Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Tattle-Tail Tuesday!

I could post about why I haven't posted in almost two weeks...

...about how grad school is still kicking my butt
...about how Kevin and I have been yard-work maniacs in the little bit of spare time we have
...about how TAKS week is quite possibly as difficult on K-2 teachers (who lose all breaks throughout the day and spend the day with their students like caged animals) as it is on those administering it

But no.

As promised, I am going to blog about...


THE TATTLE BOOK!

Here are the latest entries; see if you can read them without reading the translations. It will be a fun game.

Disclaimer #1: No matter what you may think after reading this entry, I DO supervise my class. I have absolutely NO IDEA when most of these things are happening!

Disclaimer #2: While it is a positive thing, it is slightly disappointing for the tattle book entries to be spelled correctly, simply because it is not as funny for me. First grade is nearing an end and (most of) my kids can write!!!

1. G said that I was not helping in the math center, I'm not even in the dang math center! By D.
translation: (Ok, this one needs no translation because the kid is a genius)

2. G always growns at me.
translation: G always groans at me.

3. S kept luking at me when I was writing this taddle.

4. T was boderin me and then he boderd K and then he was boderin me again.
translation: T was bothering me and then he bothered K and then he was bothering me again.

5. G sed i wus a rat
translation: G said I was a rat.

6. A hit me! (mad face) When I am on the rug S and D pull my har and mes with me. (There is a picture of a huge mad face and all capital letters taking up the whole page, saying "I AM MAD! Grrr Grrrr")

7. G did not do her fluency box.

8. When she wus doin calndr E did't pake me but when A pot at me E pake me but now she did not pake me. I am rasting my han good but she stil wot pake me. She never pake me and she pakes sumbody else but not me. She nevr pake me no day evening if I am sheoning my mawth nice but she didt pake me.
translation: When she was doing calendar, E didn't pick me but when A pointed at me she picked me, but now she did not pick me. I am raising my hand good but she still won't pick me. She never picks me and she picks somebody else but not me. She never picks me no day even if I am shutting my mouth nicely but she didn't pick me. (There is a very detailed picture with this one of her sitting on the rug with her hand raised and a big x on her mouth, with E having lines coming out of her eyes looking at someone else. Talk about a rant!!!)

9. J was heating me and pushing me down.
translation: "hitting me"

10. Look at the blue table!

11. O did not do his floosy box. He was chatter.
translation: O did not do his fluency box. He was chattering. (Nice vocab, I guess...)

12. T touched R buty.
translation: T touched R's booty. (yikes)

13. G, D, W, A, N did not do there fluency box.

14. A said a potty word. and it is poo poo.

15. K kept singing a stupid song about people dieing.

16. top secret. Stop throwing oreos at me O. (this one has a nice picture of a messenger pigeon with a case on his back. The message is spilling out of the scroll).

17. S wus not doin things in independent reading

18. M thew my new book (sad face)

19. E telled me her list (our spelling lists are leveled and it is supposed to be only your business what list you get).

20. I tri to cher up S but he sed I am a cown.
translation: I tried to cheer up S but he said I am a clown.

21. I am NOT a cowmeedan!
translation: I am not a comedian!

22. Dring the gam E tuted and when I sed it was funny she got mad at me.
translation: During the game E tooted and when I said it was funny she got mad at me.

23. O liked all over his hands right befor he touched my desk!
translation: O licked all over his hands right before he touched my desk!

You can tell which words we teach as high frequency words, huh? They're the ones that are spelled correctly that stick out among the ones which are not!

If I get a chance in the next couple of days I'll blog about the field trip to ASI Gymnastics yesterday. It was so much fun! Best field trip we do all year. There are some pics of the activities on my facebook page, for now.

Okay. Back to work.

Friday, April 17, 2009

So I guess I only post on Fridays now...

This week has been a whirlwind of stress and extracurricular responsibilities. I finally finished Week 2 of my Research course (which is so poorly organized and instructed that it is laughable) for Lamar after spending 26 hours on it in 6 days. I stayed late Tuesday and Thursday night at school for 5th grade science game night and a PTA meeting, respectively. I was in co-charge of planning and teaching the lesson for Girl Talk after school today. And tomorrow, I am working at the Teacher Job Fair from 8:30-2:00 (although I may scoot out early). Don't get me wrong, for the most part I would not trade any of this. All of my school responsibilites I have CHOSEN to take on and I enjoy them. It's this ridiculous class that has me pulling out my hair. It's for that reason that I had an emotional breakdown at work on Wednesday (and had to take a half-day and leave at lunch) after having a migrain induced by staying up until almost 4am that morning doing grad school. But the purpose of this post is not really to complain, so I'll move on.

On Thursday, God knew that I needed some encouragement. So he sent me this gift at recess (excuse the quality; they were taken on my phone)
:



Maybe it was the beautiful rainbow, or maybe it was the innocence and pure joy I say in my kids as they ran toward it in astonishment. Whatever it was gave me a fresh perspective.

I must say, I have a Tattle Book FULL of entries! It has been getting a lot of use lately! But I regret to say that I accidentally left it at school today, so that post will need to wait until Monday. Okay, not Monday because I have no life during the week anymore. Let's just be honest. At the best you're looking at next Friday. However, I do have a HILARIOUS story to tide you over.

D is a little boy in my class who is pretty much in his own world, but he is as adorable as they come. He is soft-spoken, shy, and socially awkward. On Thursday he brought a yo-yo to recess and proceeded to tell me all about how "sheep" it was. "It's so sheep, Mrs. White, it's from the Dolla Store and it's so super sheep."

I asked him if he knew how to yo-yo and he said no, so I decided to show him. I slipped the yo-yo over my finger and started to show off my mad skills. A bunch of kids gathered around to watch and some of them asked if I knew how to do any tricks. So then I made the yo-yo "sleep." You toss it down hard to the bottom of the string and it spins there for a while until you pull it back up. D was so pleased with this and asked if I could do it again. Feeling pretty good about myself (you know you're awesome when you can make a first grader's yo-yo sleep, right?), I tossed it down even harder to make it sleep longer.

That's when it happened.

The loop came off of my finger and the yo-yo flew to the ground, smashing into smithereens. The entire playground went silent as we all surveyed the damage. I was the first one to speak: "Oh D, I am sooooo, soooo sorry!"

In his squeaky voice, he just said "It's ok Mrs. White, it's no big deal. Um, it's no big deal" as he stooped down to start picking up the pieces. As I was about to start helping him, he looked down at the pieces in his hand and the several still all over the sidewalk, and then he exclaimed:

"HOLY $**t!"

Saturday, April 11, 2009

I'm still here!!!

Hi everyone,

Wow, it has been two weeks since my last post! To say that life has been crazy would be such a big understatement that it would almost be funny...almost.

Kevin and I have literally been running in two separate directions for almost a month now. When he's home early, I have to work late. When I'm home at a decent hour, he's got meetings late into the night. And to make matters worse, even when we ARE home at the same time, he's holed up in his (new) office STILL working. His new boss is wearing him out. We have hours and hours of unwatched TV on our DVR - it's getting too full! We don't have much of an idea what's even going on with each other because we only talk briefly during dinner and sometimes in the morning. The other night while I was cooking dinner he came and gave me a hug and I started crying! Why? Because I miss him! Isn't that crazy? We live together, yet we still have to miss each other. In fact, he left this morning (Saturday) before 7am and is still not home now, at 8pm. I hope it gets better soon.

And why am I so busy? Two words: Grad school. Two more words: third grade. Here's my problem with the whole third grade thing: I've never really been good at the whole cross-that-bridge-when-I-get-to-it thing. I like to be prepared. So I have been spending entirely too much time finding and making third grade centers, worrying about and shopping for my new classroom library (full of chapter...not picture...books), learning the curriculum, trying to figure out how to teach Reading in small groups like I do in First grade...you get the picture. And then there's the whole pack-up-your-classroom-and-move-across-the-school thing. Yup. I've already been sorting through what belongs to me and what belongs to first grade, organizing my stuff, planning out where it will go next year in my new room...I'm sick.

And about grad school. My new course started last week - Research in Education. And it's every bit as hellish as it sounds. EACH WEEK we have 6 readings, 4 assignments, 2 discussion questions, and a 25-26 question multiple-response exam. And these exams are not jokes. Trust me, I learned that after I tried to wing it on the first one. The best part is you need a B in every class to successfully complete the program and earn your principal certification. Nice. The good news is today I found a Facebook group about the Lamar Academic Partnership, and it's all people who are right in track with me taking the same course at the same time. Reading the discussion board not only answered some of my questions, but it also made me feel like less of a dummy. This class has made me feel completely inadequate, but it turns out it's doing it to everyone. Somehow, that makes it better...a little.

Enough belly-aching. Let's move on to the fun stuff!

Yesterday I rewarded myself with a fun, relaxing day off with NO grad school and no household chores. Kevin, of course, was working, so I headed to Dallas to spend some time with my girls from work. We had Pei Wei for lunch, then I Heart Yogurt for dessert (and let me tell you - I DO heart yogurt). Then we laid out by Alexis's pool for 3 hours and got some great sun. Let's not discuss when my chair almost dumped me out into the freezing cold pool, or when her bulldog Steve made out with my ear. It was a wonderful, fun, well deserved day off!

On Tuesday, Kevin and I had the opportunity to go eat at Reunion Tower at Five-Sixty, the new Wolfgang Puck restaurant. It was Eric's birthday, so we went with him and Debbie, Kevin's mom. It was awesome! The ball rotates one full rotation each hour, so we got to see the entire city of Dallas twice while up there. And the food was amazing, pricey, but amazing. I wouldn't recommend making a habit of eating there (unless your pocketbook is much fatter than ours) but it is definitely something you should try out once! I didn't really realize what a big deal it was, but now I do and I'm so glad we went.

And now for a funny (but gross) story!

'Jake' asks me every day shortly after lunch if he can "go to the bathroom for twenty minutes." This is obviously his (very regular) BM time. Sure enough, on Tuesday he asked me. I looked at the clock. Yup, 12:30. "Sure Jake, you can go."

He was gone for about 10 minutes and then came back and sat down at his desk just in time for math. A few minutes later I was helping his table with the lesson and I bent over near him. immediately I smelled something bad. I watched him for a while and noticed that he kept pulling on his pants and was noticeable uncomfortable. Oh man.

I called him out into the hall.
Me: "Jake, are you having a little problem in your pants?"
Jake: "NO! I can't say it because it's a BABY thing!"
Me: "Jake, everyone has accidents. Not just babies. You need to tell me what happened so that I can help you."
Jake: "(hesitates) Ok. But you can't look at me while I say this. (takes my head and turns it away from him, toward the lockers).
Me: "Ok, I'm ready."
Jake: "Also, I'm going to say a lot of words. But don't listen to ALL of the words. Only listen to the IMPORTANT words, okay?"
Me: "Okay...."
Jake: "So I was on the way to the bathroom and I stopped to get a drink of water and then I made a little mistake and now there's pooh in my pants!"

So I took him to the nurse and she got him all cleaned up and changed. In the meantime, I took the rest of the class to recess (they had no idea that any of this had happened). All of the sudden, Jake busted out of the door onto the playground and yelled "HEY GUYS! SORRY I WASN'T IN CLASS FOR A WHILE. IT'S BECAUSE I HAD POOH IN MY PANTS!"

As you can imagine, all of first grade began relentlessly teasing him. And really, can you blame them? I tried my best to stop it, as did the other teachers, but to no avail. When we went inside Jake sat down on the rug and began pouting. I asked him what was wrong and his answer was...

Wait for it....

"EVERYONE IN THIS CLASS THINKS THAT THEY CAN SMELL MY HORRIBLE STENCH!!!"

And that, my friends, is a day in the life of a first grade teacher.