Tales From the Classroom: Part Four

 One year, the superintendent’s daughter was in my kindergarten class. Talk about pressure!! As with every class, I had shared personal things as they came up in class. For example, I told the class that I had grown up on a farm.

Fall Parent-Teacher Conference time rolled around and it was time for “Tina’s” conference. He mom, our superintendent came in. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. I was wondering what kinds of questions she would have about how I teach the curriculum and what my philosophy on disciple was.  I should not have been worried. She came in, all professional-looking and intimidating as hell! She sat down in the little kindergarten chair and said, “Before we talk about my daughter, I just have one question: were you really born in a barn?” “Tina had taken me saying, “I grew up on a farm,” as “I was born in a barn.” We had a good laugh over it and her conference continued without a hitch!

Same classroom: “Jerry” was prone to breakdowns if he felt embarrassed or frustrated.  He wasn’t very good at controlling his emotions. One day, he was frustrated with adding numbers. He literally melted out of his chair and started flopping around on the floor. In one of my less professional moments, I said, “Jerry!  Stop flopping around like a fish out of water!”  My little friend, “Tina” (the superintendent’s daughter, started cracking up!  I thought, “Oh, great! She’s going to go home and tell her mom I called a student a fish out of water!”  I apologized to “Jerry” and the class, telling them I shouldn’t have said that. “Tina” said, “But Mrs. Jenkins! It’s true! I go fishing with my grandpa all the time and that’s exactly what they look like!”  Oh, boy!!

And then there was “Lee.”  “Lee’s” dad was a high school teacher at a local Christian school. His mom was a secretary there. His older sister attended the Christian school.  “Lee,” however, could not. He had been in preschool there and had a behavior problem. The head of the school told the family that he was not welcome to attend kindergarten there. And boy, was he!

After the school year was underway, we had a meeting with the family. In attendance were both parents, the principal, the guidance counselor, an interventionist, and myself.  We asked Dad what happened when “Lee” misbehaved in preschool.  Get this: He told us they would call him, he would take “Lee” to the wresting room, and spank him.  Say what??  We told him that this is public school and we wouldn’t be doing that.

I mean, here’s a kid, whose entire family is going to a school that he’s not allowed to go to, his therapist is out on maternity leave, and his meds hadn’t been refilled because he wasn’t going to therapy. All the odds were against him!  

The principal (she’s no longer a principal) told me to stand him outside the classroom when he was disruptive. He was a runner and the school was just a block off Main Street. I said I wasn’t comfortable with that. Then she told me to give him a desk by himself with tape around it and he could move all he wanted within that area. He would be defiant and step outside those boundaries all the time. He would crawl on countertops and rip things off the wall and growl.

His family got him back into therapy. He would have breakfast in my classroom. We discovered that he loved Legos. If he had a good morning, he could have lunch with the counselor and play with Legos in her office. He had someone come and spend the afternoon with him from The Guidance Center.

At the end of kindergarten, the family decided to move out of state to be closer to family.  They came back to visit.  Who did “Lee” want to see?  Me!!  He told me, on that visit, “Mrs. Jenkins. You loved me when I didn’t deserve it.”  That’s why we do this, friends! To make a difference!

Tales From the Classroom: Part Three

 I will never forget the day that I went to get cookies for snack time from one of my student’s backpacks and it meowed at me!

When Jr. came into class, he told me he had brought cookies from home for our snack.  I told him I would get them out later and to go ahead and hang up his backpack and sit down for breakfast.

Later, that day, after I had taken my students to Music, I went back to the room to get snack ready. I reached into Jr’s backpack to get the cookies and heard a meowing sound! In the bottom of Jr’s bag was a kitten!!  The poor thing wasn’t very old. I don’t know why no one had heard it during the morning. 

I took the poor little thing out of Jr’s backpack and headed down to Music. I pulled Jr aside and showed him the kitten. He said, “That’s my kitten!” I asked him why he put the kitten in his backpack.  He told me, “So my sister wouldn’t get it!” Oh, boy!

As luck would have it, Jr’s mom was at school for an awards assembly. I took the kitten to her so it could go home to its mama!

Teaching full-day kindergarten, I had a high school assistant principal’s son. My young friend was really struggling. Mom was super-amazing and moving heaven and Earth to find out why her son was having such a hard time. When “William” got frustrated, he would overturn desks and chairs, scream, trash the classroom, and dive under a table. 

Later in the school year, we learned that "William" had a diagnosis of functional vision disorder. This meant that when he saw something on the board and had to transfer it to paper on his desk. In “William,” it manifested itself in this way: Symptoms can range from mild blurriness to complete blindness and may affect one or both eyes.  Common presentations include tunnel vision, double vision, or visual distortions, and the severity can fluctuate over time. Mom was given some tools to help “William” be successful in school. However, by this time the school year was half over.  Mom asked me to tutor him over the summer to catch him up.

The following year, whenever “William” would become frustrated, my classroom was his Safe Room. I tutored him again the following summer.

When our school building was sold, I was transferred to another elementary building within the district. Because “William’s” mom was a district employee, she was able to transfer “William” to the same school I was transferred to.  I was his Safe Room there, too. Many times. “William” would see me come into the building in the morning and asked to come to my room with me. He’d play with some of my materials or we’d go over his homework. He called me his “School Mom.” He would say, “I have a mom and Mrs. Jenkins is my School Mom.”

When “William” graduated from high school, I went to his graduation party (We had since moved from that area to another part of Kansas). When I pulled up, he came and gave me a big hug and said, “I can’t believe you came!”  As I visited with people I had known from the district, he was circulating through the people who had come to wish him well.  He kept coming back to me, hugging me, and saying, “I can’t believe you’re here!”

It’s about relationships!

Tales from the Classroom: Part Two

 This one might just take up the whole blog this time. Please remember that the names are changed to protect the children.

In one district I worked in, my kindergarten classroom was in the original four-room school, along with the art room, music, an extra room in case there was the need for an overflow classroom and the gym/multipurpose room ( assemblies, meals, etc.)

When I had my meeting with this particular family before school started, it didn’t go very well.The father brought the little boy,I’ll call “Ryan.”  Ryan was on and IEP (Individualized Education Program) for autism.The first thing that the dad asked me was, “I want to know how many nig**rs are in this classroom.” I was taken aback! I calmly told him that his child would be in the minority given where we were. He said, “Well, I work at the prison and you can tell by the look in their eyes that those people are bat-shit crazy.” Ugh!  We went on to talk about the curriculum and expectations for the coming year. His language was laced with profanity. I told him that I didn’t allow language like that in my classroom. He replied that I didn’t have any students.  I reminded him that his son was in the room and he was on my roster.

Fast forward to later in the school year.  “Ryan” had a really weird bruise on his hand and said that it hurt him to write. I took him to the nurse for an ice pack.  The nurse looked at it and immediately called Child Protective Services. She said that the way it was bruised was a sign of abuse. The bruise went from his palm, between two of his fingers, up onto the palm of his hand. It was weird.

A couple of weeks later, I was called into the principal’s office. He told me that “Ryan’s” dad had gone ballistic at the Child Protective offices, overturning desks and screaming profanities. Then he came to me and told me that he had access to guns and he knew how to use them.  My principal went on to say that staff from the newer building would now be carrying keys to take their students to art, PE, music, and lunch and that the doors to my building would be locked at all times. He said he didn’t want to go to a funeral. I told him that I couldn’t imagine attending a funeral for one of my students. His response?  I meant yours. He said that “Ryan’s” dad had been told that he wasn’t allowed on school property. If Dad showed up, I was to call the main building with a code word and someone would come and escort Dad out. I told my principal that he should come up with the code word so he would remember it. I gave his code word to the secretaries.

I had been fighting to have the doors locked for months! My principal always told me that it would inconvenience the rest of the staff. Their doors were locked and all visitors had to check in at the office, but since my classroom was in the building with PE, Music, art, and lunch, the doors to my building were left unlocked.

Two weeks later, “Ryan’s” dad came into the building to bring “Ryan” to breakfast, something he wasn’t supposed to do. I saw him coming when I was walking between buildings. I went into my classroom and locked my door. Then I called the office on the intercom and said, “I need a dozen pencils.” This was the code that the principal had come up with. As you might guess, they sent an older student over with new pencils.

This is the ONLY time I have ever cussed out a principal! His concerns, his code word and he didn’t remember!