PE teacher versus Kindergarten Students

At 12:30 pm I walked into the concession area of the gym and stopped to tie my shoe.  All the sudden I heard a loud, "Kindergarten!" accompanied by a bunch of screaming children.  My aide Mando and I turned to each other.  We both had the same feeling-something bad was going on in the gym.  We slowly entered the room and saw a bunch of our kindergarten students running around with foam balls and something that looked like giant Q-tips.  It was as if we entered a war zone.  The kids were running around not listening to anything that the PE teacher said to them.  Mando and I quickly called out certain kids' names in our sternest voices.  Our class was going crazy!  It really reminded me of that scene in Mean Girls where all the sudden the girls broke out into a fight as if they were jungle animals.  My mouth fell open.  I was amazed at how our class acted.  I've seen them have rough days, but boy did this top everything from before.  We quickly had the kids in a line and took them back to the classroom.

When we got back, I explained to the whole class that their behavior wouldn't be tolerated.  For our discipline system I have a giant cardboard stoplight that we use.  Each child has a clothespin with their name on it.  When the child gets a warning, they move their pin to the yellow and when they get a second warning it goes in the red.  Red means that they miss recess for the day (which in kindergarten is a HUGE deal).  Anyways, I had to tell five kids to move their pins up one color because of their behavior in PE.  This meant that they landed smack dab in the red.  We talked about how the kids should treat adults and modeled how that should happen.  When I told them that I was disappointed in them that sure did the trick.  Their faces fell.  Hopefully they learned a big lesson today.  We'll see if they actually take it in.

BONUS STORY:

Admist all the chaos today we practiced our songs for the Christmas program.  It's only 12 school days away....God help us.  We're singing Jingle Bell Rock and All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth.  The three of us (Mikey, Mando, and myself) made up hand motions as we went along.  Best part of my day by far.  I love teaching kindergarten because we teach so much of our material "repeat after me" style.  The kids loved Mikey's hand motions/dance moves so much that one of them could not even do the motions.  She was laughing way too hard :)

No matter how awful part of the day might be, you can't help but love kindergartens when they sing Christmas songs.  Gosh darn those kids for being so cute!

Sweat Lodge

Tonight I participated in what people of the Lakota tribe call a "sweat".  Someone usually "calls" a sweat and it could be for various reasons.  The last one was for a volunteer's birthday.  This one tonight was called by a woman whose nickname is Worm.  She had a dream about something and wanted the medicine man ( heyoka) to explain it.  In the sweat there are four rounds.  The heyoka pours water onto the fire in the middle of the lodge.  Each round consists of something different, but some consist of praying and singing in Lakota.

All the sweats that I have been to so far this year were packed, so it was nice to actually have some breathing room in this one.  Our sweat lodge at the school can fit about 30 people in there.  Being in a sweat is difficult to explain.  When the heyoka pours the water onto the hot rocks a bunch of steam comes off of them. The steam hits you like a down of bricks.  You start to sweat in places that you didn't know you could.

Here's the best thing about sweats--the constant prayer and feeling of restlessness put at ease by the time it's over.  I'm still attempting to understand certain friendships in my life/lack there off.  I prayed a lot about it during sweat and about finding peace here in SoDak.   Bottom line I know that I'm here in Pine Ridge for a reason- it's about the kids.  While forming friendships is good, it's more so about making a difference in these kids' lives.   It's not about me figuring out my life.  My life is peachy keen compared to what some of my students are going through right now.  That's what keeps me in check.  It's that knowledge that this place has turned into a camplike state for me.  It's all about LOVIN' THOSE KIDS.  See, this is why I'm grateful for sweats.  They make everything so simple.

Timing

We have today off and training for these two computer programs on Monday. 

As a Garwood, I'm bad about having time off.  I don't quite know how to deal with what they call "kick it" time here.  Truthfully I would much rather be working in my classroom.  But, one of my friends here said that I seriously need to stop working so much.  The least three weeks I've been going into school at 6:30 and leaving about 7 each night.  Maybe I'm becoming a workaholic....well, that's just part of being a part of my family.

Lately, I've been missing home a ton.... We'll see where this weekend takes me.

The Kindergarten Classroom as we Know it

Once again it's been a couple of weeks since I've been on here.  A lot of it has been because I've been in my classroom.  On Saturday I think I spent about 8 full hours working, trying to get ahead of the game.  When we're in our Education college classes, we can only dream about how much work teaching is.  Just as you think you've caught up, then you're thrown into a whole new set of chaos.  Let me explain. 

Monday we had a GeoDome presentation for 30 minutes, tomorrow we have a Badlands National Park ranger coming to talk to our class for an hour, on Wednesday five of my kids are going to a Speech Contest, Thursday apparently is our normal day, and Friday we don't have school.  Today during our elementary staff meeting we talked about canceling what we call our DEW Day (it stands for Drop Everything and Write day) so that we can actually teach.  This entire month is eaten up by all of the extra crap.  Well, I'm pumped about the ranger coming in, but other than that it's really throwing a raucous into our schedules.  Our kids don't know what a "normal" school day is anymore.  In between all of this, I'm trying to assess where my students are learning.  Wait, do we have time for our actual curriculum?  Nope.  Not to mention that our Xmas program is 23 days away..not that the veteran teachers are counting or anything.

On a more positive note, I have a pretty funny story.  Today my kids came back from PE all rilled up.  My aide, Mando, had told me that she could hear the PE teacher, Kevin, yelling at the kids all the way by our front building.  After Mando had a stern talk with the class about it, one of my kids, Precious, said, "Miss Abby," very loudly.  I turned and saw that she couldn't get her sweater over her head.  She said, "Can you help me?  I'm stuck,".  I pulled her sweater back over her head and realized that her hair was seriously caught in the zipper.  It caught me so off guard that I erupted in laughter and so did the whole class.  Basically after some exploration I had to cut of a small chunk of her hair to get the sweater off.  Thank goodness she laughed it off with the kids.  Having moments like this make me realize how grateful I am to be a kindergarten teacher.  Life wouldn't be nearly as fun without my 20 crazy kids.

First Sick Day

Last night I ended up getting sick right after school got out. I may have the stomach flu :(  I called one of my aides right away to let him know that I wouldn't be there this morning and to look for detailed plans for both of the aides on their desks.  Even though I was sick, I went in that night to get all of my plans ready and it took about an hour. 

I've been having problems with one of my aides so I made sure that the plans were very detailed so that way everything was scheduled to a T.  Then, I got a call this morning about 10 from one of the aides telling me that the kids were being difficult and were not going to earn an afternoon recess.  He wanted to know if he could show them a movie instead.  I explained that a movie to these kids is a reward.  If we give them a movie, they continue their bad behavior.  Instead of the movie I told him to have them redo their homework from last Friday which was sitting out already copied for them anyways. Apparently my aides were changing other parts of my plans too....I guess there are no real sick days here.  I'm going into school anyways.  SHOOOOOTTTT.

A Blur of Words

I Like...

It's been 11 days since my last post.  Even though today sucked, I'm going to focus on the positive for right now, at least so I can get through the day tomorrow.

I like............

-coming back to my house at 9:00 pm and my housemate just finished making scones
-when my students ask me to braid their hair during nap time
-when little art projects turn into huge class projects (aka turning the posts in my room into massive trees)
-when I have time to make plans for NEXT week  by Wednesday of this week
-when Smokey the Bear comes to visit my class
-when my room is suddenly transformed into a Halloween fiesta
-when my kids give me hugs instead of listening right before Specials
-when I can talk to my friend Claire until 1 in the morning on a school night
-when my kids take the time to make me a picture after doing homework
-knowing that I have a field trip, a 2 hour late start, and a 12:30 dismissal all in one week
-knowing that I'm here for the kids no matter what
-feeling like I have 20 children of my own and that I would do anything to see them succeed
-knowing that God's given the strength to get  through this mess of a school year