October « 2012 « Miss Night's Marbles

Ask Miss Night: Taming the Transitions

by Miss Night

Oh crap, that’s right, I HAVE A BLOG!

Hello friends. I know you have all been losing sleep, wondering what has happened to your beloved Miss Ni… Oh, who am I kidding?! You all have been living your lives, most of you teaching your kiddos, getting by just fine without me. Let’s all be honest here for a minute, and admit that one of the strongest realities of this line of work is how completely the day-to-day nitty-gritty can consume us – to a point that it seems we blink, and suddenly it is the end of October.

CAN I GET AN AMEN ON THAT?! (Or a what-what, or a whoop-whoop, or a hallelujah, or a hell-ya, or whatever exclamation of agreement you prefer…?)

Anyway, have no fear: I am back, with a great question from a reader we will call NE. NE is new to kindergarten, and is struggling with transition times. She says:

Well, since this is my first experience with Kindergarten I have no expectations of what is going to happen but here’s something I’m struggling with. My dismissal time routine is really rough as is right after lunch. With our schedule we eat lunch then start math. What are some attention grabbers you use to help keep the attention of your students? After unstructured time (lunch) my class is really wild and hard to settle down……
When I dismiss, I dismiss bus students then have the walkers get their backpacks from their lockers. As I’m watching for parents another unstructured time, the students seem to be wild and not wanting to read or do a puzzle.

First, dear NE, please know you are not alone. Dealing with transitions is one of the hardest part of teaching little ones. Even the most angelic group of kiddos can seem to turn into a whole other species at the times of day when there is more than one thing going on at once, or when they are waiting for the next thing to start. To make things worse, transitions often seem to happen at times of day when kids are tired (Post-recess! After lunch! End of the day!) and/or hungry (Pre-lunch! Before snack! End of the day!) And, even when you have GREAT transition routines, there are still random days where those in-between times go back to being a 3-ring circus of chaos, and all you can do is breathe through them. The good news is: by their very definition, transition times MUST come to an end.

That said, there are things you can do to help things go more smoothly. Since it has been several weeks since you submitted your question, you may have discovered some of these, or stumbled into other solutions. I’m also going to ask the readers to share their best tips and tricks in the comments, since they are ALWAYS much smarter than me!

My first approach would be to eliminate as many transitions as possible. Look critically at any time of day when you are asking the entire group to stop one thing, come together, and than start another thing. Is there a way to change it, or to create a routine that has less stop-and-start. My favourite example of this is doing snack as a centre rather than a whole-group activity: during my afternoon play centres, one table is designated as the snack centre, where children can choose to eat whenever they are hungry. This saves me multiple transitions – from play to cleanup to hand-washing to snack to cleanup to bag-packing. Instead, we just do play to cleanup to packing. So, for your lunch-to-math transition, is there a way to have a routine allowing each child to finish lunch, clean up, and start a math routine of some kind, without having to wait for everyone? A math journal? A designated shelf of math-related games or manipulatives? Something they can start independently, but that is not mandatory, so that the slow eaters can skip it if needed.

My second piece of advice would be to consider the noise level, as transitions are a time when it is WAY too easy for kids to get sucked into an escalating spiral of LOUDNESS, where the LOUDNESS makes them speak LOUDER to be heard over the LOUDNESS which makes everything LOUDER… you can see where I am going with this. While I am not a huge fan of making children be silent, a “no talking” rule, when used sparingly, can help kids focus on the task at hand, and develop the self-regulation to move through a particularly difficult transition. My current group has been struggling with the “getting ready for recess” routine (we are already into snow pants and heavy coats and boots and hats and mittens), and just last week we instituted a “no talking until you are dressed” rule. It is not my favourite, and will not be the rule forever, but right now it is helping them stay focused on details like “MITTENS GO LAST.” So, for you, NE, are there times where a temporary “no talking” or “whispers only” rule would help create a habit of calm and focus?

My final addition to a transition tool kit is songs and chants. Songs, poems, and fingerplays are your best weapon at any time that some of the kids are waiting for others to be ready, or when ALL the kids are waiting for an event or activity. Sing, sing, sing. Find songs for the transitions themselves (like a cleanup song), and sing songs while you wait. If half the kids are at the circle and the other half are still wrapping up lunch, start singing with the carpet kids. It will keep them out of trouble, and the slower cleaner-uppers will hurry to join you. SInging a familiar song at steadily decreasing volume can help bring a group together and quiet, so you can start instruction without battling chatter.

There you go, NE: my three best techniques for taming the transition monster. Now, awesome readers, please share your brilliance in the comments, because I KNOW you know way more things than me.

And don’t worry, i won’t leave you hanging this long again!

Have a question for Miss Night and the readers? Click on the button to submit it.

Ask Miss Night classroom daily grind

4 Comments »

Little boy lost

by Miss Night

So, the thing, the amazing thing, about being a kindergarten teacher in the same school for several years is that you get to watch your students grow up, see them continue to learn and grow. You get to see their smiles in the hallways, and if you’re really lucky, they keep hugging you whenever they see you, even when they are too old, and too cool, to hug their own classroom teachers.

And the thing, the really really hard thing, about being a kindergarten teacher in the same school for several years is that you see your students when they struggle, when they fall, when they fall apart and get lost, and there is so little you can do.

You walk into a classroom, and there he is, a child you poured your heart and soul into. His desk apart from everyone else, his head down. You ask him how he is and his eyes slide away from yours.

“I’m okay, Mme.”

“Are you sure, you seem sad…?”

“Yeah, Mme, I’m…. ok.”

And then you see it – the invisible curtain over his eyes, the one you worked so hard to raise, is back down again. And there is a big scratch on his cheek and he doesn’t remember where it came from. And his shirt is stained. And his hands are clenched. And there are toothmarks up and down his pencil.

And it’s not because of his teacher. You know her. She is a good teacher, with a heart as big as the sky.

But you worry. You worry that he has become invisible even to her.

Because you know him. You know how difficult it is to love him, and even more difficult to like him. He is not cuddly. He rarely smiles. He is often grubby. His work is messy. There are no spontaneous hugs or burst of affection. There are no love notes. There is no drive to be your helper or to earn your approval. There is only survival, an instinct to make himself safe, and anger that leaks out in drips and drabs.

And what you really want to do is scoop him up and run him back to your classroom, where the curtain over his eyes came up, and once in a while you saw a glimmer of a smile, and on one, single, miraculous day that you will never forget, he once folded a paper airplane, wrote your name on it, left it on your desk.

So you give his shoulder a squeeze and you leave him. You go back to your desk and you cry hot tears while you google “paper airplanes”. You carefully fold one. You write his name on it.

And in the heart of the deepest crease, you write a single “x.” A single “o.” A single heart.

At lunch time you leave it on his desk.

And you hope that he will know.

memories students

9 Comments »

101 Thank Yous

by Miss Night

It’s Thanksgiving Day up here in The Canada, and so I have been pondering all the blessings, big and small, in my life. It’s taken me most of the weekend, but here it is:

101 Things I Am Thankful for This Thanksgiving

My dad, who at the age of 65, is living his dream of being a farmer and a cowboy.
My mom who bends over backwards to help and support her kids, even though we are no longer kids.
My brother who sees the same funnies in the world as I do.
My sister-in-law who left her country to come to my country and has never once been scared off by our crazy family.
The fact that my brother and sister in law are now just an hour’s drive away.
Their tolerance for my relentless enthusiasm about this fact.
Skip, the ridiculous epileptic chihuahua.
The generous vet who helps keep Skip healthy and happy
My pretty, sunny, little apartment.
The 19 small people who rush through my classroom door every morning.
Having a job I love so goddamn much
The Canada, my home and native land
The way Canadian Thanksgiving is so much like us as a country: simple, modest, flexible, with reasonable expectations.
Coppercreek Camp
All the things I know and learned and became because of Coppercreek Camp
The way I often wake up to wildlife: rabbits, squirrels, birds, even deer, cavorting on the lawn outside my very suburban apartment.
Oregon State University.
The town of Corvallis.
Really, the whole state of Oregon.
Wonton soup
Finally having a home sunny enough to grow ANY DAMN PLANT I WANT.
Vanilla lattes
Honeycrisp apples
My mountains
My cute little Honda CRV.
The way my Honda CRV gets me through the hilly drive to work even on the snowiest of days.
The coffee shop in my old neighbourhood, which makes the best muffins in the world.
My people.
My partner teacher who makes this job so much easier and so much better every single day.
My grandma even when she makes me crazy.
My fireplace.
The Twitterz
#Kinderchat
Vietnamese food.
My bathtub.
Clean laundry
Ballet
Garth Brooks
Pickup trucks
Sharpies
Gerber daisies
The zoo
Having cousins I not only love, but LIKE.
My boss
A school where I am so well supported in every sense of the term
How big the sky outside my window is
The invention of the PVR
Books
Little House on the Prairie
Air travel
Lavender
Dark chocolate with sea salt
The smell of dry crunchy leaves
The sound of dry crunchy leaves
Ikea
Diet Coke with Lime
Cranberry juice
Chocolate chip cookies
Having summers off
Evernote
That feeling when you go swimming outside and then let your hair dry in the sun.
Harry Potter
Musical theater
The satisfying feeling after you vacuum and you see all the crud that just got sucked up
Peanut butter
The Nutcracker
The friends who let me love the bejebus out of their children.
How some of the kids I helped raise are now adults I consider friends.
Advil
Having the financial means to buy everything I need and most of what I want.
Hot chocolate
Chicken salad
Lazy weekend mornings
The moment in the movie theatre when the lights go down and the trailers start
Mason jars
Down-filled duvets
Banana Republic
Ballet flats
Kindergarten Around the World
This blog, as a place to write my words and think my thoughts
Raffi
That, as upset as I might get about the outcome of the US presidential election, there is no possibility of Mitt Romney running MY country.
Waking up to the sound of rain.
A healthcare system that provides top-of-the-line care to people I love, regardless of their income or insurance situation.
The technology that has helped me reconnect with friends who go back as far as kindergarten
Heated seats (a ridiculous luxury, I know) in my car
French immersion schools, both as a place for students and a place for teachers
The underlying social ethic of tolerance and diversity that allows French immersion schools to exist
The spiral hairpins that Goody makes for people with hair like mine
Glee
Mittens
Friends who are adult professionals like me, and, also like me, still want to see cheesy movies about dancers and glee clubs.
Having learned to read so young and so easily that it has never felt like a chore or like WORK to read anything.
The dishwasher
The many bloggers I read who have taught me so much about writing, life, and the power of sharing our words.
Star Wars
Play dough
PostSecret
Growing up with a Grandma who taught me the basics of sewing, knitting, and needlework — skills that are slowly being lost in my generation.
Glitter
Any time I spot the stars and the moon in the night sky, and know that chances are, someone I love, somewhere in the world, is seeing the same sky.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends. Feel free to continue the list in the comments.

Oh, and here’s the wishbone:

Make a wish.

lists reflection

No Comments »

I can do hard things: Some thoughts on learning

by Miss Night

Update: This post was written when I still used Blogger for this blog. I thought about editing it so it would make more sense now that I have my own domain and work in WordPress, but the very fact that this post exists here without being re-written is a pretty good illustration of my underlying point: We can ALL do hard things when the motivation is there…

Last night, I sat down to start a semi-big project that I have been semi-dreading: migrating my blog from blogspot to wordpress. The reasons are many, but the short and sweet answer is that wordpress has more capabilities to do more things, and as my little blog community grows, it seems to make sense to move over there. I knew there were a lot of steps involved, things I have never done before, and don’t entirely understand. I knew I was going to have to LEARN a bunch of new stuff, and make it make sense, and apply it. I knew there were certain risks involved.

What if I do this wrong? What if I screw it up? What if my blog disappears? Wait, I need to buy the domain name AND the hosting. Ok, so the domain is like the name of the restaurant. And the hosting is the physical space for the restaurant. And I need to pay for both. Ok, that makes sense. But how MUCH space do I need? I don’t want to pay for more than I will use. But what if it’s not enough? Can I make it bigger later if I want to?

Ok, deep breath. Why I am doing this again? Am I sure the easier way is not worth considering? No, the easier way really isn’t what I want. If I’m going to do this, I’m doing it all the way. Even if it’s hard.

Learning is hard, folks. You try, and you play, and you ask for help, and you struggle to UNDERSTAND the help that you get. And then you apply it, and you realise you didn’t even ask the right question, so of course you didn’t get the answer you needed… So you ask again, and the first answer isn’t quite enough, but it sends you to another answer that helps a lot. And just when you think you have it, your pencil breaks (or, in my case, Google wallet took an unannounced 10 minute vacation.)

To be clear: for the 2 hours I sat at my computer, trying to figure this all out, I was deeply engaged. It got dark outside, and the house got a bit of a chill, and even though I was sitting FACING OUT THE WINDOW, I was surprised to discover these facts when I finally looked up. I was engaged, the task was authentic. I was learning, asking, self-correcting, trying and error-ing, and trying again. Reading and squinting and doubting the double-taking and cursing the people who DON’T MAKE THIS CLEARER. But I was doing. Bit by bit, I was doing.

I think the lesson here is that: there is nothing that says learning shouldn’t be hard. It is and can be hard. But maybe, as learners, we are far more likely to persevere through the task if it is also meaningful, and tied to an outcome that matters to us. I WANT to make more of my blog. I WANT to own this space more than I currently do. I am committed to figuring this out. But that doesn’t make it easy. If I had been tackling this task for reasons I didn’t choose, or for reasons someone else decided where important… I probably would have given up.

I persevered through a difficult task because I was personally invested in the outcome. There’s a thought to chew on when we think about student motivation.

In 2 hours, I got exactly one step of this process completely figured out and squared away. I bought my domain: www.missnightmutters.com now belongs to me. (Go ahead, type it into your address bar – you’ll find yourself right back here. Isn’t that SO COOL?!). There is satisfaction in that, in having ONE STEP done. But there is also frustration that ONLY one step is done.

Later today, I will chip away at the next step: choosing and paying for a hosting service. Then installing WordPress on that host. Then taking a really deep breath and moving the blog over.

It has been hard. It might get hard again. But I can do hard things when the process and the outcome really matter to me. I can do hard things.

My students, even in kindergarten, can do hard things. Our students can and will do hard things, and do them willingly, but only if the process and the outcome really matter to them.

Furthermore, the belief that they are capable of doing hard things is probably more valuable than the actual DOING.

As my grandma, who, after a stroke, taught herself to do left-handed needlepoint at the age of 85 (talk about doing hard things!) would say: “put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

NaBloPoMo reflection students

6 Comments »

The Luckiest People

by Miss Night

I had a boss, a long time ago, at Internationally-Known-Non-Profit-Agency-of-Ill-Repute, who was a big proponent of having A Friend at Work, and encouraged us to get to know one another, socialise, connect outside of our workspace. She said everyone needed People. So we did. Socialise, get to know one another, connect outside of work. And from that came P and L, two of my long-time People: friendships that have survived and thrived through weddings and kiddos and grad school and career changes and new homes and big moves. My girls. My People.

When I moved to a new country for grad school, my dad loaded all my earthly belongings into his horse trailer and drove me down there. Once I was all set up in my teeny weeny apartment, he did the long drive home alone, and later told me he found it really hard to drive away and leave me in a town where I had no People. Funny thing is, I remember watching his truck leave my parking spot, and thinking: “Ok, I have a house, furniture, groceries, a sense of where to find things in this town. Next up: I need to find me some People.”

I found me some People, and they remain My People to this day.

A few years ago, my first year at This School, at a time when it was In Transition and longtime staff regarded new staff with the squinty eyes of suspicion. Hard to find People when no one trusts anyone. I found ONE: a grade one teacher, also new, also regarded with suspicion. If you can’t have People, have A Person. That grade one teacher is still My Person, although I have People now, too.

Today, straggling with My People (including my boss, who is totally one of My People) after a meeting… A colleague, relatively new to our school, an amazing teacher. She teaches some of my students from years ago, describes them in the very same words I used when they were kindergarteners. From her today: tears, at feeling alone in her desire to question pedagogy, at being at odds with her team, misunderstood. A realization: she doesn’t need advice. She needs some People. We get her. We love our students the way she does. We ask the same hard questions. We find the same quirky, sometimes dark, humour, in working with young children. She’s us. She’s People.

So, we’ll be her People. We’ll invite her to lunch and share our jokes and make note of her Starbucks order.

We all need People. We need to find our People. We need to be People to others. Your People may be in the classroom next door or across the hall or up the stairs. They may not be. They may not even be in your school (or office or centre, or wherever you earn your paycheque), although just like my long-ago boss, I think we all do better at work if we have at least a Person. Your people may be on The Twitterz (like some of my best People are). They may be commenters on your blog (hello, blog People!). They may be in a course you take or sitting next to you at a meeting.

Find your People. Be People.

This job is too hard to do alone.

People need People.