C is for Chalk

We are having an ABC countdown for the last 26 days of school. 

Today, we went outside and did sidewalk chalk.

You can be anything you want to... except that

At school we have been talking about "community helpers" (doctors, fire fighters, police officers, etc). Last week I had the kids write about what they want to be when they grow up. I remember teaching in preschool kids would say they wanted to be spider man or the hulk when they grow up, which was cute. But my kids are almost first graders now, so it is time to get real. Or something.

I found myself encouraging my kids to pick "real jobs" (i.e. I told them they probably can't play football or be a cheerleader for a living). And yet the jobs they steer toward are almost equally uncommon for normal people to have in the "real world." Most of them want to be doctors, fire fighters, police officers, veterinarians, nurses, barbers/hairdressers. I took photos of them with these funny pictures that they put their face in.

The choices include

-doctor

-nurse

-fire fighter

- police officer

- teacher

- farmer

-painter

- scientist

 I think there were more but I can't remember. I find the choices a bit odd- how many doctors and fire fighters (etc) do you know? 

What did you want to be when you grew up?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myG8hq1Mk00 

U-46 cuts

Over 700 teachers are being cut from district U-46 today. Well some of these will be rehired, it still means larger class sizes for next year. Secretary and clerical positions are being eliminated, making more work for teachers. School nurses are now at 2 schools meaning half the time a building will not have a nurse (because the kids only get sick/hurt when the nurse is there, right?). Our school social worker is going from having 2 schools t0 4. With 4 schools, she will simply not have the time to deal with student emotional needs, only shuffle paperwork. I would think the number of school shootings alone would urge us to have more social work, not less. Librarians will be at 2 schools so they will not have time to read to the kids, only check out books. Many librarians have spent their careers developing programs to do with classes in the library that work on vocabulary development and skills for the ISAT. Kindergartners will not have art, music, or PE next year.

What are we doing to our educators, who graduate full of passion only to be treated as a commodity? Educators are some of the most hardworking people I know. Do they not deserve to have job security, fair pay, benefits?
Most importantly, what are we doing to our children? They are our nation's future. And yet we take more away from them and expect more with less. It takes a village to educate a child. 1 person can not do it alone, let alone with a class of 33 children.

Rainbow Fish

We read The Rainbow Fish today and the kids made these with watercolors. They did a really nice job :) For a moment, I felt like the teacher I want to be, happy as the kids are busy working and engaged, amazed over how the water changes colors as they rinse off their brushes in it.

My funny Valentines

How the school district makes me feel

Dear Teacher,

Thank you for giving 110% of yourself to your job. Thank you for coming in early to set up your classroom and lesson plans for the day. Thank you for staying after school to tutor struggling students or lead extracurricular clubs and events to enrich students’ lives. Thank you for coming in on your days off even though you know full well you won’t be paid for it. Thank you for dragging home children’s books, piles of papers to grade, lamination and crafts to cut, etc. and persuading your loving family to help you with numerous school projects on evenings and weekends. Thank you for writing sub plans when you are deathly ill and coming in anyway when you feel crappy. Thank you for being exposed to billions of little germs on dirty hands and snotty noses and sneezes that do not get covered. Thank you for spending your paycheck on dry erase markers, glue sticks, hand sanitizer, stickers, prizes, posters and countless supplies from specialty (expensive) teacher stores. Thank you for attending meetings, professional development and advancing your degree over holiday breaks. Thank you for putting up with overprotective, ornery, permissive, inattentive, hovering, angry and at times wonderfully helpful parents. Thank you for wearing numerous hats and making countless decisions every day- you are a social worker, nurse, public relations officer, performer, actor, diplomat, and a mom to 20-40 children every day who constantly demand your attention and request your guidance.

We realize that most of the world thinks you have it easy. Those who can’t, teach, right? We recognize that people commonly assume teachers work 8-2 September-May and “isn’t it fun to be with kids all day?” We would like to recognize your accomplishments, and the fact that most people could not survive 1 day doing what you do every day.

However, we would like to clearly make it known that all of your dedication amounts to nothing more than a statistic. We have been looking at our test scores from last year (poor performance is your fault by the way) and our enrollment for next year. Because after all, the lives of children who will be our nation’s future are nothing but numbers to us. Numbers followed by dollar signs, all in red (their test scores are red too). Therefore, we would like to inform you that you are not needed here. We may or may not feel the need to call you up on an arbitrary day (while you are teaching) sometime within the next 7 months and offer you a random job out of nowhere that you must take otherwise you have officially resigned from our district and we will promptly disown you. “You teach preschool? Now you can go teach 8^th grade math. It’ll be fine; all teaching is basically the same right?”  Never mind the fact that it takes 3 good years to get proficient at teaching one grade level/subject area. (Imagine if we did this to doctors. Foot doctor, you are fired, now go do heart surgery…) We can get away with this because we know at the heart of it you care about children’s futures, and society needs teachers, as much as we like to pretend we don’t.

Now go back in there and do it all over again tomorrow.

Sincerely,

               Your employers

                              The school district

Kindergarten Love Letter

So this isn't really a picture, but I just had to share it. One of my students' older sister wrote this for her to give to a boy in my class. I took out the names.

You are my best friend also called my BF. I hope you and _____ (his older brother) have a nice day tell _____ (his older brother) I say hi...I forgot what day is your b-day and list 3 things you want for your b-day and I will try to get one of them.

The picture she drew herself of her and him.

:)