daily grind « 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

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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.

colleagues daily grind memories reflection

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Cash to fill my tank*: choosing the awesome instead of the awful

by Miss Night

(Disclaimer, because I know I am blessed with many friends and readers who may be prone to worrying about me needlessly: I am fine. Everyone I love (including my ridiculous dog) is fine. There are no true emergencies involved in anything I am about to say. I am fine, and after writing this I am going to make some iced tea and watch some Big Bang Theory and laugh. EVERYTHING IS OKAY, I PROMISE.)

Hmmm… I don’t know if I have much in me today. It has been an overwhelmingly strange 24 hours in my world. Some amazingly wonderful things have happened (including things that involve this blog!). I have shed tears over something precious that I have lost (it is literally a THING, and I will get over it, but I am still VERY sad right now.) I have rolled my eyes in frustration at busybodies. I went back to school today, and am mired in all the ambivalence that goes with the end of summer. And then, today, a coincidence so goose-bumpy that it puts a lump in my throat. I’m sorry to be cryptic. I promise I will share if and when I can.

If someone were to ask me right now: how was your day? I’m not sure if my answer would be “it was AWESOME,” or “it was AWFUL.” Both would be true. I would rather it be awesome. So, a list of random thoughts and small miracles that may help tip the scales more clearly to the awesome side of things:

The cherry tomatoes on my tomato plants are starting to turn red! I grew these plants from seed. I have never grown tomatoes before. This was one big experiment, and I am sort of amazed that I will actually get to eat something that I grew.
#Kinderchat resumes tonight, in about 3 hours (7pm MST, 9pm EST). If you don’t know about #kinderchat, check out our Newbies Livebinder, and please come join us. We are the best PLN around.
Seeing my boss today made me remember how very much I love working with her. I wish every educator had a boss so committed to children as she is. And everyone in EVERY field should get to have at least one job where their boss is truly a kindred spirit. It changes everything.
In my classroom, I have a deep counter than runs the full length of a wall of windows. That counter gets enough sun that I really think I could grow a mini garden there. Problem: it would be too high for the kids to see and enjoy. Readers, do you have any thoughts on how to set it up so kids can “hang out” on the counter safely?
I got my class list today. 20 kids, 10 girls, 10 boys. As I wrote about here, almost exactly 2 years ago, having a list of names changes everything. I wish parents knew this: how I fall in love with their children while they are still just names on a piece of paper. With that list, classroom setup goes from “doing a chore” to “preparing a gift.”

I can choose for today to be “strange but awesome” rather than “strange and terrible.” So, I’m choosing. Today was an awesome day. Here’s hoping that tomorrow is equally awesome.

But hopefully less strange.

See you at #Kinderchat!

*Ladies’ Choice, from the Hairspray soundtrack. Because a good showtune helps turn any day around.

classroom daily grind NaBloPoMo

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Too high a price: why I don’t do behaviour charts

by Miss Night

*UpdateSept 9, 2012: In response to many requests in the comments of this post, I have written a companion piece, describing how I DO manage behaviour in my classroom: “Behaviour Management” not systems, but relationships. Please head on over and have a look!*

In my recent post on “In this classroom…” I mentioned that I don’t do behaviour charts. It’s true, I don’t. I have had some push-back on that, and it has made me think really deeply about how and why my stance on class-wide (or worse yet, school-wide) behaviour systems has developed. In the name of transparency, I will confess that in my early days of teaching, I had a colour-coded behaviour chart. It was effective, in a superficial way, and also a nightmare. I’ll share that story in another post. But today, inspired by my friend @matt_gomez’s Reward Free Year, here it is:

THE #1 REASON I DON’T DO BEHAVIOUR CHARTS

Before I say anything else, I want you to do a little imagining with me. As you read each paragraph, I want you to REALLY work to imagine yourself in this situation, really FEEL what it would be like. I’m sure you will catch on to my metaphor pretty quickly, but stay with me. I really couldn’t think of a better way to illustrate my point:

Imagine that you have a new job. You’re VERY excited about this new job, and a little bit nervous. You know there are parts of it that you will be very good at, but there are some things that you are still working on, or that you might need support from your boss to master. It’s okay, though, because you’re pretty sure that your boss is really nice, and will help you work on those things.

You arrive at work and start meeting your new co-workers, who are just as excited and nervous as you. You notice that some of them seem to be VERY good at nearly everything, and others seem to struggle with even more things than you, but altogether they are a nice enough group and you feel like you will be a good team. You start to make some work friends. It feels good.

Then, at some point – maybe right away, maybe after a few days or weeks or months, your boss sits you ALL down together and explains a new performance management system. On the wall of your communal work area, Boss has posted a list of all the employees, by name. Next to each name is a rainbow of colour-coded cards. Boss explains that every employee will start each day on the same colour, but depending on your performance, your name can be moved up the rainbow, or down the rainbow. People who move up the rainbow will get special extras: a small bonus, or an extra long lunch, or a half-day off. People who move down the rainbow will face consequences: a shorter break, a docked paycheck, a note in their file.

The next day starts out badly before you even get to work. Your alarm doesn’t go off, there’s no hot water left for your shower, you’re out of coffee, your cat has peed on your favourite shoes AND it’s raining. You get to work, and within an hour, your name has been moved down to yellow. You get a warning from your boss. Then, your favourite work friend doesn’t want to work next to you because you just got in trouble and she doesn’t want to get in trouble by association. Your hurt feelings make you distracted, and you make a few careless errors in your tasks. Your name gets moved to orange and now you only get 20 minutes for lunch, which is really upsetting because the sun is finally shining and you had been confident that a nice walk in the fresh air with your buddies would help turn your day around.

On your abbreviated lunch break, you try to get online to order some new shoes. Impatient and frustrated, you curse out loud when the site won’t load properly. In front of everyone, your boss moves your name to red. There goes 50 bucks off your pay. Apparently you won’t be buying new shoes, after all. You approach your boss privately, trying to explain and apologise. Boss tells you, kindly-but-firmly, that “No cussing” is an ironclad rule, and that because everyone heard you cuss, she has to give you the same consequence she would give anyone else. Later, you are short-tempered with a customer, and your name gets moved off the rainbow altogether. A note is placed in your file, documenting a reprimand for inappropriate language in the workplace.

The end of the day approaches. A few of your colleagues get to leave 30 minutes early because their names got moved “up” to blue. This leaves you with extra work that has to be done before you can leave. Among these colleagues, one of them had his name moved up to purple, so he is buying a round of drinks for everyone… Everyone who can leave early, that is. It’s always the same people who can leave early, and really, they’ve become quite clique-y. You convince yourself you wouldn’t really WANT to have drinks with them, anyway. You really fit in better with the red and orange card crowd.

Photo by South Carolina’s Northern Kingdom licensed (cc) by Flickr

How do you feel right now, as an employee? How do you feel about your boss, your colleagues, yourself? How do you feel about having to come back to the same place, the same people, the same chart, tomorrow? What are the chances you will turn things around tomorrow, or ever? What are the chances you will just figure out how to hang at “orange” and deal with the consequences and find ways to enjoy your 20 minute lunch with your orange friends? (I know you are smart enough to stay away from red, but orange is really not so bad, right…?)

If my boss were to hang a chart in the staff lounge, showing which teachers were doing an exceptional job each day, as well as those who were having exceptional-in-a-bad-way days, I would be furious. I would be raging about my privacy, my dignity, my right to be respected by my colleagues for the person I am, and to not be publicly labelled based on any given day. My personal growth is between me and my boss. It has no business being a public display. I don’t know any teacher who would disagree with this. My boss and I have private conversations, plans, and systems to foster my progress.

Parallel to this, I am not opposed to individualized behaviour plans and systems to support individual children. I have used them, and will continue to do so. (I am increasingly opposed to material rewards being part of such systems, but that is another post.) These systems are private. They are discreet. They are between me and that child and his or her parents. These systems are tailored specifically for that child’s needs and quirks and preferences. They allow me a lot of flexibility to accommodate the day that the child only got 5 hours of sleep, or scraped her knee on her way to school. They maintain that child’s dignity and support his or her relationships with peers.

There are many many reasons not to use publicly-displayed, one-size-fits-all behaviour “systems” in a classroom: they encourage extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation; they undermine a sense of community; they prevent kids from generalizing good behaviours; but this is the biggest one, to me:

A child’s dignity, privacy, self-respect are no less real or important or valid, than mine. When I undermine a children’s privacy and dignity, I do damage to their relationships: with their peers, with me, and with themselves.

Yes, behaviour charts can create a classroom full of raised hands, quiet voices, walking feet, please-and-thank-yous.

But a child’s dignity is too high a price to pay for criss-cross-applesauce.

classroom daily grind philosophy reflection

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wounded, jaded, loved, and hated*

by Miss Night

Today’s post is the continuation of Brayden’s story, started here. The year that Brayden started in my room he came to me for half-days, beginning in March. By April, we knew that he was not emotionally equipped to handle a transition to first grade, and the unanimous decision was that he would re-enroll in kindergarten, and would be in my class full-time the following year. My feelings about children repeating kindergarten are very complicated, but then… Brayden was (and probably still is) a complicated kid.

I wrote this post in mid-October of the year I had Brayden full time. His first 6 weeks of school had been rocky, but promising. And then… and then.

Photo (cc) by Biscotte

Oh, Internet, I swear I never wanted this to be a place where I just pour out all my woes, but…

Brayden? My laundry-list child, who started transitioning into my classroom in March of last year? Who hugs me with a ferocity that makes me cry, and who melts down in loud, noisy tears, on a regular basis, over the smallest of slights? Who spends an inordinate portion of his life on timeout, who has to push every single adult in his world to the very brink before he trusts that they (we) will set the limits he so desperately needs? Who, when he is done melting down, curls up in my lap and buries his face in my neck, and whispers: “I love you, Miss. Night”?

Yes, Brayden. Brayden, who I love with a protectiveness that frightens me.

Brayden.

Brayden, whose mom, just 3 weeks ago, accepted a corporate transfer to another city. A city 3 hours away from here. A transfer that is effective January 1st.

The last 3 weeks, since Brayden learned of this upcoming move, have been horrific The words have been said, and can’t be unsaid. He knows. He has gone from being a child in need, a child at risk, to being a child in crisis. Make that A Child In Crisis. Every day, every single day, there has been a meltdown to the point of him being carried, wailing and thrashing, from the classroom. Every interaction, every single interaction, with him, begins with “no! I will not do what you say!” He is oppositional and defiant and aggressive and angry and out of control and scared.

So very, very, terribly, scared.

I have bruises on my shins from his heels furiously flying as I carry him to the office. Tracy (my boss) has not completed a single meeting without a Brayden-related interruption, in 2 weeks. (And the one morning she was gone for an off-campus workshop was too difficult and exhausting and painful — for me, Brayden, my aide — to even begin to describe.) Every time I hear a loudspeaker announcement calling Tracy to the office at a time when my class is not with me, my heart sinks. It is Brayden. It is always Brayden. On Friday, in what would prove to be the final straw, our yoga teacher (who is also an early intervention specialist, thank the sweet baby Jesus) got punched in the mouth while trying to restrain a struggling Brayden. His mom was called, he went home, and he will not return to our classroom until we have found a full-time aide, just for him.

Every single scrap of time and energy I have had for the last 3 weeks have been consumed by him, and when I am not with him, I am recovering from being with him. It is not okay, or healthy, not for me and not for the other 19 children in my class. For them, I feel I have been a mediocre teacher. I have also, I suspect, been a mediocre and inaccessible leader to my team of colleagues. I have definitely been a completely absent blogger, and have become, quite possibly, the world’s most boring conversationalist, to everyone except my own mother (who might, quite possibly, love Brayden as much as it is possible to love someone you have never actually met.) When I am at my most exhausted, I resent the intrusion of this one small boy into my head and heart and world, and I wish for my life and time and energy and classroom back. At my darkest moments, January starts to seem like a beacon of hope and harmony…

But the rest of the time… My heart breaks, both for Brayden and for myself. I am scared of what will happen to him at his new school. Will his new teacher love him? Will she know that he CAN’T stop wiggling during circle, and that the safest thing for all concerned to to strategically seat him where he has enough room to roll around without kicking anyone? Will she allow him to push his own physical limits, even when it seems too dangerous, because PUSHING is what he most needs to do? Will she let him crawl into her lap and bury his face in her neck? Will she hold his hand even when inside she is shaking in frustration? Will she help him name his feelings, learn to control her own breathing, tell him she loves him even in his most unlovable moments? Will she praise his successes, however tiny they may seem? Will she set limits and stick to them, even when he has been laying on the floor, howling, for 30 minutes? Will his new school have an administrator like Tracy, who has turned her office into a safe haven for kids who need a place to get it together? Who will walk out of any meeting to carry a sobbing Brayden down the hallway so his classmates can eat lunch in peace? Will the other kids see the humour and enthusiasm and affection that hide beneath his nervous tics and pushy body language? Will he find a friend? Please, God, let him find a friend…

Brayden is taking next week off — it is only a 3-day week anyway — and staying home from school to allow all of us a break and some time to strategize, not to mention to find the angel-in-disguise that we will need to be his aide for the next 2 months. Just contemplating 3 days without him makes my whole body relax. I know I need it, and I know the other children deserve to get to know their teacher again.

But the thing is… I will miss him.

And if I know right now that I will miss him like crazycakes for just 3 days… what am I going to do in January?

*God’s Will, Martina McBride. Of course.

daily grind memories NaBloPoMo students

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