Happy Halloween!!

I love Halloween. I love dressing up and I love candy. I was Dooneese - Kristen Wiig's SNL Lawrence Welk show character with tiny hands - for Saturday night festivities. But that costume didn't really feel school appropriate, so I went through all of my costume clothes last night to put something else together. I combined a skirt from being a dragon-ballerina, a shirt from being a tree, and my gold wings from being a snitch and called myself a tree fairy. I think it worked. I put it on during lunch (because we weren't allowed to wear them all day), and went to pick up my kids, and they were all very excited and showered me with compliments. Except that they kept calling me Tinkerbell. I am decidedly not a fan of Tinkerbell, so I was sure to distinguish the difference. 

After we came inside, Anna and Kelsey told me, "A boy in the other class said you weren't pretty." And I said, "Okay. But you don't need to tell me that." They proceeded to tell me at least two more times.

The kids were absolutely adorable! Presley was Taylor Swift - complete with cowboy boots, pink guitar, and long wavy blonde hair. We sang a couple of T Swift songs together earlier in the day. It was a real bonding moment.

We had a wide range of kittens, pirates, princesses, Star Wars characters, and so on. And we got to spend our afternoon having a parade around the school to see everyone else's costumes - which is something that I wish adults would have too. 

Happy Halloween!! 

Um, about this blog thing...

My original intention with this blog was to have a place to put all of my thoughts about this year - the funny stories, the frustrations, the hardships, all of it. The last three months haven't been easy for me, for a variety of reasons - some of which I'm feeling very unaware of and trying to figure out. Teaching first grade was never my dream job, but I decided to take on the challenge this year in hopes that I could eventually get back to teaching older kids. I just wanted this blog to be a place for me to process all of the craziness of this year and share it with my friends and family. I never wanted or intended for strangers to read this. I only share little snippets of my day, not my whole day, and I don't think this blog in any way gives a good or clear picture of who I am or what kind of teacher I am. Even when the posts are about my frustrations or mistakes, I want it to be known that I deeply love and care about my students and treat them as such. 

Tonight I came home after a rough day and wrote a post about a mistake I made and about how terribly awful I felt about it. I posted it in the mindset that the people who would read it are people that know and love me and understand where I'm coming from. Instead I got a comment from a stranger (I'm assuming) that totally dragged me down. I know I am sometimes negative on here (although in looking back on my posts, I think that the majority of them revolve around the cute/hilarious/bizarre parts of first grade), and I have been actively pursuing positivity and gratitude because I don't like being as negative/complain-y as I've been. Often when I get around to this at the end of the day, and my energy is absolutely drained, the complaints are all that I have left. And for that I apologize. What I might call "keeping it real" can absolutely be perceived as ungrateful whining. And that's not who I want to be.

So, um, if you don't know me, please don't read my blog. I'm not writing it for you. I'm writing it for my friends who I don't get to talk to everyday and who like to read this, or so they tell me. Please also know that I am a very loving, gentle, and affectionate teacher (at least most of the time) and I am working myself sick trying to make sure these kids learn and grow as much as possible. So please don't judge me for being crabby sometimes. And if I continue blogging (which I am considering not doing), I'll try and just keep to the positive stuff and save the frustrations for people who understand me and who understand how difficult it is to be a teacher. 

The end.

I like wor herr

This morning Nathan handed me a plain white piece of paper with this note written on it: 

I had to ask him to read it to me, and apparently it says: "Miss G, I like your hair and you are pretty." 

There are definitely some nice things about teaching first grade. 

Not a Fan

Fridays are always the best days. Not only because the weekend is almost finally here, but also because we get to have things like free-choice time and study buddies. I'm sure I've already mentioned this, but our Friday afternoon time with our fourth grade buddies is my favorite part of the week. Six of my favorite former students are in our buddy class, and I love being able to see them and chat with them every week. Today we played a math game with our buddies where they needed to make a prediction of what number this spinner would land on the most. Kendal (who recently didn't want to answer a math problem correctly because the boy was right) showed me her paper when she was finished. She was supposed to write about whether or not her prediction was correct. Instead she wrote something along the lines of: "I don't want it to be 4 because I am not a fan." I asked her what she had written and she said, "I'm not a fan of 4." "You don't like the number 4?" I asked. She adamantly shook her head and said no, and made an expression that let me know she was very serious about this. I asked her why not, and she said, "Because I'm little. I don't like 4 because I'm little." She's still my favorite. 

Uuggghhhhh

We've been in school for 47 days. It feels like a million.

Only 130-something to go. It feels like millions of millions.

Yeah, that's where I'm at right now. 

Can I just have a job that involves listening to Taylor Swift all day and emailing my friends about it? I'm totally serious. That's what I want out of life right now.

Blackout!

At about 9:00 this morning, we had a blackout. My classroom is an interior room, meaning that the one and only tiny window that I do have goes out to the hallway. Luckily the emergency light came on, but it only cast a small area of dim light in my room. Also luckily I had two parent volunteers in the room at the time. I tried to get the kids to sit still and listen to a story, but they seriously couldn't handle it. They were all holding hands and cuddling up next to each other because they were scared or something. Then someone declared that they needed to go to the bathroom, and then they ALL desperately needed to use the bathroom right that second. The girls' bathroom emergency light didn't come on, making it pitch black in there, so I sent one of the moms in with my phone to use as a flashlight. Eventually I decided to just take the kids outside (as did about half of the other teachers) for some early recess time. At 9:45 the lights came back on and I was honestly disappointed. I knew I couldn't get any teaching done with the lights out, but I was kind of hoping for our afternoon of meetings to be cancelled. Oh well.

During our (three and half hour) afternoon of meetings, we were looking over a writing prompt we had given our kids the week before. Reading first grade writing is a skill that I think I'm fairly good at, but sometimes I have absolutely no idea. Just take a look at this gem: 

The prompt was to "tell about a time when you were happy." Here is how I read this: "When I was a ??. A ?? is fun. Whenever to. In the past too. In the future." You really nailed it, Josh.

The Gig is Up!

I'm not going to lie, I hated today. It was partially my own fault - I saw Cloud Atlas last night (so crazy! so good!) and then stayed up way too late reading and thinking about it. So I came to school already very tired, and none too excited to be there, and I think that contributed to my annoyance with the kids. Not to mention that they were extremely chatty and obnoxious and it was my first time dealing with Johnny in a week.

Anyway.

My students constantly and consistently ask if the can go to the clinic (the nurse). It might be for a little scratch or a stomach ache or something they need ice for. (Side note: They seem to need ice for everything! Bruises, bumps, a piece of dust in their eye, headaches... Ice feels awful on headaches, you fakers!) I usually try and convince them that they don't need to go to the clinic - because they don't - but will eventually let them go if it seems necessary, or if I am just sick enough of them asking. Well today as I was walking them in from recess, from behind me I heard Presley say, "Anna, let's go to the clinic tomorrow." Um, excuse me?! I just kept walking and said loudly, "I heard you Presley!" And then I let her know that I'll never let her go to the clinic again unless she's actually bleeding or throwing up. Is that reasonable?