As a Kindergarten teacher I feel that I am somewhat in the business of names.  Teaching children how to say, recognize, read and properly write their names is one of the first tasks we do to teach children to read.  Also, I have seen and learned exactly one-bajillion kids’ names.  So, I have some advice for those of you in that oh-so-important process of choosing a name for your little bundle.  Now, of course, all parents should choose a name that they themselves are comfortable with, because you (and the kid) are the ones who will be using it for, well, forever.  So, I do not expect you to try to please me or anyone with your choice (although aren’t you sort of curious what your kid’s teacher is really thinking when she’s writing out those namecards?).

Tip #1. If you are simply trying to give your kid a one-of-a-kind name, don’t.
The reason for this tip is twofold: first, if no one has ever used the name you are thinking of, there is probably a reason.  It’s either too weird to be a good name, or maybe there’s just no reason to name a person that.
But more importantly, if you think you have chosen a name that no one else has ever thought of, you are (most-likely) wrong.  Case-in-point, my sister thought she made up a name for my nephew from putting two other names together that she liked, and it is a very cute name.  But I promise you we have come across at least 3 other kids with the same name (one of whom is older than my nephew, so they must have thought of it first after all)!  Not to mention, once that name is out there, if it is a cool name, others will copy you, and they have the right to do so, so one way or another, your kid won’t be the only one with that name anyway.  And why sacrifice giving your kid a good-quality name just for the sake of him/her being the ONLY one with that name.  Its a pointless struggle.

Plea #2. Either name your kid the name you are going to call him – or at least make sure your kid KNOWS his actual name.
This may sound silly, but I have multiple students every year who are either called their middle name, or a name completely different from any name that’s on any paper they filled out for school.  Then, when this timid kid enters the classroom, and you ask him, “Are you John?” He’s like, “Ummm, I’m not sure.”  This is not a self-confident way for John to enter into his school years.

Now, this second scenario actually happened to me: A student enrolled late so I didn’t have any paperwork for him at all, but I met his mom and asked what his name was.  She said, “Oh his name is Barnabas.” Okay great.  Mom leaves.  “Class, I would like you to meet our new student, Barnabas!”  Kid looks at me, “Who’s Barnabas?”
Me: “Oh I’m sorry how do you say your name?”
Kid: “My mom calls me Babyboy.”
Me: “I’m not going to call you Babyboy at school, so you’re Barnabas now.”

Only problem, later on I’m trying to call Barnabas from across the room and he has no idea I’m talking to him.  Not to mention, he doesn’t want to write Barnabas on any of his papers because he has no clue who this Barnabas character is, but he knows it’s not him.

Rule #3. Try to choose a first name that’s not 20 letters long.
This one I will explain with a short scenario.  In my Kindergarten class, students have to learn to spell their first name, and they have to practice writing it 4 or 5 times a day.  After handwriting time, kids get to do free drawing…What fun!  So, if you’re a 5-year-old, and you have to write your name 5 times before you get to do art, would you rather be Matt or Maxamillion?  Poor hand-cramped Esmeralda has rarely done art all year, meanwhile Emma is in the corner taking her 4th piece of drawing paper just having the time of her life.

Now I’m not saying I’ll never structure it so that kids with longer names have equal art time, but come on, over the course of their lives, Esmeralda and Maxamillion will fill out lots of papers, forms, and have to bubble in stupid dots for the letters in their names which Emma and Matt will not.

Tip #4. Just be kind to your child.
As a teacher, one of my favorite parts of the year is learning the new kids’ names and meeting them and learning just how unique each of their personalities and interests and talents are.  It’s exciting and fun for me and the kids.  And really, it probably doesn’t matter what you name your child, as long as you love that child to death.  And anyway, kids have a way of making their name work for them as they live and grow and walk around inside of it, so once you give it to them, it’s all theirs. ]]> http://gintojuiceboxes.com/thoughts-on-teaching/teacherly-advice-on-naming-your-newborn/feed/ 1 http://gintojuiceboxes.com/thoughts-on-teaching/teacherly-advice-on-naming-your-newborn/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GinToJuiceboxes/~3/bsdbHusM5UY/ http://gintojuiceboxes.com/stories-about-kids/happy-mardi-gras-rainbow-punch/#comments Sat, 19 Mar 2011 23:42:18 +0000 mizG http://gintojuiceboxes.com/?p=158 So, it’s Spring!  And the way Spring is visible in my classroom is that kids start bringing in Easter candy, Mardi Gras beads, and you know, a bunch of crap that takes their attention away from school.  But, we are all ready for Spring break – the kids and me, so I sort of just tell them, you can wear that plastic necklace/ring you got from the top of a cupcake/shamrock pin/etc. as long as I don’t see you or someone else playing with it during lessons.
Now, for most kids, this becomes to difficult after about 10 seconds and I take it from them until the end of the day (or forever because half the time the kids don’t even remember they had this can’t-live-without-it treasure, and I certainly have other things on my mind at the end of the day rather than redistributing plastic junk).
Rainbow Punch is what you would call a constant case of the toys-you-can-wear conundrum, but she actually doesn’t play with the stuff that much, and since I am constantly fighting *ahem!* I mean bargaining with her on so many other issues (“Please don’t lick the wall all the way down the hall as we walk to P.E., Rainbow Punch”) I pretty much don’t care if she wants to wear some Barbie necklace.  Until last week.

You see her parents decided to go ahead and let her come to school with both Mardi Gras beads hung around her neck and a pink lightning bolt tattoo…wait for it…on her chest.  So, picture a kid starved for peer attention during our math lesson tapping kids on the shoulder and pulling down the front of her shirt to show off this tattoo whilst wearing the Mardi Gras beads.  It was so close to being in Rio…yet so far.

Question time for all you parents out there: why would a parent agree to put a fake tattoo on her daughter’s chest?

And if you are a parent getting ready to put fake tattoos on your kid, just know that wherever you put it, make it somewhere the kid doesn’t have to take clothes off for other kids to see it, because they will want other kids to see it.

So, in order to really challenge the higher readers for our non-fiction unit, I lugged in 30 non-fiction books from the city library about all sorts of animals(yes I got some dirty looks from the housewives who apparently needed their kids to read about pandas this week), including a bunch on dinosaurs and other extinct animals that I knew the kids would be excited to read about.

So, one of my major high readers calls me over to his desk and wants to tell me what he’s learned about saber tooth cats from his book, and he asks me, “Mrs. G, do you know what saber tooth cats like to eat?”  Mind you, he has the book opened to the picture of a saber tooth cat ripping into a deer or something, so I figured he was gonna state the obvious.  I’m like, “I don’t know, what did you find out they eat from the book?”  and he screams out, “They eat Nothing! Because they’re DEAD!”

Hehe.  Smart kid…still 5.

So, you can imagine, it was hard for me to connect with her for the first, oh, 4 months of the school year.  Since then, Rainbow Punch and I have found ways to engage with each other, I mean, after all, I do control the flow of stickers in the classroom, and R.P. has learned to trust me and that learning can be fun.

Around January, when R.P. was just beginning to turn a corner and learn to use her words, it was rest time and all the students were laying down for 15 minutes.  Now, half the time, R.P. would be so tired that she would conk out in the first 2 seconds of rest time and not even wake up when it was over, so I would just leave her in the library while we did Calendar, and the other half of the time she would roll around like a weeble-wobble kicking her feet and making bird noises.  So, on one of her bird-noise days, I walked over to her and said, “Rainbow Punch, you have to put your legs down and be quiet.”  She sat up, looked strait at me and said in the calmest voice I had ever heard from her, “That’s not going to work for me,” and then just looked at me waiting for a response.

I was so happy that R.P. had actually talked to me, and in a normal voice, that I just smiled and sort of chuckled.  Then Rainbow Punch absolutely looked at me like I was crazy, shrugged her shoulders and just went back to rolling around on the carpet.

Then there’s me.  I am the most sarcastic (but not mean) person I have ever known, and I am no nonsense with my young students.  I rarely yell – only in the case of safety issues – and I am fair and understanding, but I don’t coddle my kids.  I expect them to work hard when they are in school.  I think this strict realistic attitude toward kids sometimes translates to cold or un-nurturing, especially to teachers of older grade kids who expect Kindergarten to feel more like daycamp (I should have daisies in my pigtails and let the kids call me Peaches) and less like school.  When teachers of 2nd through 5th grade come to my classroom or see us in the hallways, they do one of two things:

Scenario 1:  3rd grade teacher walks in gingerly to ask if I have any extra copier paper and sort of steps over and around children as if they are little snot landmines that could detonate at any moment then, after receiving needed paper, backs toward the door and squeezes out closing it carefully behind her so as not to let any of the little ones slip into the hall with her like water through a drain.
I sort of like this reaction – it makes me feel like I am doing something by teaching these Kinder kids that a lot of people see as mysterious and dangerous (oh yea!).

Scenario 2 (this is the one I can’t stand): 5th grade teacher sees students in the hallway walking in line to Art class, looks at students, smiles patronizingly, waves at the little darlings and says something like, “they are so cyuuuuute!” or “awwww, your shoe is untied” and then keeps walking.
Yeah, thanks for stopping my whole girls’ line because, guess what, half of their shoes are untied, and now you’ve created a traffic jam as kids are checking their shoes and stopping in mid walk as the person behind them keeps walking right into them.

First of all, if you have never taught Kindergarten before, one thing you must learn is that a kid having a shoe untied is really not a big deal.  Heck, I have kids whose shoes I’ve never seen tied all year, and you know what? Those kids are just fine, and they will eventually learn to tie their own shoes or wear shoes that don’t tie.  If I stopped a lesson, or quit walking to lunch every time a kid had his shoe untied, we would never ever NEVER get anything accomplished.

Second, Kindergartners take themselves very seriously, which they should.  They have left home for the first time and are working for 7 hours on very difficult concepts.  If you call them cute in that patronizing way, that’s basically the equivalent of calling them babies, which is like telling them they can’t do any work on their own, and if I’m ever going to teach them to read and write – which I will – they must believe that they are big, smart, self-sufficient people, not just cute little babies.

Whereas some parents/teachers/administrators, look at a kid’s drawing of scribbles and say, “Oh, my that is a beautiful picture” and then hang it on the fridge, I look at the drawing and say, “What is this picture about?” and if the kid can’t tell me, I say, “Well, you were supposed to draw a picture of your family, so try again.”  I think there is certainly some value to free expression, but I want my students to do better than the bare minimum and I think not challenging them is patronizing.

So because I’m not the typical I-just-work-here-because-kids-are-so-darn-cute Kindergarten teacher, I think I am even more able to appreciate the really good and amazing things that they do in my classroom, both academically and socially.
Because of this, my project for March is going to be to post some especially surprising/amazing/heart-warming things that my kids are doing.  These are the moments that I look back at at the end of the day to keep myself coming back to work each day.

Of course, somehow those silent cheers are always followed by silent groans (and maybe cursing).  Because while we teachers believe that a planning day is as valuable as a time machine allowing us to spend a blessed 7 hours grading papers, writing notes to parents, planning field trips, planning lessons, setting up science centers – you know the stuff  that actually matters to us but we have never had the time to do (or have been doing on the weekends and at night when I should be having a life); yes, while teachers have a long wish list of items we would love to do for our students, the administration always tends to fill the time with more crap stuff they want us to do for them.  Strange, I thought it was No Child Left Behind, not No Principal Left Behind.  Isn’t my time supposed to be spent on how to make the students learn, not on how to push papers for my boss?

So anyway, we have this planning day coming up, and surprisingly, they are actually giving it to us…sort of.  You see, this time we are actually allowed to decide by ourselves what we work on during the day – - and the administration has been helpful enough to make an approved list of the things we are freely allowed to decide from.  Oh yes, because who knows better what work I need to do for my individual students than my bosses?  I mean, I know I have been with my students all day, every week, for 8 months, but yeah I’m sure I couldn’t think of anything productive to do for them on my own.  I was so hoping there would be a list for me to choose from so I could direct my time toward something really meaningful – Yes, I’ve grown used to my cage, people.

So, two things bother me about this – okay, way more than two things, but I’ll just tell you my biggest two.

Number one, the things on the list are pretty normal things.  It’s not like anything mind blowing that I wouldn’t have thought of.  They are things like – do lesson plans, add items to workstations, organize testing data to plan for small group instruction, etc.  So, it’s not like the administration is offering us some great guidance to help us direct our time – no, instead they are treating us like, well, 5-year-olds.  Because, you know, a 5-year-old needs to be told every single day “Write your name on that paper, Squirt.”  And it’s not patronizing, because Squirt literally will forget.  HE’S FREAKING FIVE YEARS OLD!
But me?  Do I really need to be told what are acceptable activities for me to spend my time on?  Really?  I went to college, and grad school, and I can’t be trusted to come up with ideas for my own professional time?

And let’s talk about trust, shall we?

Number two problem:  We not only have to spend our time on one of the approved activities, the administration let us know that we are all to submit, in writing, a time sheet that tells what we spent all those precious “free” minutes doing.  Really?  Really.  I don’t think I have to explain why that would incense me – a professional, who is doing this job of teaching because I WANT to.  Did anyone hold a gun to my head as I attended college, grad school, professional development trainings, student teaching, interviews, meetings, etc?  No.  I’m here because I freaking want to be, and the administration is acting like we are all trying to get out of doing work.  So, here I am wagging my tail and barking every time I get an “assignment” from by boss.  Why?  Because I guess I keep trying to prove to them that I really want to be here, and no one is forcing me to do this job – and I do it damn well, people.

So, I decided to go ahead and fill out the time sheet and validate my time – which I would have spend on valuable activities anyway – it’s really just the fact that their telling us to do this that makes me mad.

And although this is not one of the approved activities, my first line on the time sheet will be: 15 minutes – Filling out timesheet for administration.

I mean, I wouldn’t want to leave out any detail of my time spent, right?

Unfortunately, during many of those 40 minute periods I literally forget or don’t have time to use the bathroom.  And I can’t tell you how many times I have looked at the clock at the end of a planning period and realized I have to pick up my kids from music or art and haven’t gone to the bathroom.  “Shoot – now I have to wait three more hours.”  This happens at least once a week.

Anyway, this week I’m going to the bathroom and I have just started when an announcement comes on the P.A. system – “Attention students and teachers, the water will be shut off for the next hour, there will be no bathroom or water breaks.  Thank you.”

Uh, what?  Niagra is already falling Ms. P.A. voice in the sky.  Why didn’t you give us some warning?  Well, maybe the toilet will flush once since there’s already water in the bowl.  Nope.  Okay, so I feel really gross leaving my 6 hours worth of daily urine and not flushing.  Well, what can I do?

I stuck my head out of the bathroom, looked both ways, and ran back to my classroom.  Yeah, no witnessess.  Just another day of feeling super professional.

So, basically, my kids have been learning an immense amount of skills and information.  Not to mention I have bonded with them like I never thought possible.  Even Squirt and a few others (who I will write more about in the future so you can understand just how amazing these kids are) have become my favorite students despite my past prayers that they would just be absent for one day – just one day, God that’s all I ask, knowing how horrible that made me.

Yet, I haven’t written about any of that.  Why?  Because apparently, the first 6 months of school are about focusing on the kids and, you know, just providing solid educational experiences for them.  And after that it’s about the administration piling on so much crap work (they call it “holding teachers accountable”) that there is no possible way any teacher with only 24 hours in a day could actually provide solid educational experiences.

Up to this point I haven’t really written much about the administration at my school, but I have worked at a few schools and I realize that most administrators are pretty much the same.  They have the power to really back you up and support you – like lets say when a parent tries to blame all their kid’s problems on you, or when you need some help resolving some instructional dilemma and just need to bounce some ideas off someone more experienced.  Principals can be great at that kind of stuff.  Or…they can choose to use their power for evil – you know to just make your life a nightmare focusing on dresscode, or whether you keep the door to your classroom opened or closed (because, everyone knows teachers who keep their doors closed have something to hide), or whether students work in groups of 2 rather than 4.  I mean, does a principal really need to care about those things if the students are safe and learning?

Well, in many schools – and mine is no different, one of the administration’s shticks is to be sure that teachers’ lesson plans (which we have to make the Friday before we teach the next Monday) reflect EXACTLY what goes on in the classroom the following week.  And, we have been told that we must be following that schedule TO THE MINUTE at all times, and warned that there will be “random checks” – ok…

Well, come on, any teacher knows that despite our best planning intentions there are some things that we just can’t plan for.  I mean, think about all the things that come up that are unplanned every week.  Fire drills, bathroom breaks, student questions, parent visitors, colleague visitors, student hearing and vision screenings, class pictures, and on and on.  So, what, the nurse comes in to take some students for vision screenings and I’m supposed to tell her too bad lady, it’s not in the lesson plans?  Or there are 30 seconds of allotted reading time left and Squirt asks a really inciteful and interesting question and I’m supposed to tell him that reading time is over – so that question is not important?

Needless to say, my new follow-where-education-takes-us outlook on teaching kindergarten does not lend itself to me planning out every minute of instruction down to the last second.  But, I’m trying my best to stay “on track” and make the bosses happy.

So far, I have dodged any serious time offenses – although last Friday when a girl wet her pants and had to be sent to the bathroom with another girl to help her clean up 15 minutes before we got out of school, they came back, and I said to the sniffling and embarrassed  5 year old, “why don’t you just sit on these papertowels and color for the next 5 minutes until you calm down and dry off,”  my principal did come in, interrupt our end of day closure activity, point to the girl in front of the whole class and ask, “What is that one doing?”

Oh, sorry, boss, you know, I should have made a 5 minute spot in my lesson plan for “girl wets pants and gets upset.”  I’ll try to plan better next week.  But then again, I also didn’t write on my lesson plan for 3:15 “Jerk walks in and interrupts”  I actually had that scheduled for 11:45 – or didn’t you see my lesson plan?

I could get really mad about being watched and questioned about what I do every minute, or I can just think, hey, if my boss wants to waste his time walking all the way down to my room just to see what an awesome job I’m doing, fine.  The door is open.

Probably one of the hardest adjustments for me moving from teaching 2nd grade last year to teaching kindergarten this year is the amazing difference in the maturity levels and capabilities between 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds.  It is quite amazing how mature 2nd graders can be both emotionally and academically.  I mean, 2nd graders can understand how to do a project with minimum explanation, they can be trusted to do jobs for you around the classroom (my favorite was how excited they would get over wiping down transparencies or cleaning my old dirty coffee mugs, I mean seriously, it was the most chosen classroom job of all including line leader!).  And, those kids produced some amazing writing, could read and understand REAL books (Captain Underpants is a real book, right?), and could understand complex social situations like being nice to the teacher when she’s sick (Yes, teachers go when they’re sick) and letting another kid go first in line to make him feel special after getting a bad grade on a test.

And, don’t get me wrong, I’m actually getting really attached to both my kindergarten students (they really can be quite cute and smart) and the curriculum that I get to teach.  I like singing alphabet songs with them, making up silly motions for teaching math, and seeing their eyes light up the first time they read a Dr. Seuss book.  These moments are priceless.
Maturity-wise, what I could live without are the 5-year-olds who actually act like 3 or 4-year-olds.  Enter: Strawberry Pop.

Strawberry Pop is a paradox ( I mean what troublesome child isn’t really?).  Amazingly, she is the highest reader in my class.  I say amazingly because during 90% of the day, she is not listening to lessons or participating in projects, but has her arms crossed and is either crying because someone wronged her in some way (such as someone taking the black crayon which she was obviously going to use after the fist full of other colors she was clutching and using had somehow run out), or screaming in her baby/whiny/high-pitched-mickey-mouse voice a command at me, the assistant teacher, or another poor unsuspecting child.  She makes it hard for me not only to teach her, but also distracts other kids from their work by getting into fights with them or tattling on them (can you imagine?) for wronging her.

I understand that it’s normal for 5-year-olds to be quite egocentric and compulsive.  And I don’t expect them to act like my old 2nd graders (man, I could see my face in those clean coffee mugs).  And the Kindergarteners have shown me that they can do some pretty crazy things including use sidewalk chalk as lipstick (not great for the lips by the way), and drink 4 milks at lunch and immediately throw up (3 milks is the official threshold for a 5-year-old in case you were wondering).  But Strawberry Pop is so far beyond self-centered that the normal kids — the chalky-lipped girls and the throwing-up-from-milk boys don’t want anything to do with her.  Once she actually stepped on another kid’s hand when we were sitting on the carpet and the kid started crying and S.P. stopped, turned, looked at the kid clutching his hand, looked at me strait in the eyes, and then casually went to her desk and started coloring.  Seriously?  We all know it was an accident, but come on, you must feel some sense of guilt for hurting another human being.

Of course, I have talked with S.P.’s parents on multiple occasions about her behavior toward others, and they always give me the same answer, “Yeah, she treats us that way at home too, we aren’t really sure what to do with her.”  Then, as they’re walking away I hear them say to her, “Do you want to go to that restaurant you like for dinner?”  And S.P. says, “No!  Not thaaaaat place, I want the other place!”  Hmmmm, I wonder why she treats people this way at school.

Well, glory of glories, one day in October Mrs. Pop said to me, “We are going on vacation to see S.P.’s grandma for two weeks.”  “Bon voyage,” trying my darndest to be professional, “We’ll miss her (not!) and we’ll see her when she gets back.”

Freedom!  Freedom!  Freedom!  Ooooooh, Freedom!  A two week vacation for me!

But then, three weeks pass and there’s no sign of her.  The winds have calmed, small woodland creatures have come out of hiding.  Flowers begin sprouting again.  Hmmm, wonder what the deal is?  Then, one morning before school the secretary calls and says to pull S.P.’s files and send them to the office because S.P. has transferred to a school …wait for it…out of state!  I calmly hang up the phone.  My mind is racing, “hold it together Mrs. G., this could be a horrible prank, my own punishment for actually wishing S.P. wasn’t my student (pain in the *** ) to deal with.  Is Ashton around the corner?”  I hand off the files and the truth becomes tangible.  Strawberry Pop…is…gone.

Cue music and the singers from Glee standing behind me:
“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, The Kid Moves Away!”

Sigh, I know I’m supposed to love all my students.  And I’m not supposed to want them to move away.  I’m also (apparently) not supposed to want loads and loads of coffee and mass amounts of chocolate; but I’m putting this one in the “win” column.  Strawberry Pop, you didn’t defeat me.

I got a new student who speaks no English at all.  This poor kid not only doesn’t speak English, he apparently has no interest in being in school-I mean literally, we can’t keep him in the freakin’ room.  Now, it’s not like this kid is the first one who has ever had the idea to leave.  Kids have tried to leave the room all the time; this was especially common at the beginning of the year.  For about the first month, when parents drop off their kids and actually leave, the kids’ eyes dart back and forth like a scared bunny (complete with wiggling nose).  You can see the kids’ thought process on their scared little faces, “If I ran away, I would have to run faster than that teacher…if I can outrun her I’m free, but if I try to run and she catches me, she might eat me.” I imagine this is the relative scenario they are running in their minds.

People ask me what I do if a child actually tries to dart for the exit, I mean, it’s not like I am able to actually touch the children–oh no.  On the other hand, I am responsible for their safety, and I can’t keep them safe if they aren’t in the room.  Well, most kids run the escape scenario and decide that they are too slow or chicken to actually run away, so they just stay.  The rest of the kids are either enticed inside by my smiling face (and, oh yeah, I also control the snack distribution), or by seeing other kids who seem to think its ok to stay.  The 1-2 % of kids who actually try to run, well, I’m faster.  I grab them by the hand (gently of course) and lead them back in.  If they try to fight me, I shut the door and bar it with my body (oh yeah, it’s a real Did-I-really-go-to-college-for-this? kind of moment).  After about 3-4 days of doing this with any student, I always win.  What can I say, I’m more hard headed than a 5-year-old.

But this new student, who henceforth I will refer to with Gatorade’s flavor name, Riptide Rush, because this kid is apparently gulping down sports drinks every morning in order to have the electrolytes to outrun me every day.  Yep, he runs out of the room every day.  Now, I have a teaching assistant who normally nets the kid before he can get too far down the hall (he sure figured out that doorknob quick), but she doesn’t arrive until 30 minutes after school begins.  This means the first 30 minutes of school, I’m taking attendance, leading the pledge of allegiance, and doing our morning meeting (with 28 other kids) all while holding this kid by the waist so he can’t get out.

Well, after 3 days of this, I decided to call on the …parents.  (Oh, you though I was going to say principal didn’t you?  Ummm, tried that, a little tip, you don’t want to be the new teacher in the school and the teacher known by your principal as “that teacher who can’t keep kids in the room”).  So I called Rush’s dad, who thankfully speaks English, and simply stated that I could not teach Rush if he wouldn’t stay in the room.  I told the dad that if he wanted Rush to learn, he needed to attend class with Rush and make him stay in the room.  Unfortunately, Rush’s dad couldn’t come, so he sent his mother who doesn’t speak any English.  But, she did understand that Rush had to stay in the room and she would make sure that he did.

So, Rush came back with his mom.  Remember how I have 28 other students besides Rush?  Well all 28 of them and I watched as for 5 days, Mrs. Rush sat next to Rush, did his work, wiped his nose when it ran, fed him graham crackers and answered her CELL PHONE and had conversations during the lessons.  What the heck?!

I got what I asked for.  Rush is in the room at least, now I just have to figure out how to get Mrs. Rush to leave (maybe Rush has some leftover Gatorade I could sneak into her purse).  That’s another fight for another day.  Off to do my runner’s stretches.