October 18, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged Catholic School, Paperwork, Title I
I am back! This time I have landed myself a job as a Title I teacher at a Catholic Elementary School. The school is still inner city but is a whole new world that in a weird way I have to get re-used to. During last year as a substitute I experienced things I never thought possible, I witnessed abuse, pain, suffering and indifference, I came home drained (physically and emotionally) every day. I thought that’s what teaching would be like if I stayed in Chicago.
I was, in a sense, thrown into this new job. I spent 3 days observing two different teachers in the same position at two different schools. I then started the next week at my school and learned (was also warned by the teachers I observed) that for the first two weeks I would be doing paperwork. Thank you NCLB and all the glorious educational red tape! I hope some of my sarcasm is coming through…I have yet to locate a sarcastic smiley face! I believe I have killed an entire forest of trees and developed a case of carpal tunnel syndrome. On the one plus side, I learned all of my students names and correct spelling of them without actually meeting them.
After the beginning paperwork, testing begins. Then of course after testing is more paperwork, followed by teaching at some point, one can only hope!
June 19, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged elementary school, Field Day, last week of school, students
I remember when I was in Elementary School that we had Track and Field day. It was a huge event and there were many relays and games that we got to choose which to participate in. Now when we had Field Day here, it was chaotic and depressing. The primary teachers, myself included, planned a few stations where students in preK through 2nd grade could compete for tickets anduse those tickets to redeem prizes. It started off with just two stations open andended up with just me running the jump rope contest. The kids were so into it that I had to add hula hoops so more kids could play. Eventually the older kids started coming up to ask if they could play due to the fact that the upper grades had no planned activities, just a day of being outside. I allowed the older students to play but could not give them tickets for prizes. We then had a one hour time slot to allow the k-3rd graders into the bounce house, followed by being forced to stay outside in the intermittent rain and a clown whom only a few younger students wanted to see.
Of course this whole day was ended with dancing to a DJ’smixed rap songs with the bad words bleeped out, but even with that you could look at almost any student and see them mouthing the words! Then two different groups of 5th and 6th grade girls proceeded to do dance routines. Now, they were doing them to music inappropriate for their age and with dance moves that I can’t believe no adult objected to! Even the 5 year old daughter of a teacher jumped in andstarted shaking her stuff with surprising quality comparable to the older girls.
To end this unusual day of events, the 6th grader who just gave birth to a baby girl 3 or 4 days previous showed up with daughter in tow. It was so dusty and windy and she had the baby open and exposed that a teacher had to go over and show her the proper way to hold, shield, and protect her baby!
June 4, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged anger, hanging, home problems, second grade, students
There is a boy in my now 2nd grade class. Recently his behavior has gotten worse. Every day he comes to school in a fowl mood. He refuses to do any work anddisrupts classmates. He walks around the classroom threatening students and picking fights. I talked to the science, gym, and computer teacher who all noticed a change. We suspect something is going on at home but with little help from the administration there seems like not much that can be done. Yesterday while he was having a meltdown he went and hid in the coat closet. I then had a student tell me that the boy was trying to kill himself. I ran to the closet to find him with his long sleeved shirt tied around his neck and hooked on to the coat hook (he is a little taller than where the hook is). He saw me and untied it and I talked with him about how scary that is and he walked away from me to his desk for the last 30 min of school. I went to the assistant principal and discussed the situation. She had me fill out a incident report and a detailed description of what happened. I have no idea if there has been any follow up but I do plan on asking again soon. Only 8 years old and already thinking about and knowing how to hurt himself. Would it make a difference in how this was handled if it happened in a suburban school?
Update: The mother of the boy came to the school awards assembly and I took her aside to talk to her about what had happened. While I am glad that there was an actual call to her from the school and that she wanted to talk to me, she was very calm and almost nonchalant about the issue.
May 28, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged children, homeless, society
Living in the city I do come in contact with my fair share of homeless, panhandlers, hobos, whatever label you choose. Now seeing as I don’t have the expendable income to support someone other than myself, I have to pick and choose who I will give money to. Most of the time it’s to the people who look like they will benefit from it or are trying to go somewhere with their life. Of course, the younger they are the more likely I am to lend a hand. (Is that wrong?)
I was recently watching a special on homeless children in America. And the whole thing they kept pushing was to donate money to give each homeless kid a backpack with a few school supplies, 2 boxed dinners, some cereal and a tub of peanut butter/jelly mix. They are saying what a huge deal it is that they are supplying these to the kids. This is horrifying. We should expect so much more to be done for them. That people care so little about children born into horrible situations and then having to live on the street. They didn’t ask for this, they are children, and we are just dumping them out of a help system when they turn 18, as if magically by then they can make it on their own. I didn’t make it on my own until I graduated college, and that was with love and support from my family. Not to mention a good education. I have heard about ’sleep outs’ in order to raise money and awareness for the homeless, what else can and should be done?
“You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course.” – Jello Biafra
“If Americans ever allow banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless”
~ Thomas Jefferson
May 23, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged elementary school, hate, Kindergarten, latchkey kids, notes, third grade
Hate is such a strong word, stirs up emotion, applied to so many things in life. How much of what you say you hate, do you really hate? Your clothes, hair, food, what about people? What’s sad is that I hear the ‘h’ word constantly. More often than not it is applied to students hating students, or teachers. What’s worse is when I hear the words spoken ‘my teacher hates me’. My heart aches. As a teacher, could you ever HATE a child? Even if it isn’t true that said teacher hates said child…what could you be doing that puts that message out there to that student?! Where is the love in the schools that need it most? Some students certainly don’t get it at home. I have even found out that some students aren’t living with their moms (dads are rarely in the picture), they are living with older siblings. While in the kindergarten class today the teacher and I noticed a large burn on a little boys hand. When the teacher asked what happened he told us that he was making himself noodles for dinner and burned his hand. A five year old in charge of feeding and cooking for himself!! Unbelievable! According to his cousin who is in 7th grade, him and his siblings, ages 3, 5, 5, 7, 7, and 8, are left home alone to fend for themselves!
A third grade girl got in trouble by her teacher for talking and disrupting while they were supposed to be taking a test. The student then wrote a note to a classmate which the teacher saw and confiscated. It read ‘I hate my teacher. She sucks dicks for dimes.’ The teacher got the girl suspended and then brought her to the office where she had the student read her letter to her mother over the phone. Of course the student felt awful and wouldn’t say the bad stuff to her mom. I am amazed that a third grader even knows this kind of language, and I wonder if she even knows what it means.
May 20, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged drinking, elementary school, sin, students, teen pregnancy, weed
I help out with an after school group every Wednesday. Our group has gone from 25 to 50 students in it’s 5 week run! During last weeks session we were talking about Sin and some of the ‘bad’ behaviors or things the students have done. The students were broken into three groups and I was with the 3-5th graders. Students were asked to tell something that they had done that they felt bad about doing. The responses started out as expected, things such as; I hit someone, I cheated on a test, I stole something… Then students started to feel more comfortable and really dug deep for what they had probably never told anyone. ‘I got drunk off Champale’ – 4th grade boy, ‘I’ve smoked weed’- 4th grade boy, ‘I put rat poisin in my sister’s drink’- a 4th grade girl, after which she began to cry. Then a 5th grade boy said ’I tried to shoot myself with my dad’s gun’. I found out from the Principal that they know of a few of the 4th graders had been having sex already! (How they figured this out, I’m not sure I even want to know.)
There is a particularly unruly 6th grader at my school who is four months pregnant! On one occasion I had the pleasure of listening to a few of her friends talk to her about girls they know who got abortions, or who have babies. And then to my surprise ‘how pretty them babies is, when they mamas so ugly’. The cycle of children raising children continues,and soon enough her child will roam these halls most likely following in her footsteps. The father is a ’special education’ student in the high school. Where as in these schools, all students with behavior or learning disabilities are labeledSPED and shuffled through each year until the graduate, or don’t, with maybe the reading and writing skills of a 5th grader!
May 16, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged beating, discipline, elementary school, misbehavior, parents, teachers
I have come across many interesting ways that teachers punish misbehaving students. For the lower grades, I do like the ‘stoplight’ or ‘turning cards’ methods. They really put a visual for the students and make them responsible for themselves. Now, in several classrooms I have come across an unusual punishment, making students stand. This ranges from minor infractions (talking and disrupting) to not getting behavior slips signed by a parent. For the minor event, the student is told to stand in front of their desk until the teacher says they may sit, for major infractions, the student will have to stand in front of his/her desk all day. Through every lesson, assignment, even center times! On a rare occasion I have even seen students have to stand still with their hands behind thier head.
Onto the parents…since I came to Chicago, I have never witnessed so many ‘beatings’ by these parents to their misbehaving kids. Now while 80% of the school staff agree with this method, I just don’t see the benefit. Most of the kids being hit are so used to it, it doesn’t work as a behaviour deterrent. My two most memorable moments were when I told a 3rd graders mother about the day before and his fighting and disruptions when I was subbing and she took him aside and I heard her smack him at least ten times, skin on skin contact. The next time I was in his classroom and he got in trouble again, when he was told his mom was coming to ‘whoop his butt’, he said he didn’t care. The second was a 2nd grade girl who was in the office for fighting when her mom came in, dragged her into her classroom, interrupted class, made her take off her belt, and then used it to beat her in front of the class and horrified teacher! Then to make matters worse, she told the other classmates to laugh at her daughter!! I can tell you that her daughter ( and a few of her other children) were right back in the office the next day.
May 14, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged behavior, elementary school, fighting, Kindergarten, out of control, students, Substitute, teaching
What do you get when you put 25 five and six year olds in a room with a teacher they don’t care to listen to?
The day starts as the students file in and sit in their seats ready to learn. For the first hour and a half we all learn together and are listening and participating. It seems after lunch is when everything always falls apart. Kindergarten is the only grade that gets an occasional recess, but at recess there is constant pushing and fighting that there are always at least four students out against the wall. We come back in the classroom to a student flicking people off and yelling cuss words. As I try and remove her from the situation she goes limp and kicks while she cries for being in trouble (so much for the “don’t touch students” due to fear of lawsuits). The class is now chaos and no one will listen or sit in their seats, some jumping over tables and chairs and one student throwing books. It takes about 5 minutes to restore ‘order’ and most of the students get into their seats, two decide to fight over a pencil, a real tug of war. One gives up and pushes the other as she turns to walk away, the other student then takes the won pencil and stabs (and I don’t use that word often to describe actions) the other girl in the back!
After the students are removed, partial order is restored. One student even walks up to me and says “I feel bad for her, she got hurt really bad. Jesus doesn’t want us to treat people that way, we are supposed to be nice to everyone.” This from one of the boys who is constantly in trouble! (Maybe there is hope!) Empathy is something I rarely see in these children.
I then have a student from a 4th grade classroom come in and ask me if she can help in the class. When I ask why she isn’t in her own classroom, she informs me that her class also has a substitute and they are acting crazy.
I announce my last resort for any type of order for the last 2 hours of school…I will bring in treats for those students who cause no problems for the rest of the day, and/or those who have been behaving throughout the day. I had most of the class on my side for the rest of the day, and as promised I did bring them treats the next day (rule #1 of promises to any child is that you MUST follow through, you have to build up their trust in you, just as they have to do the same with you!).
The kids are then lined up outside the room to await their parents/grandparents/sibling/ or cousin to come and pick them up to go home. I retire to the classroom, to cleanup the destruction, and leave my note to the teacher in the hopes they will follow through with discipline the next day!
May 14, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged Crime, elementary school, Guns, Police, Shootings, students, Violence
We need to have a serious talk about Guns. The world is a scary enough place, when you add in the fear of being shot to your daily life, well, you can maybe imagine what these kids lives are like. “Since the beginning of the school year in September, at least 32 Chicago Public Schools students have been killed” – Chicago Tribune.
While I had an after school group, we had a unusual request to keep the doors shut and keep all the kids inside the library. I thought very little of it because I figured it had to do with wandering kids. We (teachers) were then told that there was a high school student from the ACT program above us with a gun. We mentioned nothing to the students and continued as scheduled, making sure when our time was over to have each student picked up and walked out by an adult. I found out later that a fight broke out between our seventh grade girls and the ACT girls. Soon enough the boys joined in and one high school student had brought a gun and flashed it to people outside, even hitting someone with it (thankfully no shots were fired). Four students were injured, though I am not sure on those details, but one of the students was injured by the police and pepper spray.
What can be done to prevent this? Stronger gun control laws? Worse punishments for offenders? We need to figure out how to get these guns off the streets, and educate the ‘at risk’ students on how to stay away from them.
