here on out known as The Boy, that perhaps I should to go speak to someone (i.e. get my head shrunk). Reluctant to go that route (though too terrified is probably the more accurate description) I realized after reading my very dear friend (and !Swingle Sister!) Erin's blog that perhaps going back to the basics would be a less drastic option. (Another plug: my friend Shani has also started a fun food blog!)

It's almost (actually not quite at all) unfortunate that school will be ending in five weeks. But that's alright. I have all summer to learn how to code and perhaps not sound so boring in these posts. This summer, I have a house to put together, (we FINALLY close tomorrow) a clase de espanol to take through the community college, a puppy to buy and hopefully some road trips!