Tag: Teaching

special education

Phone Alert

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The joys of technology seem infinite.  Emails, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Skype……. I’m sure that there are many others, but I did not grow up in the generation of ultimate technology.  When I started teaching, we had to write our report cards with cursive print. We did not write a great deal of detail and often the words we used were “fluffy.” Yes, it’s true. The computers that were in the classroom had floppy discs and were generally big and bulky.  Needless to say, as a teacher we went through many changes over the years and learned many lessons about the pros and cons of technology. I will share one story about technology and the reason it should be stored in a safe place.

Flip Phone Flip Out

In my special ed classroom, there is not a great deal of space so I do not have a “ teacher desk”  I have a student desk for my day book and a few personal items. Today has been a very busy day and I have carelessly left my flip phone on my desk.  There are approximately 10 students in my class ranging from grades 2-6. At the present time, students are working at various learning stations and I am walking around to help them with their individual work.  Do not assume that they are all sitting and working diligently, some get up and walk around to talk with others. Some need constant redirection and support. Some need support to pick up their pencil and some just need a smile. While I circulate around the class I suddenly hear a noise coming from my phone. At first I think I’m hearing things.  “ 911, 911, can we help?” The students are now laughing and I’m looking around the room in shock. I walk to my desk and pick up the phone. I open the flip and I step with one foot in the hallway and one foot out. I talk into the phone.

Hello, can I help?

This is 911, did you call?

What? What? No, I did not call. I think one of my students used my phone to call.

Well,Ms. I would say that you need to be more careful.  This is not a laughing matter. If this happens again we will have to send the police to charge you with mischief.

I’m sorry, but a student must have taken my phone from my desk and called. I know that it is not a laughing matter, and I will do my best to make sure that it does not happen again.

I am rather surprised that the 911 dispatcher is so angry with me, since I am apologizing for something I did not do.  As I am talking I notice that Jumpster is looking at me with a guilty smirk. The other students are not really interested in what I am doing, but he is pacing and looking at me to hear the conversation. I hang up the phone and talk with him.

Jumpster, did you call 911?

Yup.

Thank you for being honest Jumpster. Why did you call 911?

I just wanted to see what would happen.

Jumpster, they were really mad at me and I am disappointed that you did that. Do you like it when other people touch your things?

No.

Well, I do not like it either and you should not have touched my phone. Do you understand?

Okay.

That is all you can say?

Yup.

I do not want to escalate Jumpster, so I drop the issue and tell him that we will talk about this with his mom and dad when they come to pick him up. Jumpster does not seem too worried and he goes back to work. I put my phone away. Out of sight, out of mind. I then continue doing my circulating and the day goes on as usual.  At the end of the day, I talk with his dad and we chuckle over his 911 call.

This seems like a rather mundane story and in many ways it was.  It is a lesson to remind you to put away all of your personal items.  I’m visualizing a new invention in the future for personal items. It is called The Teacher Box. The teacher locks themself in the box and uses a microphone to talk and direct the students. Ahhh, that would be awful.

The 911 phone incident was interesting and I probably would have forgotten it completely if it hadn’t been for the fact that Jumpster’s parents did not respond in a nice manner.   Dad had chuckled with me about the incident and made an Academy Award performance telling Jumpster that he should not have called 911. However, that is not how the story ended. They did not walk home into the sunset and remind their son to keep his hands away from things that do not belong to him. They claimed that the whole incident was my fault because I did not put my phone away. Yes, I forgot to put my phone away because I had a call from my dad about my mom and I was a little out of sorts, so I forgot to put it away. I was not Super Teacher of the World on this particular day because I was thinking about people outside of the school. Jumpster’s parents decided to take the matter further and requested the principal meet with me to, “ Tar and Feather” me. I found this out when I received an email from the principal. I basically sent her an email to let her know that I had already taken care of the matter. Yes, I avoided personal contact and sent her a polite, crisp email.  If you knew my principal at the time, you would have understood my lack of caring. Let’s just say, she was very forgetful.

So why did I share this story?  Basically to let you know that sometimes the strangest things will happen when you are teaching. Be careful and keep your personal items in check and do not be surprised when you are blamed for things that are not your fault. You can’t be Super Teacher everyday because you are human and humans are not perfect.

Daycare

Sit Down and Play

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A 3-year-old boy with limited knowledge of English has arrived at the doorway to the centre.  He is very upset that his mother is leaving him and is crying unrelentingly. I feel so sorry for him because he cannot understand most of what we are saying to him.  His mother walks with him to the main play area and tries to encourage him to go play with some of the toys, but he is presently clinging onto her skirt with a strong grip.  I can see that his mother is worried about him, but she is also repeatedly looking at her watch. One of the teachers manages to get him away from his mom and picks him up, while his mother runs out the door.  The teacher asks him if he wants to play and he responds by throwing his head back, so she lets him down to sit on the carpet. Fortunately, someone has closed the inner door; otherwise I think that he would run out to catch his mother.  He proceeds to lie down on the floor, screaming and crying.

It is a very upsetting scene and I personally feel my stomach turn with knots of sympathy.  The other teachers are now discussing whether they should call his mother back because he doesn’t appear to be settling and his crying appears to be getting louder.  In fact, some of the other children are holding their ears. I decide to sit down near him and play with a toy car. I begin to crash a car into a block wall and I make lots of silly noises.  A few of the other boys think that it is funny, and they are laughing. I do not look at the little boy, but continue to play.

Gradually the boy, who is still sobbing, sits down near me and proceeds to do the same thing with another car.  I continue playing and smashing the car with lots of noise. The little boy stops crying and starts crashing his car into my car.  I then pretend to cry like my car is sad and he begins to laugh. We repeat this process over and over until there are cars being crashed with laughing and pretend crying.  Eventually, the other boys are playing with the new boy, so I remove myself from their play. They continued to play like this for another 25 minutes adding other toys and sound effects. I was now the observer, laughing when they laughed.  These boys continued to play throughout the day and overtime, this young boy learned to say goodbye to mom and meet his new friends in a happy manner. I do not think that I saved the world. I played with a child who needed a friend. I did what I thought would work, remember, I wasn’t trained.  I just did my job, got down on the floor to play and I smashed cars.

Introduction
Introduction

Introduction

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Did you recently graduate from teachers college? Determined to get a permanent job so you can “mold some minds” ? Or maybe, you are becoming a teacher because you are not really sure what to do with your life?  You figure, teachers have summers off. You like golfing, so maybe attending teachers college is for you. Perhaps, you have had a teacher who inspired you and you want to emulate what they did for you. Whatever the reason, you have thought long and hard about becoming a teacher and you have decided to begin the journey to share ‘pearls of wisdom with the world.’  

Teacher. When you look up the definition for the word in any random dictionary, you can view a list of synonyms : instructor, schoolmaster, preceptor, tutor, professor, pedagogue, educationist, educator, school mistress. These words are very unclear descriptions of what really happens on a day to day basis. Often the instruction for teachers comes from the little wizards sitting in class saying things that either shock you or touch your heart.

My blog is not full of pedagogical facts that will help you organize and teach a lesson. Nor is it a series of lectures to review the history of teaching.  It is the stories I and some of my teaching colleagues have experienced in their lifetime as educators. Some are hard to believe, while others will make you cry.  I have changed the names of everyone involved, to keep things ethical. If the story sounds like something you experienced then let’s just say you live in a parallel dimension to me.

After I graduated from university, I started working at Olympia Business Machines.  No offence to anyone working in the field, but I was bored to death. I learned very quickly that I could never do a full time job that required me to sit at a desk all day. I stayed at this job for 6 months and then I saw a newspaper ad. Yes, I said newspaper. The job was for an assistant at a daycare centre.  I had a Bachelor of Arts Degree, but I didn’t have any qualifications, on paper, to teach children. To clarify, I had taught dance to children from ages 3-12 at four different recreation centres, so working with children was not a foreign, or fearful concept. Do not laugh, some people find children very unpredictable and scary. I applied, I went to the interview, I was hired and I was inspired.  The sad point was that I would earn significantly less than when I worked in accounts receivable. Well, I loved working at this daycare. It was a special place because it allowed me to observe other educators working with children. I learned so much from the experience and I discovered that my passion was teaching. I began to work towards that goal. This is one story that made me realize that I had a proclivity for the profession.