Are You Directionally Challenged?

Before I get started I'll update the list of scholars as there have been changes.  Whale has departed as he now resides outside our school corporation boundary.  Blank, an on again and off again scholar in our classroom, is on again as he is coming part time to our classroom.  "With that said," a little inside humor, here is the latest listing of the scholars that Knewer, Low, and I attempt to educate.

Grr! - 4th grade

Tourette - 4th grade

Huey - 3rd grade

Fruit - 1st grade

Cue - 3rd grade
Hiss - 4th grade
Blank - 3rd grade

Like I said in my last post, I'd rather have a Whale than a Blank in the classroom and here is why.  I first encountered this scholar in kindergarten.  I'm not exactly sure how to label this scholar so I'll just say he was a disruptive force.  His disruptions continued through the first grade and on into the second and third grade. During this entire time this scholar spent the majority of his school day outside his assigned classroom as he was so disruptive the teacher couldn't get anything accomplished.  Rather that gathering the resources necessary to get this scholar the help he needs the school just passed him around from one non-classroom teacher to another with the mindset that at least he's not in a classroom.  Well, he just landed in Knewer's classroom and I am talking about Blank.

Blank's non-distruptive force was short lived in our classroom.  I can't recall if it was his second or third day in the classroom when he decided it was more fun to play with a balloon and distract the other students who were on task academically.  FBG was in the classroom and he told Blank several times to put the balloon away or it would be take away from him.  Totally ignoring what FBG said to him Blank kept playing with the balloon.  With hands as quick as lightning, FBG snatched the balloon from Blank.  Blank's immediate response, one that he did multiple times between kindergarten and Knewer's classroom was to run out of the classroom.  Unfortunately for Blank, someone in the classroom (me) anticipated his move and parked his butt in a chair right in the center of the classroom doorway.  With his escape route blocked Blank's next attempt to get his balloon back was to start knocking things over in the classroom.  After multiple attempts to get Blank de-escalated FBG gave him his final two options, either to sit at his desk quietly or go into our time out room.  After a couple angry screams of defiance Blank was introduced to our time out room.

Beware!  Some of you may find this next section a bit disturbing as I know it was for me and the other adults in the room.  It was Thursday of last week and FBG arrived in the room to conduct one of his group training sessions.  These sessions deal more with behavior than academics and today was going to be community day.  Knewer laid out the guidelines for community day as follows:  one only person talks at a time, if you have a question for the speaker you put up one finger, if you have a comment about something the speaker said you put up two fingers.  With the guidelines set the conversations began.

The first couple discussion points were pretty simple.  What is your favorite fruit?  What is you favorite restaurant?  Then Knewer asked this question, what is your favorite movie?  Blank was first up to speak and he quickly rattled off the name of several of his favorite movies.  Every movie he named contained violence, lots of violence.  As Blank went through his list of favorite movies I was sitting off to the side of the room.  From this vantage point I could see the concerned facial expressions on Knewer and FBG.  At one point Blank asked Knewer and FBG if either of them watched any of these movies and they both responded that they don't like movies with violence.  Blank's response was that he liked those movies because of all of the killing.

Although Knewer was leading the discussion, FBG was the next one to speak up.  As soon as FBG asked his first question I knew exactly what he was doing.  He was probing for information about Blank and his activities away from school.  "Does your parental unit know that you watch these movies?" was the first question.  Blanks response was, "maybe."  "Is there anyone else in the house that watches these movies with you?"  "My brother, well he's not really my brother he just lives with me.  He really doesn't like them because they scare him.  If he starts touching my things I'll put an even scarier movie just to scare him so he doesn't touch my things."

It was at this point that FBG made eye contact with me and his looks said it all, "what kind of scholar do we have here?"  After the other scholars had a chance to talk about their favorite movie Knewer asked the final question, "what is your favorite color?"  Blank responded first, "I like red because it looks like blood."  He then grabbed a stuffed animal that was on the table.  He put his hands in the mouth opening, opened the mouth as wide as he could and said, "if we open this mouth wide enough maybe we'll see some blood."  Hopefully you are still with me as we are moving on to something that is not so dark.

Every morning during our first academic rotation the scholars have to look up the word of the day in a dictionary.  They have to spell the word correctly three times, write down the definition of the word, put the word in a sentence, and then draw a picture of the word.  On this particular day the word was "south."  Tourette was in the last group to rotate to my desk to look up the word "south."  When he completed his entire worksheet he said to me, "Mr. Schultz, do you want to know how I remember all the directions?"  "Sure," I said.  For those of you that are directionally challenged now would be a good time to pay attention.  Tourette started by pointing north but said "never."  I abruptly stopped him, turned him counter clockwise a little and said to him, "that way is north."  Tourette started over pointing north and saying "never."  He then turned clockwise and said, "ever," turned again, "smoke," turned again and said, "......."  "Sorry Mr. Schultz I can't say that word in school."  I'll give you a second to fill in the blank.  Ready?  Times up.  "Weed!"  Remember, I don't make this stuff up.

Speaking of directions.  Mine changed again with my reading intervention group.  My involvement with my third grade reading group had a very quick beginning.  Unfortunately, my third grade reading group had an equally quick ending.  I'm no longer involved with the read group.  Why?  Knewer asked me to give up the reading group to stay in the classroom.  Before she could even explain her reasoning I already knew what she was going to say.  With the introduction of Blank to the classroom the dynamics changed.  Tourette and Blank are not compatible at all.  Add in Fruit and his oppositional defiance disorder and the potential for very anger eruptions from one or all three of these scholars can occur quickly and its already happened twice.  Am I disappointed that I lost the reading group, yes.  Am I happy that the volatility level in the classroom can increase quickly, no.  It's the "no" part that I'm struggling with as it's an environment that I'm not sure I want to continue volunteering in.

That's it for today.  There is some demolition going on right now in my kitchen as old kitchen cabinets are being removed so new kitchen cabinets can be installed.  The project is supposed to last three weeks.  When I mentioned this on my Facebook page two naysayers, SpecEd30+ and a 9Patch quilter, were quick to point out that the project may take up to six weeks.  I labeled them both as pessimists so I guess, as time goes by, we'll so who is right.  See you again.  Hopefully sooner that later.

   

 





 

Get In Your Cars

I arrived at my volunteer job at around 9:30am.  When I stepped into the classroom there was already drama taking place.  For reasons unknown to all of the adults that support our classroom Whale was again having another emotional breakdown.  He was crying, stating that he can't take school any more, wants to call a parental unit, and wants to call a second parental unit all with the hope that one of them will take him home.  Unfortunately, all that drama doesn't get any sympathy so adults were doing what they do to get Whale to relax.  After ten minutes of so Whale is sitting at his desk and the day can begin.  A short while later, Whale stands up and is moving toward the classroom door so I immediately stand up, move to the door to block his escape and ask him where he is going.  Whale replies, "Mr. Schultz, I need to use the restroom," so I let him pass.  I also grab a chair, place if right by the classroom door, prop the door open wide enough so I can see clearly the restroom that is right across the hallway from our classroom to keep an eye on Whale.  As I'm sitting by the classroom door FBG arrives and asked how the day is going.  I tell him about Whale's emotional meltdown and FBG tells me that he'll stay in the hallway and watch for Whale.

While I'm seated near the classroom door Huey gets my attention and asks me a question so I redirect my attention to Huey.  The conversation we had was pretty brief and I then redirected my attention to the hallway.  As I'm sitting there FBG walks in and tells me he had to address and issue down the hallway and asked me if Whale returned to the classroom.  I responded that he hasn't and FBG returns to his guard duty position in the hallway. In less than a minute FBG sticks his head in the door and said to me, "he's been in there a long time and I'm going to check on him."  FBG returned to the classroom and said to me, "he's not in there."  "What?  Are you serious."

I'm now in the hallway with FBG and my gears are grinding, "where did he go?"  In the past, Whale would exit the building by going out door number four so we headed that way.  Outside door number four is the school's main parking lot and surely, if Whale went out door number four, we would see him and FBG could run him down.  When we exited the building, it was cold and raining, and Whale was not in sight.  We decided to split up.  FBG went east and I went west.  After a couple minutes searching and not seeing Whale FBG gets on his walkie talkie and communicates with the front office about Whale's departure.  TheBigB is notified and we were also told that our school security camera confirmed that Whale exited door four.  TheBigB went directly to her car to start searching.  After a few minutes I received a group text from the TheBigB, "get in your cars and continue searching."

As I head toward my car I'm getting real anxious as I was the one that was supposed to be watching the door so Whale doesn't do anything stupid.  TheBigB was searching east of the school in her car so I decided to go a block south and then head west.  As I'm moving in my car I see two other adults from the school in their cars beginning their search.  At each intersection I'm looking left and right and I see nothing.  A couple intersections later I looked left and saw an ambulance and fire truck stopped at an intersection and their emergency lights are flashing.  "Please," I think to myself, "don't let that be Whale."  I turned left and heading in the direction of the emergency vehicles.  As I got close I received a text message and it said two words, "got him."

I'm now back in the school.  Mr. CTM saw Whale standing outside a gas station about a mile from school in the cold and rain and all Whale was wearing was a hooded sweat shirt.  When Mr. CTM saw Whale and called his name, rather than running away, Whale turned and walked into the gas station.

Later that day I passed TheBigB in the office area.  She said to me, "you don't have to worry about Whale any more, he's gone."  "You mean for the day," I asked.  "No, he's no longer goes to this school."  "Really," I said.  "When I was searching for him," TheBigB said, "I called his parental unit and told him his scholar ran out of the school and we were looking for him."  The parental unit said that Whale was probably running home.  TheBigB responded, "where is home?"  The parental unit gave her the address.  The address was outside our school boundary and just like that Whale is no longer a scholar in our school.

Ok, enough with all of that drama.  Let's move on to reading intervention and the Orphan Train Rider.  The book was written by Andrea Warren and has a subtitle, "One Boy's True Story."  The boy's name is Lee Nailling and he is the middle child of a family that had nine children.  Two of his siblings died shortly after birth so that leaves seven siblings.  Lee Nailing's mother died during child birth for child number seven and that left the father to raise them.  Unable to work and raise seven children the father decided to split up the children.  Five were placed somewhere, the book wasn't real clear where they were placed, but Lee and his brother Gregory were sent to an orphanage.

As the story evolves, Lee decides in some way that he his going to track down his father and his brothers and sister with the goal of reuniting the family.  My reading intervention group was in day four of reading this book when one of the scholars raised her hand.  "Mr. Schultz, this story is so frustrating to read."  "Why is that?" I asked.  The scholar raised her left hand up in the air as high as she could and says to me, "one day it sounds like things are going to turn out well for Lee and then..."  The scholar quickly drops her left hand down and slams it on the table and says, "and then something bad happens to Lee."  When the scholar finished her statement I asked the entire group to predict the ending of the story.  Most of the scholars were uncertain so I came up with a plan and when I wrote out my plan on a giant Post It note they got excited.

I drew out, on the Post It note, the family tree.  The father and mother were at the top and then I listed Lee's siblings.  The mother and two infants were deceased so I drew a tombstone next to those names and wrote R.I.P on the tombstones.  I then asked the scholars, "given all the information that we've read so far who do we know is still alive?"  One of the scholars raised his hand and said, "Lee, because we know this is a true story about him so he has to be alive."  "Perfect," I responded.  I then asked the scholars to make their predictions on who else will be alive at the end of the story.  The conversation among the six scholars got pretty loud and a bit animated but I wasn't too concerned.  I let them discussed the story because at that moment I knew I had them hooked on the story and they wanted to know how it was going to end.

I drew out the family tree on Friday.  A couple of the scholars wanted to keep their copy of the book to finish the story over the weekend but I said, "no" we need to finish the story as a group.  It's now Monday morning and I'm sitting at my desk where I have a view from the back of the room.  The LittleBigB enters the classroom and puts a stack of papers on my desk.  "We are going to change directions with the third grade reading intervention groups.  Starting today the scholars will begin reading different short passages and then answer the multiple choice questions and complete the short answer questions.  We believe that the short passages and questions will closely mirror what these scholars will see when they take the state mandated IRead3 test and hopefully it will give them a better chance to pass the test."  I'm not going to share my thoughts with you on what just happened but I bet they will closely mirror yours.

One final thought and I'm going to call it a day on Super Bowl Sunday.  We lost Whale due to a school transfer but we gained a Blank.  I'd rather have a Whale than a Blank in the classroom and you will find out why soon enough.  Thanks for continuing to follow along.

PS:  New England Patriots or Philadelphia Eagles.  I don't care.  I'm just hoping each quarter ends with either an 8 and 1 or 4 and 4 as a score.  If it does I win money.  Yes, I know.  Those are not very good numbers.