student and teacher meltdowns

I'm having a hard time teaching in the morning. And by that I mean I have a collection of behavior issues in my first grade group that, when thrown in and mixed together, becomes this toxic poison.

Except this poison doesn't kill you, it just makes you want to retire from teaching at age 29.

I had four students in this group. I've recently added a fifth. On "Adam's" first day, Thing One argued with my every direction (or just flat out said "no"). Thing Two loves to feed off of Thing One and thought the whole thing was hysterical. Thing Two shut down when he got some sad face tally marks. Thing One laughed loud and long to show he didn't care about sad faces.

And Adam looked on.

When Thing Two didn't get his first choice of activity for Daily 5, he decided that the best solution was to hide under the table and intermittently shout "NO" .... for an hour! 

Folks, this exact same kind of behavior from those two students happened for THREE DAYS IN A ROW. For three days, Thing Two collapsed into a pile of refusal and I had to get another adult in there to entice him to move to his next class. Thing One continued to loudly protest every direction and every activity at every opportunity.

I did my best to teach despite it all.

I ended the week on Friday with Thing Two in full meltdown mode, yelling from his new hiding place:

Tell me ..... where can I hide from first grade?

Beat up by a nine year old

It took seven years to happen, but it finally did: I was hit by a student. Repeatedly.

It was last week and Marta was not paying attention to social studies. I was in there for forty five minutes to help with inclusion and my little friend refused to follow even the simplest directions (sit on the carpet). When it was time to lead my group of six students out to my classroom for language arts, she hit me on the butt on her way out the door. Hard.

I said "OH!" in surprise and then took a few deep breaths. I got down to her level as she got her backpack out of her locker: "You may NOT hit a teacher. That is not okay."

I made a calculated decision not to dole out any consequences just then. I knew enough about her to know that if I gave her several sad face tally marks right away, she would just escalate and I wouldn't be able to teach anything that afternoon.

So I put on my happy face and taught my little heart out. Marta behaved herself pretty well. But at the end of the day, when it was time to tally our happy faces versus sad faces and earn a penny for the store, things went sour FAST.

I gave everyone a penny except Marta. "I'm sorry Marta, you cannot get a penny today because you hit a teacher."

A dark cloud passed over her face as this sunk in. She took her "bank" (container with 2 pennies in there already) and chucked it across the room. She grabbed her folder and her backpack and made for the door!

I had to go chasing after her and corralled her back in. I got the other students out into the hallway as fast  as I could and got down to Marta's level. This she did not like.

Cue the kicking. The hitting. The scratching (she drew blood on my arm through my sweater, and in two small spots on my leg). She was so frustrated she also chucked her hearing aid out of the room.

Eventually she burst into tears, sat on my lap, and cried on my shoulder.

We had both been angry that afternoon, but at that moment in time, I was sorely tempted to cry with her.

Instead I just stroked her hair and told her that it was okay, that I still loved her, that we would try again tomorrow to earn a penny. After a few minutes of repeating this, she wiped her eyes, nodded her head, and joined the line to get on the bus to go home.

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If you're wondering, I had to fill in an incident report and call her mother. We were both baffled as to what could have triggered this kind of behavior. She's always been a bit defiant, but never like this. I talked with our behavior specialist and we now have a plan in place where she can earn something rewarding for following directions.

The only part of this whole incident that I regret is getting into Marta's face right away after I had corralled her back into the classroom. She clearly needed some time to calm down and I could have saved myself some scratches! Otherwise, I think I did right - especially in restoring our relationship at the end there.

*******************************************************

I'm so curious: have you ever been hit by a student?

no laughing matter

It was the end of a particularly bad day for Tammy. She had been defiant, she had been out of her seat more than not, and she stuck out her tongue at her classroom teacher.

At the end of the day, she asked me if she was going to get a sticker ("ticker?"). I sat down with her at my teacher table while my other students were reading quietly. I pulled out her behavior chart just as one of my colleagues showed up at the door. He stood in the doorway and watched us for a minute.

I counted the smiley faces for "I will follow directions". Two.
I counted the sad faces for following directions. Eight.

"Oh no, Tammy!" And as I started to debrief with her, I noticed my colleague at the door is laughing quietly. "You have more sad faces today! You did not follow directions. You did not stay in your chair. You stuck your tongue out at the teacher! No sticker for you today. Let's try again tomorrow."

Out of the corner of my eye, one of my other students was mouthing to my colleague at the door: "Stop laughing! It's not funny!" Her serious scolding made him laugh even harder, so he left our doorway.

I'm so glad the rest of my kids think bad behavior is no laughing matter!!

Father knows best

There's a first grader I work with in the general education setting. Let's call him "Doug". He is highly distractable and often impulsive. On Thursday, though, he decided to add shouting and outright defiance to the mix.

It wasn't long before his behavior chart went from green, to yellow, to orange, to blue, to the dreaded RED.

My mild-mannered co-teacher got out her red pen and wrote his father a note with exclamation points! Serious trouble indeed.

On Friday, we got a note back from dad that simply said: "He's just being a kid." [Hold on a minute while I catch my breath in the face of such overwhelming parent support....]


In addition, he sent a strip of paper to school with Doug. It had two words written in green marker:

LISTEN

BEHAVE

He told Doug to put the paper inside his desk, that way it would help remind him to have good behavior.

OOOOOOOOOHHHH!!!! YOU MEAN THAT'S ALL WE HAD TO DO? A SLIP OF PAPER IS ALL HE NEEDS TO CURE HIS BEHAVIOR?!?! WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THAT?

My co-teacher and I looked at each other and wondered whether we should laugh or cry.....

shame... shame on me

There are two kinds of teachers in this world: those who send their students to the nurse for every little scrape and boo-boo, and those who downplay everything and make the kids tough it out.

I'm of the second camp.

*A kid falls down? "You're fine!" I say.

*Does your head hurt? "Go get a drink of water!" I say.

*Are you bleeding? (Wait, let me get out my magnifying glass for this one...) "Here's a bandaid now get back to work" I say.

So a few days ago, when I noticed some teeny-tiny red spots on "Thomas's" hands and wrists, I didn't think much of it. I asked him if his wrists were itchy, and he said no. So I figured he was fine. He wasn't complaining about it!

It occured to me that I should maybe ask the nurse to look at it just in case, but it was the end of the day and I forgot.

Today, a different teacher sent Thomas to the nurse. This teacher is more caring, and clearly belongs to the first type of teacher.

After she examined him, the nurse came to find me right away. She interrupted my lesson and pulled me out in the hallway. She told me I needed to send Thomas home, and clorox down all the surfaces in my classroom immediately- anything he could have touched.

Why?

He has scabies.

he's baaaaaaaaaaaaack

If you've been with me long enough, you'll remember "Jose". He was the fourth grader who drove me (and countless other teachers) wild with rage and brought me to my knees in tears last year.

You might also remember that after much drama and to-do, we FINALLY got him the help he needed by transferring him to the behavior unit on a different campus. You can read about that victory here. I called it a miracle. I celebrated with colleagues. I considered it The Single Greatest Accomplishment of My Career.

That was just four and a half months ago.

And now they're sending him back to us, because "his behavior is fine".

Do you know why his behavior is "fine"? Because he's been under the impression that all he has to do is to earn his way back here. He's manipulative like that.

My deaf ed. colleague and the principal have attended his IEP at this behavior unit. They report that the other school has taught him no coping strategies, and no anger management strategies. In fact, they had NO GOALS READY for his IEP.

He's scheduled to come back this Monday. Thank the good Lord Almighty that they moved me to first grade so I will no longer be his teacher. The fifth grade teacher has had Jose in the past, so she knows what to expect.

It makes me more than a little angry and sad to know that I spent so long fighting an unfair educational system just to have him end up back in a place where we can't help him.

And when I see him on Monday? I may have a fixed smile on my face, but here's what I'll be feeling on the inside:

Going down in flames

Yesterday, we had a practice fire drill. Two things bothered me about this:

1. It was 29 degrees outside. Why couldn't they have waited for a warmer day?!!?
2. The fire drill doesn't go off in the portables.

Yes, you heard that right. The portables that I teach in -- the portables with three classrooms full of DEAF KIDS -- aren't connected to the fire drill. Each room even has a bright red bulb above the doorway, and the blinking red light didn't even go off during the fire drill!

So the only chance we have to save ourselves from a fire is if we glance out the tiny window and happen to notice a mass exodus of kids and teachers onto the field.

Umm... hello, Liability. We haven't met before, but we may soon become very well acquainted.

I expressed my concern with the powers that be and I was informed that this was a problem for all the portables in our district and that our deaf-ed portables are somewhere on the list to be fixed.

Oh good. Let's just hope there's not a real fire before now and the time they get to "somewhere on the list".

Plan B: Quit

Remember when I said that no token system is going to stand against a chemical imbalance in the brain? 'Member? There is just no defense but to brace yourself against the wrath and fury that is sure to be unleashed when that One Student walks into class with murder in his eyes...

"Jose" is that One Student on my caseload. He's had trouble regulating his emotions since preschool and is frequently defiant (but maddeningly passive aggressive about it!), avoids any kind of work, is verbally and physically aggressive, and loves to engage adults in power struggles.

As far as I can tell, the staff that have worked with him have been great: documenting what goes on, involving the parent, enforcing consequences to the best of their ability, trying 101 strategies to find one that works, writing Behavior Plans and Functional Behavior Assessments up the wazoo, and calling the behavior specialists when they are out of ideas.

Unfortunately, the behavior specialist assigned to our school is less of a behavior specialist and more of a Professional-Documenter-and-Boss-of-the-World.

I had my first interaction with her last week and she was quite rude. She asked me what had been going on with Jose since the beginning of the year. I tried to tell her, but PDBW kept interrupting me to berate me for behavior documentation done last year that wasn't on the CORRECT FORM. Last year, you know, when I was in Michigan and not in this state. And the form!!! If we document on the incorrect form the world will stop turning!!!

After SEVERAL interruptions to my answer, I started to get pretty ticked. First of all, listen to the answer to your question, or don't ask the question in the first place! Secondly, I shouldn't have to feel defensive when I'm doing all the right things!

Trying my best to keep the anger out of my face, I succeeded in being respectfully assertive. I started with "LOOK..." then talked very quickly to get out what needed to be said.

I ended my mini-speech talking about appropriate placement: his primary disability is no longer his hearing impairment, it's his emotional impairment. She responded by saying that she didn't want to put him in a behavioral unit because he was just going to get worse.

And she may think that she has the authority to single-handedly decide the placement for a student, but she has another thing coming.

My plan? Document (on the CORRECT FORM) the heck out of every misbehavior, then call an IEP meeting where the IEP team will make a decision about Jose's placement in a behavioral unit based on our data.

If that doesn't work....

Forty dollar investment into my sanity

One of the reasons why I dread going to school in the morning is my fourth graders. That sounds awful, but it's true. I have a grand total of four of them that I pull out into my classroom for Language Arts every morning, then follow them back into their general ed. class to assist when needed until lunch. Here's a snapshot of what I deal with:

"Jose": Both Hearing Impaired and Emotionally Impaired. Very defiant but passively aggressively so... like you tell him not to do something and he'll do it anyway--as he looks at you and smiles. Can't move on after a real or imagined unfairness/insult/issue. Frequently tries to leave my room and walk off school grounds.

"Thomas": Both Hearing Impaired and Emotionally Impaired. Severe ADHD and is on meds. Unfortunately, these don't kick in until mid-morning. He goes from being uncontrollable to a total wallflower.

"Brandon": Hearing Impaired. Overly sensitive. As in he will completely shut down so that you can't get him to participate or even look at you for 20+ minutes all because you had the nerve to NOT call on him when he had his hand raised. Frequently bursts into tears over things like: "He didn't let me borrow his eraser"

"Martha": Hearing Impaired and Cerebral Palsy. No behavior issues here, she's just really low and needs a lot of attention and help to do any sort of task.

I have been through two behavior plans already that have clearly not worked. Both have been based on taking things away and losing privileges. But tomorrow I'm trying something new: The Token Economy. Anytime they show desired behavior, they will get a token. They will have a chance to spend their tokens every day or save up for something big. The ultimate plan is to phase out the tokens. I usually don't like behavior plans this involved, but I'm dealing with some, ahem, special kids here.

So I spent some of my weekend getting my "store" together:


Like it? I hope the kids will and that it won't take them long to buy into the system!

So How Was Yours?

Max: "How was your day?"

Me: "Well, we had a thirty minute lockdown at the end of the day because there was a gunman loose in the city. After that, a student with an emotional impairment snuck out of the building and it took four teachers with walkie-talkies twenty-five minutes to find her! So, you know, the usual..."

Caught ya!!

As part of our National Reading month, all of the teachers have been "asked" to call a certain number of kids during a certain time in the evening (once a week for three weeks). If we catch them reading, they are entered into a drawing for a bike or some such prize.

I just got off the phone with "Johnny" and his mom.

Me: "Hi, I'm calling to catch Johnny reading"

Mom: "Okay, here's Johnny"

Me: "Johnny, were you just reading?

At this point in the conversation, I can hear one of them say yes and one of them say no at the same time. I can't tell whose voice belongs to whom.

Me: "Hello?? So did I catch you reading?"

... [scuffle, scuffle]

Mom: "Sorry about that. No, he wasn't reading. He was just about to go play, and when you asked him your question over the phone, he grabbed the nearest DVD box and started reading from the back. Ha ha!"

Well, I guess I caught him doing something!

Crisis Averted... I Think

Well, the final decision about my Facebook Debacle of 2009: I've decided to accept her as a friend, but I chose to limit what she can and cannot see on my profile (I blocked my wall and my status updates from her).

IN THE FUTURE, all of you teachers out there who are afraid the same thing may happen to you: go to the "privacy setting" of your Facebook account. There will be section entitled "Block". Type in the name of your principal (or other people you don't want stalking you). That way, they can't search for you or find your Facebook profile in the first place. I wish I had known about this last week!!

Oh well.

A Regrettable Conundrum

My principal has "friended" me on Facebook. There is no link back to this blog from my facebook profile, but still.... what should I do???

Escape Artistry

Sometimes routine can be a good thing, but I will admit that I like it when things go differently during the day, or when something unexpected happens (AM I IN THE RIGHT JOB, OR WHAT??).

So I was a little amused when "Howie" (a first grader with high functioning autism) walked rather quickly into my classroom, and clambered into the tent. [Oh, did I mention that I keep a small tent in my room for kids who need some quiet time?] I was in the middle of teaching a small group of second graders, but I was concerned because Howie's one-on-one aide did not come into the room directly behind him. In my experience, a six-year-old-with-autism on the loose is never a good sign.

I poked my head in the tent.
"Howie.... Where is Mrs. G?"
"I don't know" he said, turning on a full dose of Howie-charm.
"Did you run away from her?"

As Howie shook his head "no", I could tell from his out-of-breath panting and his bright, wild eyes that this little charmer was L-Y-I-N-G to me.

Sure enough, Mrs. G comes in right on cue. We tried to talk him out of the tent, but when that didn't work, he had to be physically removed. We have a positive behavior plan in place for his occasional sprints down the school hallway. Needless to say, though, he didn't earn his reward today!

"Chew Food Not People"

This, of course, is good advice for everyone, but it is especially good advice for a certain six-year-old boy with autism who I happen to work with.

The advice (well, it was more like a direction) was given to him by our assistant principal after he had bitten his aide on the arm twice. When we brought him to her office, he was screaming at the top of his lungs that we "don't call dad!!" Screaming and sobbing. When we were finally able to calm him down, our AP told him in plain and simple terms that teeth were for chewing food, not people, and that if he made that choice again, we would be calling dad. When we were sure that he understood the rules and the consequences, we sent him back to class with his long-suffering aide.

About an hour later, I'm walking out of the lounge towards my classroom when I notice our social worker RUNNING down the hall to my room. Never a good sign. It means a kid is having some sort of fit or meltdown, or timeout. It was my little guy again. He had bit his aide again! This time the regular ed teacher and the aide brought him to the office. We called his dad while he was half screaming, half crying, and curled up in a ball against his teachers' chest.

When the aide hung up the phone, she started to discuss with the kiddo what his dad had said. He didn't want to hear any of it, so he flattened himself out like a board (laying across his teacher's lap), closed his eyes, crossed his arms in the shape of an X across his chest, and stuck out his tongue. He was literally playing dead. The sheer unexpectedness of this action (in all of its six-year-old wisdom and logic) was enough to make each of us turn away from him and laugh into our sleeves.

Must... keep... a straight face... for discipline....

Busted

Last week, one of "my" first graders got in trouble in gym class for disruptive behavior. A note was sent home for mom/dad to sign. When he handed it back to the coach yesterday, coach pulled him aside and told him how proud he was of him, and told him how responsible he was to bring it back. My little student just nodded proudly. When coach looked down at the paper, a perfectly printed MOM was written on the signature line!

Busted.

Perhaps a taste of things to come? Let's hope not!

Metamorphosis

Not unlike becoming werewolves at the sight of a full moon, my kids have become monsters-- bearing claws and howling into the night. I'm not exactly sure when the full moon appeared, but it was sometime in January. All I know is, I have never been so furious with my students. By the end of the day, I was reading the riot act to my entire class--the closest I have been to yelling.

The day started out great. It was author's day and Deborah Turner spoke to the school about her book: "How Willy Got His Wheels". It's a true story about a rescued chihuahua whose back legs didn't work. Deborah tried helium balloons and a skateboard to help him walk but nothing worked until she found a special doggie wheelchair in a magazine. Now he uses his front legs and his wheels in the back and rolls around, appearing on TV and in assemblies around the world. It was very cool because she brought Willy with her and all the kids got to pet him. At the end of the assembly, she gave one of my girls a postcard with a picture of Willy on the front.

One of my werewolves decided it would be appropriate to take the postcard from her at lunch and flush it down the toilet in the boys' bathroom. The entire bathroom flooded as a result, the plumbing was backed up, and the janitor had to close all the boys' bathrooms down to fix the problem. My little girl was crying so hard, it might as well have been Willy himself that he flushed down that toilet.

During afternoon recess, another one of my werewolves purposefully excluded a student (one of MY deaf students who is fully mainstreamed in a different class) by saying: "You can't play with us, you're not in our class!!". The words sounded even more spiteful to me as I remembered that this student is having a hard time dealing with real bullies in his general ed. class.

Yet another of my little monsters, after my aide asked him to sit out of the dodge ball game for rough-housing, picked up a rock and hit a random boy who happened to be walking by. For no discernible reason.

At this point in time, I am ready to howl at the moon myself.

The Case of the Missing Supplies

Over the past few months, my aide has said things to me like: "Hm. I thought we had more markers", or, "Have you seen the red construction paper?" Today when she was looking for gold-yellow construction paper and it was all gone, I started to get worried. Before, I just assumed that things were messy and got lost, or moved, or maybe we were just losing our minds. But I could have sworn we had lots of gold-yellow construction paper left the last time I checked. My aide suggested that maybe somebody was taking things from our room. I dismissed the idea quickly, but the more I thought about it....

Two weeks ago, my colleague wanted to borrow a certain edition of the second grade reading curriculum. I directed her to where I keep that stuff, but it wasn't there! And even more telling, Monday morning I noticed that one of my two large classroom clocks was missing. One clock is a district clock, and the other was a personal clock that the teacher before me had bought--the one missing was the one belonging to the teacher before me. My colleague from across the hall, upon hearing of my little problem with disappearing items, was sure that the culprit was this other teacher who left right before I came. She must have kept the room key (she took a year off last year, and went back to teaching at a different school this year). So we went to the office to request a lock change.

The whole thing is quite bizarre. If she wanted her clock back, why not come and ask for it? Or call? As for the markers and construction paper--that stuff isn't hers, it stays with the classroom. Our supplies like construction paper come from district allotted budgets. Anyways, it could be that we're wrong, and it's not her... but she is the only good suspect so far.

And furthermore, how come I keep getting robbed? But I suppose missing markers is better than missing thousands of dollars :)

Bathroom Talk

I had a really fun activity planned for today's "Fun Day Friday" time (kids can only participate if they've turned in their homework!). Unfortunately, I had to cancel it because I was forced to spend that time lecturing my students on the importance of proper bathroom behavior instead. Apparently, two of my students were observed by another staff member to be rough-housing in the bathroom, as well as peeking under the doors, locking doors, etc. The culprits wouldn't admit it to the other staff member, even though they had been identified by said staff. Well, after a long lecture, two detention slips, and quite a few teary eyes as I packed away all of the ingredients for my "haystacks" recipe, I decided that I would at least read them a story.

So I pulled my "Haystacks" book which I borrowed from the public library. I hadn't read it yet, so I decided now would be a good time. Well.... the book is all about farms, and farmers and hay. Near the end, it had a drawing of all that was left after the cows and pigs ate the hay. So my kids learned a new word today: manure. They were all quite shocked and grossed out when the next picture showed the manure being spread all over the field and I explained how it helps to grow our food. One student was particularly expressive and I saw visible relief on his face when I explained that the manure wasn't actually on the corn, just that it helped it grow. He later put his head in his hands and said, (in what I think was a statement intended to communicate overwhelming shock): "This is really a new day for me!"

Trouble

I was just thinking today how much I love my kids! They can be cute even when they get in trouble...

I had a girl today chew out a teacher on recess duty for telling her to play in a different area. She yelled at her and pointed her accusing index finger right at her: "I don't like what you said! I'm so mad at you! I'm telling my dad and he'll be mad at you!". She went on and on. Thankfully the recess teacher had a sense of humor, and instead of getting mad and issuing a citation, she tried to keep from bursting out in laughter!
When said student got back to the classroom and my aide told me what happened, I pulled her aside and we had a chat about the right way to express our feelings. I told her that it's okay to let people know how we feel, but it's not okay to yell at a teacher because that is disrespectful. Because our classroom rules state that we follow directions the first time, and that we respect other people, I asked her to color her apple blue (that's one step down in the "good behavior chart"). She cried quite a bit and was obviously upset by the whole thing ("how did you hear me?" she asked), but I think she understands why her behavior was inappropriate. She will also be apologizing to the recess teacher tomorrow.

Ahhh, was I that funny when I was little and in trouble? I just remember having a sore bottom once in a while....
And, according to Max, he never got in trouble when he was little. Or if he did, he doesn't remember!