Grade One to One L

Moving from first grade to first year law is quite the jump, but I have to say that the transition has been less rocky than I initially thought. The idea of being cold-called in class is scary, but less scary than being on call to a bunch of six-year-olds most of the day, every day. I can handle my odds with ease after two years of that. It's crazy how differently my first week of law school has gone in comparison to my first week of teaching. That was a wild display of chaos, inexperience, and completely false expectations. Not that I think law school will be a walk in the park... I'm sure the anxiety and insecurity will come in due time. I'm wondering whether it's easier to get the horrific out of the way early, or to know it's lurking somewhere in the future. I guess the jury's still out on that one (hah! Law jokes!).

I went to the gym for the first time today, overwhelmed because BU's gym is huge. I walked around aimlessly looking for day lockers and feeling like a freshman (how I've felt most of the week) when all of a sudden I heard some yelling echoing down one of the hallways next to the pool. I looked through the door and saw a short, young-ish man with one hand over his head.

"First grade! You have five seconds to get in a line behind me! Five... four..."

Six-year-olds with wet hair sopping the backs of their shirts pulled at their clothes uncomfortably. The countdown didn't stop them from whipping their towels in spirals on the ground, scuffing wet shoes on the floor, or looking in awe at their surroundings. One girl seemed more concerned about finding her friend Stella-

"Where is she?!" she proclaimed to the teacher's dismay.

-than getting in line.

Don't get me wrong. I miss my kids. I miss parts of teaching. But you could not pay me a million dollars to take first-graders on a field trip to the pool. I could only smile at the teacher and hold the door as the line straggled past.

*Side note: why doesn't this class have a door holder as a class job?! Rookie mistake.

Wait, I'm Not a Teacher?

Hold up. Looking at the date when I posted that last blog brought on the heavy realization that I am NOT starting the teacher workdays with the rest of my old colleagues and TFA corps members. As much as I know that I do not belong in the classroom, it's a hard thing to let go of. It's losing a part of my identity. It's changing the verb tense I use when people ask what I do.

I was a teacher.

A few weeks ago, I was browsing the book section in Target for my next summer read. I had tried to convince myself to read dry, boring books to prepare for school (hah) and ended up "just looking" under the Top Beach Reads category. An older women saw me and ended up recommending a book she'd just read, recommended to her by a stranger in a book store. We started chatting and I mentioned that I had a lot of free time having the summer off because...

I paused, contemplated what I would say next and proceeded.

"I teach first grade."

Teach. Not taught. The woman instantly lit up, and I instantly went crazy in my head. Why would I lie about that? I don't WANT to teach anymore. And yet I was still longing to hold on to that part of myself, even to some stranger in Target.

Of course, the woman had been a first grade teacher for 30 years. Of course, she told me that she would say many prayers for me that I had a great class roster this year (we are in South Carolina, by the way). Of course, she had to tell me that she could tell "by the look in my eyes that I love it."

You mean the look of sheer panic at what I just told you? The utter confusion of why I would pretend to still be a teacher to someone I've never met before? The frantic damage control with which I acted after I blurted out that lie?

Oh right. Panic, confusion, damage control. All key characteristics of teachers... I see where you got that from now.

Forgotten Gem

I miss those little ones. Even when they forget the words. Even when they change what I think of when I think of Nelly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkJSPL_1uLQ

Over.

I'm struggling to put into words exactly how I feel right now. My two years are up. My short-lived teaching career is over. Tomorrow, I will pack up the last pieces of my classroom and leave J. H. Gunn Elementary forever. While I do that, I'll find remnants of my students everywhere- the Disney tracings that Glenda gave me, the pencils Jaelyn tore erasers out of, the thirteen toy cars I confiscated from Sean.

I'll think of my kids from last year. Of Jacob, who figured out how multiplication worked on his own but could barely read. Of Taylor, who got a nosebleed every single day when we packed up. I'll think of Briona and the day I found bruises handprinted up her arms and onto her back. The sadness that was constantly behind Juwon's eyes.

I'll remember the days I hated it more than anything, the days when I was waiting in the parking lot at 5:25 am for the janitor to come and open the doors. The days when it was dark as I walked alone to my car. I'll remember my desperate hours spent planning, worrying, wondering how I would get some of these kids to read. I'll remember my craziest days when I wanted to go back to where I found myself after that first day, curled up in my cubby sobbing to my mom on the phone. The books and pencils and chairs that got thrown at me. The slammed doors. I'll remember the Mondays that felt like a whole week by themselves, the paperwork that took up hours of time. I'll remember the pain I felt knowing about the lives some of my kids led, lives filled with poverty and problems and neglect.

But most of all, I'll remember the moments when it all came together. When I asked how Ronaldo became such a good reader and he told me he dreamt it one night while he was sleeping. When Adrian remembered what the word elusive meant a month after we learned it. The excitement of the fun days. The hugs and high fives. The Friday dances on the bus lot. When they GOT it and their eyes lit up because they knew they got it.

My dad's always said that this is the greatest job in the world. And while I feel good about what is next for me, I can't help but think of how different life will be without those kids driving me crazy every day. Because when it came down to it, no matter what they did or said or threw, they were always just kids, growing right in front of my face and teaching me a hell of a lot more than I think they realized, a hell of a lot more than I ever thought they would.

I'll end this post with a quote from Destini's yearbook about me, which I think might be a better description of how I feel about each and every one of my kids:

My teacher is crazy and she is full of love and I want to squeeze the love out of her.... Right back at ya.

Five Days

I'm not quite ready to do my final reflection on these crazy two years I've spent teaching. I do, after all, have five more days to go (and with six and seven year olds, you never know what can happen in five days). But I am beginning to fill up with a big sense of guilt and regret about leaving. My plans for next year were put in the staff bulletin for the week and I got an e-mail shortly after from the teaching assistant who has worked in my room for the past two years.

She's seen some of the craziest moments of my teaching career, from my horrible first day (after which she told me she was surprised I came back) to the day when two kids peed their pants and one threw up within a span of 30 seconds. She was there when one of my kids threw a bin of books across the room in rage, when my autistic student ran out of the room and down the hallway. She's amazing.

Her e-mail was short, but it really hit me hard.

Miss Fiorillo, Congratulations on your new venture! I was really surprised. I thought you were a born teacher, but I know you will be successful in whatever you do. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with you the past two years. Please be sure to stay in touch!


I'm not putting that on here to try to show everyone what a fabulous teacher I was (and am, for five more days). In fact, I don't really know why I'm blogging about it. It's just another piece in the puzzle of trying to make sense of the work I've done these two years, trying to come to terms with all the challenges I've faced and the challenges my kids face. It makes it incredibly hard to leave knowing how powerful your impact can be as a teacher, but I'm still doing it. For what? Maybe I'll figure that out in my final reflection. Until then, I'm letting it sink in.

"Do you think this makes me want to invite you to my house?"

First grade teachers have to deal with a lot of problems that have nothing to do with whether their kids know how to read or do basic math (although I guess all teachers do). Because of the time of year, and all the canceled specials and outdoor recess, those problems seemed to be a lot bigger over the past two weeks. The biggest one? Our classroom bathroom.

Every day for two weeks, someone was peeing on the floor of the bathroom. It was gross. We had already had the talk that just because there's a drain (in this case, on the floor) does not mean you can pee in it. Several boys had further questions after that.

"Why not?"
"Well would you pee in a sink? That has a drain in it."
Blank stares. My thoughts- Oh God, they peed in the sink.


After that, I had everyone close their eyes and offered a Dum Dum to the student who was honest enough to admit to doing it, whether it was by accident or on purpose. Three boys raised their hands. THREE. They admitted to peeing all over the bathroom for a piece of D list candy. I had to have a talk with them, trying VERY hard not to just yell about locking it up and getting themselves under control.

"What do you think we can do to solve this problem?"

The three boys looked at me inquisitively. Then Gabriel, one of the few white kids in my class with a thick backcountry accent says, "I think maybe I might stand too far away." Yeah, that sounds like a good place to start to me.

Later that week, our toilet started spurting water out of the top, flooding the bathroom with at least an inch of standing water (good thing there's a drain!). I called the office, ready to evacuate the room for fear of rising toilet water. Luckily, the water stopped after about five minutes. Even more lucky because no one ever came down to fix it.

Which brings me to my main story. Before lunch one day, Gabriel came running out of the bathroom speaking so quickly and with such Southern twang I could barely understand him.

"I don' know what happened Miss Fi-rillo but I was jus' in the bathroom and washin' my hands and all of a sudden out of nowhere the piece fell right on off of that sink and I didn't do nothin' and it just fell and now it's sprayin' all over the place and I don' know why."

Translation: the piece that makes the sink water come out in a soft, steady stream somehow fell off. I didn't think it would be that bad until I turned on the sink and a stream of water came shooting out so hard it ricocheted off the porcelain and almost took my eye out. I hastily tried to screw it back on, but one of the pieces wouldn't fit. I left it by the sink, deciding to wait until the end of the day to call a custodian.

At the end of the day, one of my girls came to me and informed me that the metal piece of the sink had gotten thrown in the toilet. I was mad. Really mad. And really fed up with all these bathroom problems.

"IF SOMEONE DOESN'T TELL ME WHO THREW THAT PIECE IN THE TOILET, I AM CANCELING FIELD DAY FOR EVERYBODY."

Gasps. Color drained from their faces. A chorus of "I didn't do it!" rang from the class.

I calmed myself down a little bit. "I don't need to know who didn't do it," I replied, writing NO FIELD DAY in big black letters on the whiteboard. "But if I don't find out who did do it, we will be sitting inside doing MATH WORKSHEETS during Field Day."

Kids started packing up, and Gabriel starts walking sullenly to the front of the room. I should have known.

"Uh, Mis Fi-rillo?" he said, looking down. "I, uh... I think I might have been the one who threw the thing in the toilet.

"You either did it or you didn't Gabriel."

He paused for five seconds. Then- "I did it."

I made him go get it out and replace it in the original spot on the sink. While he was doing that, I erased my NO FIELD DAY message and started to meet my packed-up class on the carpet.

Just before I got there, Gabriel walked by me again.

"Well you're welcome for telling the TRUTH!" he proclaimed with his hands on his hips.

Oh right. I'm supposed to thank you when you throw stuff in the toilet. They must have skipped over that in Teach For America training.

Now that THAT's out of the way...

The depressing post, I mean. It's been a long time. For some reason I've been completely turned off by the blogging world. I blame the time of year and the situation described below. But my mom threatened to cut off my phone bill if I didn't blog soon, so I figured I HAD to write something. She also told me I needed an attitude adjustment.

Probably true.

My days have consisted of working and forgetting. I "forget" that three kids admitted to peeing on the floor in our class bathroom for a measly Dum Dum sucker (I had to get the truth out of them somehow), then explained that it might be happening because they're standing too far away from the toilet. I "forget" that one of my girls told me her butthole itched then proceeded to stick BOTH hands down her pants to scratch it.

One of my girls, a little redhead, was hanging off the monkey bars today with her shirt around her neck. Baring it all. She didn't hear me screaming pull her shirt up, but just hung there, letting the breeze cool her off. I had to run across the playground to get her to cover up her Janet Jackson-esque wardrobe malfunction. I think she thought it was okay because she had Bandaids covering up her... well, you know. Like if that part was covered she wasn't being inappropriate. I couldn't forget that story because it was too funny. I think we all wish we could be that free still.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try a little harder to stop this whole forgetting thing because as excited as I am to have only ten days left, I know I'm going to miss it. And while the part I'm going to miss only makes up about 10% of my (the other 90% being about testing and school/district administration and kids being brats and bodily fluids), it's the most important 10% of what I do.

More on that sentimental topic later, when the cabin fever of the past nine days has worn off.

Return of the First Year

I chose that title because in spite of the fact that I have been teaching for 350 days, in spite of reaching the ten day countdown in my second year, today took me back in a time machine to a feeling I was used to having in my first year. A feeling of hopelessness. A feeling of being trapped. A feeling of wanting desperately to escape. Or hide... possibly inside a small, inconspicuous cupboard.

I hate that people reading this are probably wondering how bad six and seven year olds can REALLY be. Suck it up, you're saying at home. Hear me out.

Let me paint a picture for you of the last two weeks. I get to school at 6 in the morning and prepare my classroom. This is actually my favorite part of the day. It's quiet and I have a large amount of coffee to enjoy with no one else around. I've already gotten my daily dose of adult news thanks to a 20 minute commute and NPR's early morning programming. I'm not trying to make people feel bad for me because I get up early- I would do the early morning for the rest of my life if I could.

At 7, kids get there. They unpack, start their morning work, and try not to bug me. At 7:35, the late bell rings and I close my door. I close my door very slowly because it is the last time my students and I will see the light of day until 1:45 pm. I whisper last words to the other teachers on my hall, all closing their doorways equally slowly.

Okay, okay, I'm over exaggerating. We are allowed to leave for 20 minutes to eat lunch. But because of testing, there have been no specials, no recess outside, and absolutely NO noise. Ever. And my lunch break isn't so much of a lunch break. After 10 minutes of putting food on their trays at  (they can't reach the plates themselves), I run to the bathroom for my one bathroom break of the day and scarf down my food in the remaining 10 minutes. And then we trek back to the room, silent, for the rest of the day. It feels like jail, not because I don't want to teach my kids, but because we are not allowed to leave the room and get some space from each other.

It's enough to put a strain on any relationship, but little kids need to move around. They need fresh air. They need to hear someone BESIDES me. They need a break. I NEED A BREAK. It's been nine days of this. Today, something finally snapped.

I won't go into details because it is not funny. Plus, I've been able to get over it thanks to some Starbucks, retail therapy, and a wonderfully intense power yoga class. But I wanted to be on the cyber record so that when it has been FOURTEEN days of no specials or outdoor recess, people know what happened to me when I don't return from work... yes, that's right. We still have five days of this solitary confinement left. Five more days of kids wanting to go to the hallway bathroom just for a change of scenery. Five more days of "Can we please go outside today?" Five more days.

I'm trying to stay positive. You can do anything for five days.

...except go without food. Or water. I fear this situation may be just as dire.

Real Life Quotes

From the end of year survey/letter my reading class did... yesterday was my last day with them because of the crazy testing blitz schedule at my school. Seriously though- the official admin name is the testing blitz schedule.

"My best part of Ms. Fiorillo's class is        testing       ."

"Ms. Fiorillo helped me become a better reader by testing me a lot."

"My favorite memory from Ms. Fiorillo's class is        the last time she tested me     ."

Also, this gem:
"The most important thing Ms. Fiorillo taught me is      math     ."
Except I only taught you reading. Oh well. It's the thought that counts, right?

So I want you to take a wild guess at what I'll be focused on the last 22 days of school. Yep, that's right. I'll be giving each of the kids in my class FOUR tests, one-on-one with me. I guess I'll have to save up the anxiety and nostalgia and all those other good feelings until after my 42 hours of testing is over. Talk to ya then.

Missed Moments

A lot goes down in my classroom that I do not blog about. Either I forget, can't word it right, or fall asleep before I can share it with the internet. And then my faithful twelve readers are deprived of that hilarious or important moment forever. I realized that one of my favorite stories from this year is one of those. And, as Jack just reminded me ever so kindly, now is the best time to begin blogging about it (as the Celtics/Heat game begins).

Anyway, it's short. Plus everyone knows the beginning of basketball games don't matter. Not the first five minutes, at least.

Qwaseem, one of the kids in my class this year, is one of the happiest and most carefree little kids there is. Unless he has to do something he doesn't want to do, which is 95% of all first grade requirements. Then his face turns sour, he gets mad, and he snorts and grunts like a bull.

Key difference between this year and last year? I can deal with that now. I had to escort him one-on-one out to the bus lot one day because he wouldn't leave my room with the rest of my class because he didn't get a SECOND piece of candy. He glared at me the whole walk out, slamming his bookbag on the sidewalk as he trudged along.

"Pick it up," I commanded.

"Why are you ruining my life? I hate you."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Last year that would have haunted me all weekend. This year, I'm not letting a six-year-old ruin my Friday because he didn't get his way.

NOT the story I intended to tell. The one I'm talking about happened during math class, when Qwaseem waved one finger in the air emphatically to show me that he had to use the bathroom.

"Someone's in there," I replied, "You'll have to wait."

"But I CAN'T," he whined back. "Let me go in the hall bathroom."

Unfortunately for Qwaseem, two unidentified K-2 students had been dumping our toilet paper rolls in the toilets, so student were generally not allowed to go to the hall bathrooms anymore. And I've gotten Rainman-good at being able to tell when kids can wait and when they are actually going to pee their pants. This was not one of those moments. When I told him to wait, he continued to glare at me in spite of my insistence that he just keep working to make the time go by faster.

His classmate finally came out of the bathroom, grinning because he had probably been using toilet paper as a makeshift toy car for 10 minutes while in there. "Go, Qwaseem. Sean's out."

Instead of wiggling on over to the bathroom like most first graders (and college boys) when they REALLY have to go, he stood up slowly, staring at me. Each step he took had a calculated, even slap to it, like the steps of someone walking the plank on a pirate ship. It took him about 45 seconds to walk to the bathroom like that, his eyes on me the whole time.

When he finally got to the bathroom door, he lingered for about fifteen seconds with his hand on the doorknob, still looking at me. What a drama queen, I thought, believing he'd break the stare down to finally go in. But he didn't.

He turned around, walked just as slowly across the room back to me (where I was working with another kid) and told me flat out-

"Why do you have to be WASTING my time?"

I just looked at him. Wasting your time? You're six. What else do you have to do beside these addition problems I just gave you? Tie your shoe? Oh wait, you still don't know how to tie your shoes.

Meanwhile, as Qwaseem's nostrils were flaring and daggers were shooting out of his eyes in my general direction, the sweetest kid in my class walked up to me doing the telltale "I have to pee" dance.

"Go ahead," I said to him, then turned back to Qwaseem. "I'm sorry I wasted your time."

First graders telling me that kind of stuff is one of things I will NOT miss about teaching. Along with a whole bunch of stuff I will miss. But you won't hear about that until I start getting sentimental... on the last day of school.

Appreciation

This week is Teacher Appreciation Week, with the official Teacher Appreciation Day being TODAY. What does this mean? Free chicken sandwiches for teachers at Chick-fil-A, for one thing. It also means an onslaught of gifts from kids ranging from homemade to store-bought to I found this somewhere in my house, put it in a plastic bag, and then gave it to you.

I blogged about awkward teacher gifts at the end of last year when I got (so far) the most random gift ever- a pajama romper. The roll-on gel deodorant and cologne two-pack I got Monday is in a close second... but I have high hopes (It's only Tuesday after all).

For some kids, Teacher Appreciation Week is a year-long things. One of my girls this year has brought me a gift at least once a week since school started. So far, just from her, I have accumulated:

• A shrink-wrapped toothbrush
• A Yoplait yogurt
• Several tracings of Little Mermaid scenes with captions in Spanish
• A smushed Twinkie
• A miniature Mickey Mouse snow globe 
• A Barbie band-aid
• Three Christmas tree marshmallow mints

I think she has the most potential to beat the romper, but again... still early.

Stability

Learning from a traumatic lesson today. One of my favorite kids, or at least my most quirky and adorable one, had his last day today unexpectedly because of a parent custody issue. His mom came in during the middle of the day out of nowhere and 15 minutes later, he was gone. Moved. He came to school with everything normal, believing he'd be back home at 2:00. I came to school believing he'd be in my class the rest of the year. If it was traumatic for me to have to say goodbye to him so abruptly, I can't even imagine what it would be like for him.

The most heartbreaking part is the fact that this kid is below grade level but has finally been getting it. Things have been clicking for him and he's been growing like crazy the last few weeks. Now he'll be at a new school, probably back at square one because he's not used to their expectations and routines. I worry about him.

It made me grateful for the sense of stability I have in my own life, even though I've been complaining about it since January. No matter how much things are up in the air with school and jobs and all of that, ultimately I know that I'm coming home to the same apartment every day and can trust that the people supporting me will be there for me. It's a perspective shift.

And with that shift I make my official announcement- da da da DA- that I WILL be going to law school next year, officially. No more "Well, I don't know..." or "I haven't decided yet...". BU School of Law, here I come. I'm taking advantage of the solid ground I have under my feet and just biting the bullet. My deposit check is written, sealed, and ready to be mailed. Although maybe I won't mail it just yet...

Some things might never change.

All Growed Up?

Things that Make Me Feel Like an Adult:

• CC'ing someone on an e-mail
• Filing my taxes
• Having one beer at the bar and then going home
• Cleaning out a vacuum cleaner (I didn't even know you could do that before last year)

Things that Don't Make Me Feel Like an Adult:

• Eating PopTarts
• Getting carded to buy spray paint
• Telling a kid to write about a bunny that farts jelly beans for a shape poem because he wasn't interested in anything else about bunnies

What I'll do in the name of student achievement.

Disclaimer: this post somewhat inspired by my hilarious friend's similar post. Not quite as funny as hers, but oh well.

"Is This What Ya'll Want?!"

For some reason, I'm about 90% more inclined to use "ya'll" when I'm angry at my class. Which is usually about... four hours out of the day. It's becoming more and more prevalent as March unveils their true personalities, showing me that my kids are actually the spawn of every ADHD individual that has ever lived. Not necessarily the devil, because alone each one of them is bearable, likable even (most of the time). But together, I need a misting hose of Adderall to contain their activity, a blowhorn to get their attention, and a three gallon tub of Starburst jelly beans to even begin to motivate them to sit still.

The computer teacher asked me how I survived without keeping a switch in my classroom. The music teacher offered me 5% of his salary. The pregnant art teacher just rubbed the bridge of her nose and said, "You have a very active class this year, Ms. Fiorillo." Even the secretary (who frequently pages our BMT for me) told me she was praying for me. What's the deal, kids?!

It was another day of them coming out of specials being scolded for their group behavior, only to be skipping down the hall spastically knocking down student work because they prefer looking like they're in a Dance Dance Revolution commercial rather than regular elementary students walking down the hallway.

Flash forward five minutes and there I am, talking at a pretty loud volume.

"Is this what you want?" I say. "To drive your teacher crazy? To send her running out that back door flailing her arms and screaming like she's being chased by bees?! IS THIS WHAT YA'LL WANT?!"

Silence. Then the crack.

"Did she just say ya'll?" Two kids fall out of their chairs and a strand Jha'Nya's plastic hair beads come loose and bounce dramatically on the floor. Three kids lay out to try to pick them up first. At the same time, Sean makes a farting noise with his mouth by accident and Immanuel proclaims loudly that he will use it on himself if he isn't allowed to go to the bathroom immediately.

Another typical day.

Daylight Keeping Time

I've never understood why they call it Daylight Savings Time. It's not like you're saving anything. Changing the time forward or backward has no effect on how long the day actually is; it just changes what the clock says. It's all a matter of perspective... it's a matter of whether you want light at 6 in the morning or 8 at night.

For me, it means it's dark when I get to work again. Bummer.

But in a more philosophical way, I think maybe I need my own shift in perspective away from this attitude where I do not like my job (at least a lot of parts of my jobs) and count down the days until it's over. I need to try to find some light in what I do. Because there are great moments in my day somewhere, even if it takes some serious emotional excavation to find it. Case in point? My reading class is amazing, and we have fun together EVEN on the days when the kids (or me) are not 100% on the ball. And the fact that most of my homeroom is genuinely sweet, whether they bring in extra pieces of their birthday cake or tracings of Disney characters with Spanish captions. However I look at it, it's time to start looking forward (get it?).

VIP

I got invited to a really exclusive party this weekend. Too bad I'll be out of town in the middle of nowhere Tennessee on a romantic girl date with my friends.

Where's the bash? Lazy 5 Ranch. Whose party? Jha'Nya's seventh birthday.

I actually kind of wish I could go... Weird? Probably.

Part II

All that sappy stuff I said yesterday about the teachable moments? And the children teaching me life lessons?

Yeah, I take that back.

Not entirely, but today was pretty bad. I think I might need get some kind of mister that sprays out a mild sedative every 30 minutes or something. My kids this year... are CRAZY. Or "busy." Or "active." Whatever you want to call it, they are all over the place. Need constant movement. And today, the only thing they were teaching me was how to lose my patience. One of them was acting crazy enough to prompt another student to call out, "I think he needs Ritalin!" Probably so.

*By the way, how do you know what Ritalin is?*

The nice thing about this year is my ability to forget about the day's events and chalk it up to them being juice box hungover from the Super Bowl. Tomorrow's another day, or something like that, and no matter how bad things get in my room one day, they could be perfect the next. Plus tomorrow's the hundredth day of school, which is always a pretty cute time. By always I mean it was last year.

What was supposed to be Part Deux of this blog post was the difference in teaching children something and teaching adults something. And that the older you get, the harder it is to teach people.

Why? Because kids have faith. Adults have less. Right now, my faith is pretty low. I'm hoping that will change tomorrow.

Pretty much all you have to do to teach a kid is to show them something that doesn't fit into their schema.  Show it to them, and they adjust what they think to include that event, even if what they see might be wrong. To them, there is no trickery. There's very little skepticism. Whatever they see is truth. If they don't see it... then, it's not true. Duh.

Adults are not that way. You could show them something a million times and they might still lean back and shake their heads. They might come up with a million excuses, a million reasons to counter what they've seen. Adults are (generally) very protective of where they place their faith, if they place it anywhere at all.

That's why in some ways, I'd rather have the kids. That look in their eyes when their skepticism melts away is something that you rarely see in people over the age of 12. It's something really special.

The only problem is that in the precious seconds after you've gained that trust and faith, they start sliding Bruce Springsteen Super Bowl show style underneath tables. Does it still count when they do that?

Teachable Moments

A catchphrase in education, often an excuse for diverting from the plans that are supposed to be the law and order of classrooms (in my school, at least). Teachable moments are times that present themselves without warning or preparation, a chance for a teacher to divulge his or her priceless knowledge to some unsuspecting child who has asked a golden question, a question that opens the floodgates for the wisdom of the elder. Early in my Teach For America experience, the people training us spoke about these times as if they were more valuable than gold, and yet still manage to happen at least once a week.

To be honest, the only teachable moment that I ever really remember is when one of my kids asked me what a sea urchin was. And the only reason it was a teachable moment in the first place is because my photographic memory (which never fails to deliver) remembers a book from my childhood that I knew was in my classroom library in the "Fun Books" bin. Not exactly the most glamorous kind of teachable moment.

Certainly there have been more, because I do recall times when I left work feeling as if I had capitalized on some invisible opportunity to give out a little nugget of information that my students otherwise would not have gotten. But in my experience, I have been the recipient of teachable moments more often than my students have.

One happened on Friday. And it was probably one of the most dynamic ones yet.

As I have mentioned a few times this year, one of the students in my class has VERY severe ADHD. It's at its worst after lunch and recess, probably because of all the movement and transition. He swings his arms, jumps over desks, mashes pencils into the floor... for awhile I was convinced that he was the devil reincarnated, sent to destroy any ounce of desire I had to continue teaching the next day. I changed my mind slowly and with much hesitation. By now, I've realized that he can't help it and that he has an unfortunate imbalance of something that makes him different. He needs something else. I haven't figured out just what that something else is yet, but I have figured out some things that can work for him. Sometimes.

One strategy I've reverted to is having him walk with me in the hall instead of in line with his classmates. He's there to pick out the kids who are doing a good job in the hallway, a task that keeps his focus enough to prevent him from windmilling his arms and legs violently as he walks. I was pacing next to him, one arm around his shoulders as he pointed out kids who were showing good behavior. It was a particularly... challenging day for him.

"Jaelyn," I started. "Did you take your medicine today?"

"A little bit," he said, not looking. "But that medicine don't work anymore." He frowned, crossed his arms, and stopped walking. Meanwhile, his peers were puffing out their chests and holding their breath dramatically, trying to get chosen for best hall-walker. I have the dumbest rewards.

"Well maybe you need to talk to your mom about it." For my sake. I thought it selfishly. I hate when I think those things. "We want you to be able to do well in school." We also want you to be able to walk in a line without acting spastic.

He looked right at me then. Right in my eyes. When six-year-olds look you in the eyes, REALLY look at you in the eyes... I can't even explain it. They have that saying about things coming from the mouths of babes... I'm convinced they're talking about six-year-olds when they're talking about the mouths of babes.

"It's so hard for me to be good."

He didn't turn his gaze right away. He held it just a little bit longer. Then, it broke.

"Sean's doing a nice job... Emmanuel, too."

Right there it was. My failure as an adult to acknowledge that there was a legitimate thing holding him back, something that I could not and would not ever understand. I had ignored it. I brushed it off as an excuse he was making, an act he was putting on so that he could play instead of work. There he was, a first-grader, capitalizing on a teachable moment he probably couldn't even recognize.

I felt guilty the rest of the day.

Fashion Show, Fashion Show, Fashion Show at Lunch!

My kids were funny this week. With the exception of Wednesday, when I had to eat two Poptarts after school in response to the day's events.

I recently decided to try to have a mindset change about my relationships with my kids because, after all, they are just kids. I hold them so accountable for what they do and get so angry with them, forgetting the whole time that they don't mean it. They can't mean it. They're SIX. They are not barrel rolling around on the carpet when they should be measuring tape on the floor to annoy me or to ruin my day, but because when you're six, barrel rolling on the carpet seems a hell of a lot more fun than measuring something with craft sticks. When I think of it that way, I don't really blame them.

In fact, it made me wonder why I'm not doing more of that stuff. Not necessarily the rolling and flailing parts, but the having fun parts. It's not hard to have fun teaching little kids, especially for someone like me who thinks they are endlessly funny and likes to be the center of attention. That's where the attitude shift came in. I decided to stop being such a party pooper and let myself and my kids have a little more fun. Then we could give each other a break with all this making each other angry stuff.

So this week went a lot better.

First of all, one of the girls in my reading class complimented me on my dark purple nail polish, then said,

"Miss Fiorillo, when you wear that dark nail polish it makes me think you're going moth."

"Oh really," I replied. "Going moth? What does that mean?"

"You know, when you wear black nail polish and pretend you're a vampire." I guess that's what they're calling it these days, then.

Then, during math, I explained that we were going to be practicing measurement all week so we could get really, REALLY good at it (god, doesn't that sound exciting? Doesn't it just make you want to follow the rules?) .My little hyperactive ADHD friend piped in right there with-

"Why can't we get better at flying?"

Last year, that little blurb would've puzzled me. I would not have known how to respond. Why is that even coming up when we're talking about measurement? This year, I can go with it.

"Well we'd have to know how to fly first to get better at it, wouldn't we?"

Apparently that answer was sufficient for him because he cocked his head to the side, looked up, and nodded a cursory nod before continuing to listen. It's scary that I know how to answer that kind of six-year-old question with so little effort.

Yesterday I took a little video to record them doing a fake fashion show during indoor recess. One of the girls in my homeroom thinks she's Beyonce, strutting down the hall with her  hand on her hip and her little pigtails bouncing. She taught me how to dougie on the playground, and at the age of six is already a better dancer than most people I know. Weird how you can see it come out that early. It makes me wonder what some of my friends were like at that age.

The funny part of the video wasn't the girls doing a make believe fashion show, but the kids in the foreground who decided their indoor recess activity would be to put on the puffy winter coats and have back scooting races on the floor at the back of the room. Kids are entertained by anything-- except maybe measurement.

Center of Gravity

Major shift today. Last night, I got a phone call and two e-mails about an impromptu staff meeting before school this morning. Let me remind you that our school day begins with the bright-eyed children walking through our doors at 7 am, which puts the meeting around 6:45. Entirely too early to be discussing any kind of information, much less any kind of pertinent information.

And pertinent information it was. We found out that our principal is being moved to an extremely low-performing elementary school in Charlotte as a strategic staffing initiative. Extremely low as in the bottom 5%. Of the state. Her last day is February 11th, giving us two weeks to let that bomb of information settle and for her to clean out her stuff and prepare to transform a new school.

I don't really know what to think here. I've known for awhile that I haven't planned on coming back next year, something that I finally told my principal about a few weeks ago. Now she's leaving, and suddenly the whole school is uncertain. With her here, as tough as she could about certain things (like turning in lesson plans and posting lesson objectives on the board and staying top of relatively minute details like bulletin boards), we all knew what we were getting. We knew what to expect. Now we don't even know who our new principal will be, much less what he or she will be like. There's nothing to do now but wait.

She announced the news on the morning announcements and I talked to my kids about it during morning meeting, explaining that sometimes people are needed in other places, especially when there are other kids just like them whose schools aren't as good as ours. They decided that no, it wasn't fair that the other schools weren't like ours and that yes, it was a good thing that our principal was stepping up and helping out. Case closed.

But then, at lunch, Jha'Nya asked me agin why the principal has to go. I explained again that she was needed at another school to help the teachers there be better teachers for their students.

"Why don't the teachers just fix what they're doing wrong? Then everyone can just stay where they are and be happy."

I wish the achievement gap were that easy to solve.