A Road Trip With Jack and Annie

With the school year winding down Gnu decided to ask the scholars to name all of the activities throughout the entire school year that they liked.  When you put this type of task in front of the scholars you really don't know what to expect so doing this was a bit risky I thought.  After all, Gnu has spent one hundred and seventy seven days with the scholars so for them recall only a few items I'm sure would be very disappointing to her.  After a few moments of silence they started naming them and Gnu wrote them on the whiteboard.  I'll list them and when necessary elaborate on the item so you know what was going on.

• The Camp Belzar field trip, outdoor activities at a Boy Scout Camp.  They got to shoot a bow and arrow and a BB gun.  Under very close supervision. 
• Field Day, a school organized day of just having fun outdoors playing games.
• The crime scene investigation, someone entered our room, left a footprint in some flour on the floor and the scholars had to put on their detectives hat and figure out who it was.
• Basketball, Gnu played basketball a lot with them.  She taught them defensive positioning and how to pump fake and them drive to the basket.  With so many male parental units absent in the lives of our scholars this had to be fun for them.
• Our camping day in the classroom to include sleeping bags and an electric lantern.  Gnu joined all the scholars in sleeping bags and read to them stretched out on the floor.  As with camping, s'mores were made and consumed.
• Gnu's fanny pack because she kept loosing or breaking stuff.  Once the fanny pack made it's first appearance the scholars would remind her constantly to be sure she took her fanny pack anytime we left the classroom.
• Bugs, the live ones that sometimes appear in the classroom.  Gnu is actually petrified of bugs and the scholars would regularly pretend they found a bug in the room and wanted to show it to her.  There was a day when she actually left the classroom to avoid the bug.
• Shrek the Musical - a local high school production.
• The Nutcracker - another local high school production.
• The bubble gum sampling project and survey.
• Making the gumball machine for our hallway bulletin board.
• Making smoothies from scratch.  I still can't believe they never heard of a smoothie.
• The ropes course at Camp Belzar.
• The Mother's Day key chains that they made out of beads.  I picked little beads up off the floor for weeks after this project.
• Yoga to include their our labeled yoga mat.  By the end of the year they easily could name a dozen yoga positions and actually do them.
• Reading theater, The Little Red Pen plus the making of the background.
• Baking cookies from scratch.  I'm glad this one came up as it was the first classroom project way back in September of last year.
• Greek mythology and the little Greek gods they made on tongue depressors.
• Making applesauce.  This came about after reading the story of Johnny Appleseed.  Gnu brought in four different kinds of apples.  The scholar were not aware there were so many different kinds.  Like the gum project, each scholar got to smell and taste the individual apples as part of a taste test.
• Painting pumpkins.  This is one of my favorites as the pumpkins looked real nice.
• As they some times call her, Momma D, breaking her cell phone one hundred times.  This one was pretty funny as the scholars actually underlined the words one hundred times on the whiteboard.  I believe three times during the school year Gnu broke her cell iPhone.  Klutz!
• Baking muffins from scratch.

There are a couple more items for our list but I'll save them until later.  The list was pretty impressive especially with the hands on activities like making food.  These were group tasks where everyone was working in close proximity to each other and had to work together.  That may seem minor to some people but when you consider improving the scholars behavior and social skills is second only to academics, getting them to work as a team without any eruptions is a huge accomplishment.  Sitting on a three by five card right in front of me is the list of what I just entered above.  As I hold it in my hand and go over it again I can't help but smile at all of the activities that Gnu brought to the classroom for these scholars who came into this world with some pretty serious issues.  I wonder at some point in the distant future if one of these scholars, when asked who was their favorite school teacher, will say Momma D.

The author is Mary Pope Osborne and the book series is called The Magic Tree House.  In this book, Jack and his sister Annie venture to Egypt in a book called Mummies In the Morning.  For the record, this is a chapter book and it is the last academic task for the year.  I like the chapter book as it gave each of the scholars a chance to read out loud plus the chapters were short.  One theme from the story, as Jack and Annie were on their magical adventure, was bread.  According to the story, bread was a popular food item in ancient Egypt so what do you think Gnu decided to do?  Correct, let's make some bread from scratch in the classroom.  It was a pretty simple recipe, basically flour and water and I think some salt but that didn't matter to the scholars.  After all, they are making bread and doing a fine job of getting the flour all over themselves and half the classroom.  The best part to observe from my view at the back of the room was when they got to knead the bread.  The shorter scholars, in order to knead properly, climbed on top of Gnu's desk so they could do a better job.  At one point, MiniJ decided that pounding on the dough with his fists was the best way to knead the dough.  With the kneading process completed it was time to shape the bread, put it into the bread pans (3) and send it off to the kitchen for baking. As in the past, the guy with the least experience cooking anything was in charge of baking the bread.  The end result was edible bread. 

Just past the half way point of Mummies In the Morning the word sarcophagus was introduced to the scholars.  I was surprised at how many of the scholars were familiar with the word, especially Grrr! our first grader who can't read.  As the story continues eventually the topic turns to mummies and their burial in a sarcophagus.  As a side reading, Gnu read to them the process used by the Egyptians to prepare a body for mummification.  The details of the process were pretty gross but the scholars were fascinated by the process.  I'll give you one detail on the grossness.  You take a small hooked shaped object, shove it up the nose of the deceased, turn it a little and then pull it out to see what you get. Then you repeat the process until the skull is empty. Now that is disgusting.  At this point we have a sarcophagus and mummies so guess again what Gnu does next?  A small brown sandwich sized paper bag is used for the sarcophagus and the scholars got to create their own design on the bag.  For the mummies Gnu cut up white tee-shirts into strips, created a mixture of water and flour and then dipped the tee-shirts into the mixture of water and flour and wrapped the tee-shirt strips around our bodies.  What were the bodies?  Barbie dolls.  As with bread making Gnu's desk and my desk were a disaster.  So were the scholars shirts and pants but who cares they were working together is small groups and they were having a lot of fun. 

A couple brief items and then I'm out.  First, the mummies were made on a Friday so they had to dry over the weekend before the scholars could take them home.  Big mistake as on Monday morning when I arrived the classroom stunk and we had quite a gathering of flies circling our mummies.  Next is the Big B and my trip to her office.  When I walked in she was sorting through some papers.  When she found what she wanted she handed it to me.  I didn't even need to look at it as I knew what it was.  With the paper in my hand I reminded her of my conditions.  She said as far as she knew Gnu was returning next year.  I said good, we have a deal.  So I set the paper down on her desk and signed my name.  In that brief signing moment I committed to returning to the classroom again next year with the caveat that Gnu has to be the teacher.

Thunder is rumbling off to the west, rain is falling and I need to head inside.  Thanks for continue to follow the life of an old guy that will have another full school year with a view from the back of the room.

Live From Indianapolis, It's Reading Theater

I have to take a few minutes to recognize my colleagues Oreo and IvyL.  Like Gnu, IvyL is about to wrap up her first school year as a behavior therapist.  She was in the classroom last school year as an intern working with PhD(?)Sparty but this year she is on her own.  For those not familiar with PhD(?)Sparty she is a friend first but also my nemesis as she attended that green and white university and I preferred blue and gold university. During the last school year a gentleman caller worked his way into her life and they were married just a short while ago.  I'm really happy for her as I met the gentleman caller and he is a real nice young man despite his green and white affiliation.  While I gave the gentleman caller a thumbs up, when The Collector saw a picture of the two of them together he thought the gentleman caller was too tall. Back to IvyL and her role in the classroom.  She is responsible for working with the scholars on their behavior and social skills in what is referred to as "group sessions."  She also leads the yoga class for our scholars as well as the scholars in the 5th and 6th grade emotional disability classroom.  During our group sessions all of the scholars gather at the front table which usually increases the degree of difficulty during group because too many scholars are too close together.  While it increases the degree of difficulty it puts the scholars in a setting that can improve their social skills.  From my view at the back of the room it's been interesting to watch IvyL lead group.  There were a few incidents earlier in the year when she got pretty animated trying to control the scholars and keep them on track.  As the year progressed the animation decreased and to get the scholars back on track when needed she would just go silent.  One of my challenges working in this environment was to avoid getting animated and that was something that I struggled with during my first two years in the classroom.  It was during year three that I finally got a handle on it so for IvyL to be able to do that in less than one school year is admirable.  With the school year winding down Gnu gets a break from the scholars but IvyL continues working with them as she is a year round contracted employee.  I'm not exactly sure what her role is during the summer but I do know that she maintains contact with the scholars and their parental units and that is critical to working toward the end goal of improving behavior and social skills.

Oreo, a behavior specialist, also supports our classroom as well as fills in during group sessions when IvyL has a schedule conflict.  In addition to working with the scholars in our classroom Oreo also supports the teacher in the 5th and 6th grade classroom.  Supporting these two classrooms is challenging enough but in her role she also supports several other general education classrooms when scholars have behavior issues.  Oreo's task is huge as there are several scholars in the general education classrooms that are consistent disruptions.  Her office is just a few steps from our classroom and its pretty rare to walk by her office when she does not have a scholar or two with her that comes from a general education classroom.  I like working with Oreo because she has another role that I particularly enjoy and it doesn't involve academics or poor scholar behavior.  Instead, it's more of a running banter between the two of us.  Usually the banter is about totally stupid things that happened or was said but are welcomed because they are often humorous can take the edge off a bad day when you are having one. 

I'm sitting on the screened in back porch of my house as I write this blog and I'm thinking about IvyL and Oreo.  I'm not sure if I've given you an accurate enough description of what these two individuals bring to my classroom and it bothers me a little.  Although my description of what they contribute daily is lacking in my mind I can say this about them with no uncertainty.  Both Ivy and Oreo have committed themselves to working with some of the most challenging scholars in our school.  They both excel in a school setting and our scholars future is brighter because of the work they do.

I'm drawing a blank as to how this came about but one afternoon Wide said something about our Little Red Pen reading theater.  Almost immediately, the others joined in the chorus and it was agreed that we would do our little play.  If you recall, our reading theater was to take place during parental unit day but it didn't work as planned so the audience we wanted will not to be in the room.  IvyL and Oreo are in the room and as happens so often with Oreo she has with her a couple disruptive scholars from the general education classrooms.  To have adequate space for our play furniture had to be moved and the scholars gladly helped move tables, chairs and desks so we could have a stage area.  The rest of the chairs and desks were arranged in theater style and every one in the audience took their seat.  Just before the play started The Collector chose not to participate.  That left a hole in the cast so we decided to ask one of the scholars that was with Oreo if she would like to participate.  She quickly said yes and took over the role of the Green Highlighter.  Her position in the play was right next to EM and I told her he has trouble reading so when it was his turn to speak I told her to lean towards him and tap him with her elbow.  That worked out perfect and EM got to participate.  The performance was a little shaky but considering we haven't practice in a couple weeks everyone participated and there were no eruptions.  When the play ended the audience applauded and the actors took their bows.  After a very short period of time all the scholars wanted to do the play again so it was agreed to do it one more time.  After the second go through there was quite a bit of improvement and I even think the scholars knew they did a better job.  When the final curtain fell they were all so excited that they just start running around jumping on top of desks and tables.  Although it got a little wild it was fun to watch them as they were so excited. 

Academically it's decision time for Gnu as report cards are due and so is the decision to pass or failure the scholars.  There was one incident when she said to me I'm not sure I have what I need to make decisions about report cards.  All I could offer was that you gave them tests in language arts, they had to pass exit worksheets in math, you heard them read out loud all school year and you saw first hand how much they contributed in the classroom.  Even if you don't have a huge stack of graded papers you knew how they did academically at the start of the year and the end of the year and that is really all you need.

Before I wrap this up I'd like to tell you that so far Gnu has not been approached by the Big B about next year.  That's a little surprising to me as we only have a few days left in the school year.  As I mentioned in the past, my continued view from the back of the room hinges solely on what Gnu decides to do so I guess I'll stay on hold about next year.

As always, thanks for returning and I'm out.

           

       

    

It Happened On A Thursday at 3:05pm

Just when I think the classroom is event free this happens.  Leftside, speaking to Gnu, "my grandma has been sleeping for two days."  As a reminder, the court system removed Leftside from his parental unit for reasons that are not clear but probably related to P.P.P.  On the day of the final court proceeding Leftside's parental unit didn't even show up in court.  Once Leftside made his statement Gnu and I made eye contact.  I don't know what she was thinking but I'm thinking I hope she is not dead.  Gnu walked over to him and started asking questions.  In the end we find out that Leftside made the decision to call 911.  He said he told the 911 responder that his Grandma is not waking up, gave the responder his home address, and hung up the phone.  The EMT's arrived and took his Grandma to the hospital.  Upon further questioning by Gnu we find out that Leftside's Grandma was sick enough that she couldn't get out of bed and not that she had died.  As Gnu and I talked about this incident we wondered who fed and clothed this scholar for the two days his Grandma didn't get out of bed.  As far as we know, there are no other adults in the house so we guessed that he just took care of himself which I'm sure you'll agree is unusual for a scholar in the fourth grade.  At the end of the school day Gnu asked Leftside how he was getting home.  He said he was going to be a car rider        instead of walking home as his Grandpa, who does not live with his Grandma, was picking him up.  That got a sigh of relief from me as seeing him go home to an empty home was not a good visual.  For the next couple days Leftside arrived at school without incident, meaning no funeral.  When Gnu asked him how his Grandma was doing, he said she was back home.  Crisis averted for the time being because Leftside calls her Grandma but she is actually his great Grandma.    

As we slowly approached the end of the school year I was wondering when it would happen.  Well, I can now tell you it happened on a Thursday at 3:05pm.  Gnu just completed a reading block and was deciding what to do next.  At the time, she was standing in the front of the room and after a moment of silence she said to the scholars, "just go play hangman."  This statement was made at 3:05pm and it was the first time after approximately one hundred and seventy of our one hundred and eighty day school year that she just said to the scholars go play a game.  When she said it I just looked at her.  I thought about saying something but decided against it.  After all, I'm working with a really good teacher and if she wants to have the scholars just play a game for approximately fifteen minutes as Pope Francis would say, "who am I to judge?"      

With the end of the school year approaching there is a lot of paper work that needs to be completed as well as conferences that need to be held with the parental units.  Gnu has been diligently working through the paperwork.  The items that need updating are the behavior plans, the individual education plans (IEP's), and the cumulative folders.  The Cum folders, as they are called, are always a fascination to me.  By the way, that is a long "u" in Cum and not a short "u".  As you might have noticed there is a big difference in the word depending on how you pronounce the "u".  What fascinates me about these Cum folders is the shear size of them.  For example, The Collector's, who is in the fourth grade, is approximately six to seven inches wide and contains all of the minutiae of stuff that has to be kept for a scholar in a special education classroom.  The folder used to be much wider but Gnu told me that she purged the folder of all of the duplicate items to get it down to a manageable size.  I also like to read the IEP's and the hot topic IEP for the year belongs to EM.  Caution, I might get a little testy talking about EM's IEP.  Gnu had updated EM's IEP and went over it with me for feedback.  She had him listed as reading well off of grade level, somewhere between kindergarten and first grade.  So you have an understanding of where he is reading wise I'll refer to Fry's First One Hundred Words that you need to easily recognize.  The first time EM went through the list he knew four or five of the words.  The second time he got twenty four correct.  On the last reading he got thirty nine correct.  Progress, yes, but these are words that first graders easily recognize.  For math she also had him off grade level as he has difficulty reading numbers.  For example, if you put hundred count chart in front of him and point to different numbers he'd have a hard time telling you what they were.  He also struggles with the addition, subtraction, division, and multiplications signs.  After discussing EM's IEP I concurred with the academic assessment Gnu came up with and it was submitted to one of those overhead personnel. 

The next morning when I walked into the room and before I could even put my lunch away Gnu said, "I'm so angry."  Not exactly how you want to start the day and when I looked at her to say something she just continued venting.  "How can she just return EM's IEP and tell me that it needs to be changed."  "I'm the teacher of record and I know what's good for my students so what right does she have to say I have to change it."  As I wait patiently for an opening to speak I know who Gnu is talking about and my anger is building.  Finally I say, "what are you supposed to change?"  "I have to have fourth grade academic goals for EM," Gnu said.  My response was "he can't do fourth grade work so why do that?"  "Because if another overhead person in a much higher overhead position reads an IEP for a scholar going into the fourth grade and it has academic goals for a first grader these higher overhead personnel are going to wonder what is going on," Gnu said.  Oh, now I get it so beware because after this last statement from Gnu I got pretty hot.  Succinctly, this is nothing but a cover your ass situation to avoid tough questions and the person doing the CYA is not the teacher or instructional assistant.  The question that I believe is feared most by the overhead person is how is it that a scholar can reach the fourth grade but have an IEP with first grade goals?  The question I'd like to ask the overhead person as well as the higher up overhead person is how is it possible that you are not aware of what is going on academically with a scholar is a special education classroom.  IEP's have been submitted in the past.  Gnu didn't deviate too much from what others wrote so why and the hell don't you people know what is going on?  Do you read these IEP's or just file them?  You think I have an attitude.  You're damn right I do because Gnu looked at almost an entire year of EM's academic work and wrote an IEP with goals that are attainable and now she is being requested to change it to placate some overhead person who is just doing the CYA.  Bull!

EM's IEP was resubmitted with slight adjustments and it was approved.  The school year continues to advance with the end in sight as we are inside five days.  Key decisions need to be made and when a teacher has to put up with the crap that she does from overhead personnel it makes you wonder what decision she will make.  Here is one thing I know for certain, it's the weekend.  I think, after the EM IEP episode, I'm going to double the amount of Tanqueray in my gimlet.  I'm out, thanks for continuing to read my blog.

Parents Day

If you've been following this blog for any period of time you've read about the volatility of this classroom.  Lately though, the classroom has been pretty quite.  Hopefully I haven't jinxed the room again like I did when I said to Gnu a couple weeks ago that we should not be getting any new students for the remainder of the year.  You know how well that worked out a Leftside arrived the next day.  Well, the room has been pretty quiet lately but as a precaution when I walk into the classroom the day after making this statement I'll enter cautiously in case of flying objects.  So I'm think why is the room so quiet?  Finally it comes to me, NoFouls is now longer with us as his parental unit moved outside our school district.  It's been close to three weeks since he left and there have been no violent outbursts, no fights, no constant non-stop mouth running, no scholar who thinks he is in charged of everything.  We've almost reached the level of a normal classroom.  Again, I hoped I just didn't jinx the classroom.   

A considerable amount of progress has been made in our rehearsing to do our little reading theater production.  Uh-Uh-Uh has a good grasp on the Spanish she needs to speak as she portrays the Push Pin.  EM, despite his very limited reading ability, has his part down pretty well as the Eraser.  In fact, he pretty much has his lines committed to memory.  The most impressive part is Wide, who in his lead role as the Little Red Pen, has his lines memorized.  So you know, he has two separate paragraphs to remember so that is pretty impressive. 

With so much progress made on learning the speaking lines Gnu decides to introduce the final part of our little play, creating the background.  Using a blank white and very large (8' by 4' or so) piece of paper she hands out the colored markers and our water color paints.  The only instruction Gnu gave the scholars was to make the background look like a school classroom and turned them loose.  Given the size of the piece of paper it wasn't long before the scholar were standing on the paper trying to determine what to draw and where to place it on the paper.  Wide, who is the closest thing we have to an artist, finally took charge and said the desk is the first thing to draw.  Following the desk it was decided the background needed a clock, white board and a large calendar like the one we have in the classroom.  Uh-Uh-Uh decided to draw a globe on the desk and set about doing that.  She used the bottom of a wastebasket to get started and then just used various paints to color in the land and water.  When she was finished it actually looked pretty good.  For the final touches Wide drew an apple, stapler, and some books on the desk.  While all of this was going on MiniJ decided to start mixing our paints together.  Why?  Who knows but he was having a good time doing it.  Unfortunately, his pants were taking a beating with multiple colors on his beige colored pants.  Once he saw the mess he made he asked Gnu if she could get him some new pants.  "Sorry, we don't have any," she said.  That didn't set well with MiniJ and you could see him getting agitated so I went and found a pair of pants that were in lost in found and gave them to him.  They didn't fit very well so he again got agitated so I told him to wear the pants while I washed his paint covered pants.  That satisfied him and off I went to our laundry room.  With the dials set on the washer I prepared to put MiniJ's pants in the washing machine when I noticed a completely different color stain.  I was a brown stain right on the seam in the middle of his pants on the back side.  I immediately recalled the incident that took place about two weeks ago when MiniJ had an accident in his pants.  At the time it happened, he refused to let us wash his pants and so he pretty much sat in his soiled pants for an entire afternoon.  It's now two weeks later and this same stain is in his pants and I'm wondering if these pants have been sitting at his home all this time and no one washed them.  I did another visual inspection of the stain and decided that these pants had not been washed previously and tossed them into the washing machine. 

With clean pants in hand I head back to the classroom.  When I handed MiniJ his pants he said "thank you Mr. Schultz," and headed to our timeout room to change.  When he walked out he came over to me and gave me the pants that came from our lost and found.  When I looked at him I noticed that he didn't zip up his pants so I told him to zip his pants.  As I said this Grrr!, who was standing next to me, said to MiniJ, "you need to be careful, you don't want that thing to get out the door."  As soon as he said it I started laughing.  Grrr! looked at me and said "that is what my Mom says to me when I forget to zip my pants." 

The background is complete and lines have been rehearsed and it is now Parents Day.  The parental units were give an arrival time so all the activities that were planned could be completed.  Guess what happened?  They were all late so adjustments were needed.  It was decided to take out the play about the Little Red Pen.  That was pretty disappointing but we had one other activity that should keep everyone happy.  Gnu, Oreo, and IvyL put together a video recording of each scholar.  While recording the scholars they were instructed to say sometime nice about their parental unit and then we'd show the video during Parents Day.  This video turned out quite well and when showing it to the parental unit's some of them got a little emotional as they watched their young scholar speaking.  Parent Day didn't quite go according to plan but the positive feedback from the parental units indicated that is was a very appreciated and successful day.

The school year is rapidly coming to a close and decisions need to be made.  First and foremost, Gnu needs to decide what she is going to do about the next school year.  She's already told me other school corporations have contacted her about employment and she knows right now if she leaves her salary would increase significantly at these other schools.  I also need to make the return or not return decision.  In the past, I waited until the very last hour of the very last day of the school year to make my decision.  That is pretty much my plan for this year as my final decision will solely be determined by what Gnu does.

One final comment.  My part time editor, part time consultant and full time spouse has decided to come to school and read to the scholars.  Despite that fact that she has 30+ years of teaching she is a little nervous.  Her concern is about what she should do if something goes wrong.  So I told her exactly what I tell anyone who enters our classroom, if thing get very animated don't get involved and just head to a safe place which is usually right behind me. I also told her not to worry as no one will get out of control especially once they see that she brought cookies.  I'll let you know how her visit goes later.

That's it for another week as it's the weekend and I'm out.  Thanks for reading the blog.