Kindergarten Blues

I have officially survived my first day of kindergarten. It was a rough one, and I had to come home and have a good cry about it all. My morning group is going to be the most challenging behaviorally. The problem today, though, was in my time-watching. I didn't realize what time it was until I looked up at the clock and saw that it was 10 minutes past the time I was supposed to have walked the kids down to meet their parents. They were right in the middle of an art project and I had to recruit another teacher and parent to help me round them up and get them down to the door 20 minutes late. It was utter chaos. Not the best first impression : (

So, after my 10 minute lunch break spent getting ready for my next class, I had a student who was bawling when his mom left. He cried so hard that he threw up all over in the mud room. Luckily for me we have a wonderful principal who happened to be there at the time and he ended up cleaning the whole thing up and taking the boy to the office where he got settled down and enjoyed the rest of the day as if nothing had happened. I did improve my presentation and timing for my PM class, but wish I could have a do-over in the AM.

Other than that, it's simply the stress and frustration of realizing how long it will be before the kids know how to behave in the classroom and what to do. Unfortunately, I am still learning the best way to teach all of those things, so I hope it all turns out in the end.

Okay . . . after hours and hours and hours and hours and HOURS of work, my room finally came mostly together this weekend. Thanks to the help of mom, Jenn, Alison, Natalie, Aunt Layna, Nicole and Nick my room is clean and decorated! Not all of the projects are finished yet, but all of the really hard work has been done. The janitor has commented three times so far on how clean my room is and how much he appreciated all the work we did. He said we're all hired if we want a job!

This is the word wall where we post words that start with different letters of the alphabet.

Here is the main teaching area. On the left is my birthday board, and on the right is the carpet area where we start the day with weather, calendar, singing and reading.

This will be the 'reading cave'. The picture looks dark, but it's really very cute! I still need to finish decorating the wall and I am going to hang icicle lights from the top to give more light and maybe look a little like stalactites. I will also be getting some bean bags to go in there.

This will be the art and science center. I hope to cover the cupboards up with more beautiful artwork that the kids make. I also have a piano in my room which I can use for music time if I ever learn to play some songs.

This is my teacher area (still kind of a mess right now)

Things have been going pretty well. Yesterday was rough with a half-day faculty meeting where they pounded us with information and the open house which ended up being really stressful. We were in the principal's office when the open house started still trying to split the three sessions into four. Not all of the parents were happy with the changes and confusion (neither were we) and I'm still working on getting things worked out with a few kids.

Today was much better. I started assessing my students and it's nice to meet them one at a time at first. It is nice to see what level they are at so I know where to start. I am also getting more organized and feeling ready for the next day without staying at the school until 11. Today I decided that I was going to leave everything at school and not worry about it until tomorrow. Then I will finally start planning what I will do with the kids on the first week of school!

As for Nick, he is being really wonderful and patient. Today he got me flowers with an orange daisy surrounded by red roses to symbolize my students blossoming from my wonderful teaching! He is training for the law review this week and will start school again on Monday. He is enjoying having a little free time to work on some fun projects he's been looking forward to doing (like re-building speakers from DI)

Tending on the weekend.

Last weekend Nick and I got to tend my friend's baby and our nephew Dallan. We had so much fun! Dallan is starting preschool this year and he really wanted a Diego backpack. Grandma got him one and he was thrilled to wear it around and pretend to be Diego!

Dallan and his backpack

Jane is such a cute baby! She is so pleasant and has the most beautiful face when she smiles (or when she sleeps)! We loved spending the day with some of the best kids in the world!


'Auntie Em' & Jane

A tired girl.

She really liked 'Uncle Nick'

My very own classroom!

I finally got keys to my new classroom and have a lot of work to do on it. I don't know who they had plan the colors for the cupboards, but they must have eaten one too many cotton candies! As of now (Thursday night) nothing is set up and it is really dirty. Apparently the janitors didn't do much this summer in the room : ( We have an open house on Monday night, so mom came up to help me get it put together. Between her and who ever else can come to help, I hope to have it transformed by then!

It's a good thing that Kindergarten kids have a week of testing before we actually start class instruction because there is no way I could get my room ready and plan lessons at the same time. So, I am trying not to think of the latter until Monday!

Emily has a job!
Wahoo!!!

After an entire summer of hoping for a job in Family & Consumer Science at secondary schools in the area, I finally decided it was worth looking elsewhere to see if some other option would open up. I found out about a program offered by the Utah State Office of Education that allows you to teach with a temporary license while you complete distance education courses and work toward earning your teaching certificate. I chose the Early Childhood Education route and started applying for Kindergarten teaching jobs. (A long way from High School, I know, but it was all I could think of.) Almost immediately after I sent in my applications I started getting interviews. Today I received two offers and had such a hard time deciding which school to work for, but I finally decided to go for the full-time teaching instead of half-time.

I am sure that somewhere inside I'm still excited about teaching the little kids, but the reality has hit at this point and I am actually TERRIFIED!!! I am grateful that I have been blessed with many friends and family who have training and materials and are willing to help me learn what to do. I will start testing my students individually next week and school will start officially on the 28th . . . that's only two weeks to figure out what to do with 21 5-year-olds for three hours a day! It will be an exciting adventure to be sure.

Here is a picture of my new 'office' Rocky Mountain Elementary in Lindon:

sorry it's a small picture, it's the only one I could find!

You can check out the school's website if you're interested although I don't know that they have much interesting information. Soon, though, my name will be added to the Teachers/Staff list. Weird!!!
http://rockymountain.alpinedistrict.org/Home.html

Nick's Loot

This week Nick flew to Chicago to do job interviews for next summer (and potentially the next 3-5+ years after graduation). There were hundreds of students and intellectual property law firms there. They had rented out an entire Marriott hotel. He spent the day hopping from room to room doing interviews, schmoozing with the partners and associates, and picking up all of the free stuff they always give away at conferences like that.

Here is what he came home with -- some of them are pretty cool actually.

Our favorites are the star fish stuffed animals with t-shirts on! The firm's name is Fish & Richardson (hence the starfish). There were the typical pens and highlighters - one of which has post-it notes in the lid which I love! They had nice little containers with skittles (better than the usual mints), magnetic clips, post-it notes, chap stick, a pen with a USB flash drive hidden in the lid, and another 1 GB flash drive in a really nice container.

The interviews went well. A couple of firms have already made offers to fly him out to their office for a more official interview and we expect to be receiving more calls during the month. It will be hard to work out a schedule for flying out and he'll probably be gone a lot of weekends, but it will be worth it in the end. Most of the firms are based out of Washington, DC and Northern California so who knows where we'll end up.