kids say the darndest things

this afternoon, after the kids were up from their naps and had snack, they were running amok around the classroom, like it was a free-for-all. Mona and I were trying to get a bulletin board going. Well, I happened to walk by the art center and I noticed there was marker on the floor. I asked Sammy if he had done and he said no. He told me Max did it during nap time. So, I called Max over and asked him if he had colored on the floor. He said yes and when I asked him why, he said, (and I quote), “you put me there”, meaning he was on his cot there during naptime. They aren’t allowed to have anything but books during naptime (if that), but he got a hold of some markers somehow and drew all over the floor.

So, we made him clean it up. He kept asking me for help, but I told him that nobody but him had drawn all over the floor, so he wasn’t going to get any help in cleaning it up.  Needless to say, I don’t think he’ll be drawing on the floor again anytime soon.

 

amazing

how things change when you find out that the school you work for could pay for you to go to school. I had a seminar to attend last night to get continuing education credits (we must take these courses to keep our jobs). Anyway, these classes are totally boring to me because I already know about what’s being taught. I know about play, about behavior/classroom management, inclusion, etc.

But the point is that last night I found out there’s a program here in Vegas that I can go through to complete an apprenticeship in early childhood education and then go on to get an associates + a bachelors + a masters in early childhood education. Suddenly, I am not completely opposed to teaching preschool, because I’m not tied to Shenker forever. I mean, I wasn’t to begin with, but this will open up many more opportunities for me, rather than just having to apply for elementary positions.

Unfortunately, my mother always has to be the doubting Thomas and ask if that’s really what I want to do. Well, no, it’s not. I don’t know what my dream is anymore. I think it got crushed sometime between August of 2006 and April of 2007. But if I’m able to get education paid for, then I will certainly take the opportunity and run with it.

 

Job Hunting Can Be Stressful (written 01.24.08)

As some of you may know, I’ve been job hunting a lot lately. I’m always looking for that elusive dream teaching job, but rather than feeling like I’m just searching for the needle in the haystack, I’ve decided to become very pro-active about finding a good fit for a teaching job and moving on from my life in Vegas. In the last two weeks, I have applied for seven different jobs, none of them here in Nevada. They are all in Seattle and the surrounding area. Two of them were at Waldorf schools, but I’ve been turned down for both of those. This is okay, though. I understand why, but it never hurts to give it a shot. And, actually, the response from the second school was very positive and they would be interested in talking to me, should I decide to pursue Waldorf training, which is not completely out of the question. Unfortunately, there are no Waldorf colleges here in Nevada (this did not come as a surprise to me), so that plan has been put on the back burner for awhile.

The other schools that I have applied to are all private, independent schools. I heard from one, the Soundview School, and they’ll be contacting people for interviews in the next couple of weeks. I’m not sure if I’ll get a call from them. It will be interesting trying to figure out how to give interviews, given that I am out of state. I may have to fly out there at some point, but I’m not worrying about that now. I’ll just wait and see what happens.

However, I don’t want to junx myself too much, so I’m going to stop talking about job hunting for the time being. However, I’ll be updating, vaguely, as I hear more.

So, I’ll leave you with a funny story about work. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a teacher’s assistant for a four year old class at a preschool. We have 12 boys and two girls in our class, so something crazy is constantly happening. But I love it.

At any rate, this week we have been studying the letter m and our theme has been manners. My darling kids need some serious work on their manners, so I created the Museum of Manners and made a chart that allows them to get one thumbprint every time they do something that is good manners.

Well, Henry immediately latched on to the idea and all week he has been on his very best behavior. He is constantly looking for ways to get thumbprints next to his name. Well, today he comes up to me and says: “I said sorry four times and excuse me once”, meaning he wanted to be able to put five thumbprints next to his name. He didn’t get any today, because it’s reached the point that he’s just brown-nosing, but it’s very funny to watch him really think that he needs to make the best decision possible. He’s not typically a bad kid, he is just in a very compulsive stage and doesn’t always think things all the way through before he does something.