Meltdowns, Moms and Magic Elixirs

(The first part of this blog was written a few weeks back, discarded and then found again)

Tonights are the easy nights. Baths are done (Milly did open a bottle of "bath paint" that soiled the bathtub something dark purple, but otherwise, uneventful), kids are eating more than screaming and their clothes are put away. This past weekend was anything but.

We took the kids to Indiana University. My eldest had a tourney/camp and after we realized the hotel we were staying in had a pool, we decided to make it a daycation. Of course, the second we get there, a sign in the lobby tells us the pool is closed for maintenance. Despite the bad news, I kept telling myself, "Don't freak out."

Of course, we sometimes end up doing the opposite of what we tell ourselves. We remind ourselves to not say something stupid, and it's the first thing out of our mouths. So, it's not five minutes into the room that I'm getting after kids for jumping on the bed or Cruz for screaming. Not an hour before I'm regretting the decision. Soon, it's a full blown meltdown.

Then after the meltdown, you remember your proclamations. This will be a good weekend. I will help out with the kids. I'm here to help you relax. Then it all crumbles in front of you like some spilled cup of ice (which, ironically, did happen a few times).

(The rest is fairly current.)

But the weeks after have been bittersweet (we introduced that word in vocabulary to the fourth graders concerning a slave owner who sold his slaves and who used the word in his narrative, pretty interesting to see their responses). We finally got to see some indoor softball games of Lisa's, I fell back into a solid routine with my reading groups and Del and I delved back into Bible studies and share groups.

Thanks to some great ideas discovered from Sunday school, I transformed some lessons and reworked them for my needs at school. Also in the mix was an idea from Lisa's campaigners evening where they prayed for one another. So last Monday we had them finish the sentence, "I am at my greatest when I..." And the kids wrote down their answer, passed their papers to the right and wrote down the same answer or new ones. By the end, each had 28 "greatness" examples. The next day, we shared our favorites. Some of them were pretty good, like showing their work in math or cooperating with others. Then we chose one we wanted to work on, one idea we aren't strong in but wanted to improve. We wrote that one goal inside a tracing of our hand. After taping our hand-goals on the cabinets, each student laid their hands on them and said, "I am going to help (name) with...(whatever their goal was). Empowering day for me and the kids got into it. So far, the kids have been using that language in the class with one another. It's good to have a family to come to work for!

Not that this school week hasn't had their down sides. Despite some productivity in Social Studies projects and compiling picture book materials for their k-1 read-alouds in a few weeks, I had a collision of wills with a parent, one that I haven't had since my second year of teaching.

Of course, I have a habit of rattling hornets' nests. I've often told my students, that if I have to make everyone at your house mad at me so that they can gain an education, then that's the price I'm willing to pay. I rarely use the power of office referrals to social workers to get the desired affect of getting a kid in class. Sometimes, it's the power of the comment box that gets them before it gets to that point. Needless to say, when you see a mom wearing a hoodie coming down the hall after you with her kid in tow, followed by a sub principal who had the assumption something was amiss, you know it's not your day.

Whether my comments in the hall that day amounted to frustration, disgust (her words, not mine), stress, soap box, tiredness or my subconscious need to uphold my reputation in front of the kids, but doors were closed, fifth graders were laughing behind then and my kids were probably pretty stunned. Amid all this, I wondered what her daughter was thinking when mom comes to the school to chew out her teacher?

There's a lot of questions and questioning between my colleagues and I this week. Do we ignore how the boys talk to the girls in class? Do we throw our hands up at the borderline learning disabled kid who is reading at a second grade level? Do we snicker at the mom who requests to move her kid to another class as if that's the magic elixir that will suddenly cure their child's' mischief?

More to come....