First Week, Class of 2010, 18th Year

It's time to begin again, and a fresh opportunity to improve on what I love to do the most. Teach! Last year, I had full intentions of writing regularly about my year, but that's not what happened. It's a teacher's karma to repeat those lessons not perfected so here I go again, same goal. I will wrap up last years story by reporting that those kiddoos were a class in a million. They are now launched to third grade highly prepared and ready to delight their third grade teachers.

My new class is here, fresh faced in a somewhat sparkling setting if you choose to not notice the finger smudges still on the windows, or the spider webs in the corners. We're heading deeper into the Recession in California, but Sonoma Valley is not so hard hit due to its support community. All of us teachers at EV have learned something new: its a social framework for education called Responsive Classroom. It's a program that demands we greet each student daily, meet their basic social needs for inclusion, choice, fun, and safety. It's a dynamite program but will take time to implement.

I had to work very hard that first week to be present to my class. My daughter got married the weekend before, so those profound images filled my brain. If you teach, you gotta be present, so moment by moment I had to will away my post wedding revery and focus on the moment.

I organized and set up my classroom in July because of the wedding in August. I thought I'd just be able to walk in and teach easily, but it was a bit tricky since I forgot where some things were. Classrooms are very busy places.

That's the broad picture but here's the important part: the children. I have 8 girls and 10 boys, and a full inclusion aide to assist a medically fragile student. My aide is helping me assess the students for reading fluency by having them read sight words. So far, only 5 need to review their first grade words, but we're not finished. I have not assessed math although I have begun to teach it. We're using Mountain Math with small individual white boards and we're writing our numbers to 1,000. I am emphasizing social skills with the morning meeting and lessons surrounding rules and procedures. We have a rule museum set up to demonstrate how rules are used in different setting but we are planning to write our own rules. I have assessed writing by having them write. All are willing to write by themselves, and they are delighted to use their word banks and dictionaries that are in their writing folders. Only a few are writing words that are unintelligible. All are being conservative and writing only what they think I want to see.

Socially, there's been a few wrinkles but mostly I see their good training. One boy A tore up his team mate's paper doll. I had him make amends by trading and taking the torn one for himself. He pouting mightily to find out he would now get to decorate a torn but taped figure. M, a smiley but wiggly girl keeps showing me her broken crayons. I have discovered she is breaking them on purpose so I have shown her how they can be taped. Taped crayons are not so wonderful, so I am hoping she'll stop short of damaging the whole set. J is frustrated with me because I keep calling him by his brother's name, so we're trying to get him to remind me nicely by holding up his name card while I correct my messy habit.

Every time a child goes back to get a drink of water, they stop to see Bubbles the chinchilla. I don't mind because loving Bubbles will help them stay motivated to come to school and maintain a calm classroom. Bubbles nipped me when I took him out for the first time. It was a gentle nip to say he was timid. I used it to explain to the children about how Bubbles communicated using a soft nip to express his need for a calmer environment. If he was feeling threatened, he'd let us know that way. I told them that after a week or two of living in the classroom he would be tame enough to handle if they would only do their part of following classroom procedures. They are doing a bang up job of working quietly most of the time.

This concludes my snapshot of the first week. I'm omitting any descriptions which may violate a child's right to privacy, but will try to paint a picture of second grade at a predominately Hispanic, working class California public school.