Always an Adventure

Teaching is always an adventure. As with all adventures, there are pleasant parts and not so pleasant parts. In the case of teaching there are pleasant students and not so pleasant students. I'll share with you a story about each kind...

Mema (I changed his name) is a new student this year. He is from Japan, knows very little English, and has mild autism. He is so cute! This week I discovered he is an incredible artist. When I asked the students to write a journal about what they like to do at school, Mema drew a Nepolean Dynamite style lion. When I asked him if it was a lion he shook his head no, added a belt, and wrote GRRR to the picture. Then I asked him how this showed what he liked to do at school. He drew a rectangle around the creature. Added a spiral down he side to show that it was a piece a paper and then squeezed a picture of himself holding a pencil into the corner of the page. Clever! Apparently he likes to draw at school.

And now for the not so pleasant... Lila is another new first grader. She spends her time in my class rolling on the floor, giggling obnoxiously, and pestering the other students. I've tried my range of classroom management resources (though this is admittedly not my strong point) and have no clue how to motivate this kid. By Friday this week I was fed up. She started the day as usual and I decided to get tough. I gave a very forceful lecture ( I try to avoid these, but I'd used all my other tricks) about how she would do what I told her to today because I was the teacher. She responded, "So?" I continued my lecture and ended by explaining that if she chose not to do as I asked then we would go to the office and call her mom. Her response: "You don't know my number. Tell me my number. You don't know it." Determined to behave like an adult and not engage in a "No, you don't." Yes, I do." argument, I decided to ignore her and turned my attention to the other students and my lesson. My childlike tendencies got the best of me, however, when she announced that her telephone number was 831. "That is not enough numbers to be a telephone number Lila, apparently you don't know your number either." To that, she babbled out a few more numbers. I regained my adult posture and continued ignoring her. It sounds like the lecture was completely ineffective, but she actually did what I asked for the next 20 minutes or so. Our time together ended with my wadding up her paper and throwing it away because she folded it when I told her not to (I'm going to admit that was not a necessary move, but I wasn't thinking straight at that point). Oh, my!

The picture shows all the countries my students are from. The number on the jersey represent how many students are from that country.