Week 8: The Pre-K Diaries

Well, I've made it through eight whole weeks of Pre-K. Although there was apprehension, fear, excitement and a dash of doubt, I have survived the first five weeks of school and more importantly, so have my students.

I have an interesting band of 17 misfits with big personalities and even bigger needs. It's definitely been a challenge to learn what motivates them and what manipulation techniques I can use to persuade them to follow the rules or "make good choices" as we say in my classroom.

With that said, here are the top ten Pre-K moments so far with my band of misfits:

10. Reminding me that They are Little People Still Learning Right From Wrong: Don't know why this is number 10, but yesterday a student went into the bathroom and after I shut the curtain behind him (not more than two minutes) I heard a huge crash in the bathroom...he broke something...well, it turns out he pushed the cover off of the toilet lid and it smashed to the ground. Not sure how he lifted it or why he did it but when I asked him if it was a good choice, he didn't know. Needless to say, now he doesn't get the curtain shut behind him anymore and the toilet has a cardboard box over the tank.
9. Their Sense of Justice: Since day one, I have repeated the line: "Pre-K is fair" to my students with the hopes that they'll gain a better understanding of sharing. Well, this week,one of my students with an IEP (specialized plan for children with special needs) was watching as another student run up to the schedule and tear off the arrow pointing to where we were in the schedule. B was so appalled by this action, apparently, that he got up from the carpet, took the arrow from the other student saying, "No, N, that's not OK. You're not making good choices" and he put the arrow back on the schedule. I didn't have to say anything...B felt a sense of injustice and wanted to right the wrong.
8. Creativity: during an assessment, one of the questions is - does he/she know his/her full name? I asked one little girl what her name was and she said, "Claire". Then I asked, "Claire? What? What's your last name?" She stopped, thought for a second and smiled brightly while screaming, "Claire Polka Dot!"
7. Their Grasp on Reality: I took my students on a listening walk but before we went, I asked them, "what do you think we'll hear on our listening walk?" Their answers go as follows: -a firetruck -a car -a dog -a plane -a tractor trailer and my favorite, a  princess turning strawberries into frogs. I love that in my job description, I am not allowed to correct them, this was a brainstorming activity and you never know, we might've heard a princess turning strawberries into frogs on our listening walk.
6. The Innocence of their Thoughts: It's inevitable that a handful of my students are going to be listening to the same music as I. I recently heard a few students singing Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" which is 100% about sex. My students kept repeating the same lyric over and over: "I know you want it. I know you want it." So I finally asked them, "What do you think he wants?" and without a beat they responded, "I don't know, a cookie?"
5. Their Emotions: The emotions they have are so pure and raw and honest that it's beautiful. When they give you a hug, it's the best hug you've ever gotten. Yesterday a student was very sad after his mom left and my youngest student turned to him and said, "it's OK, mommies always come back" as she rubbed his back.
4. Their Ability to Roll With the Punches: We were reading Caps for Sale and it was my third read through and by this point they knew most of the words in the story because a few lines repeats over and over again. I read one of these repetitious lines, "Caps! Caps, for sale! 50 cents a cap!" and they read it with me. When it came time for the line again they anxiously yelled, "Caps! Caps, for sale! 50 dollars a cap!" I stopped, and smiled in disbelief and said, "wait, wait, wait, is this because of inflation?" And they screamed, "yes, caps are expensive!"
3. Their Ideas of beauty: while playing beauty parlor with my hair, they have pulled out probably half of my scalp...but as they constantly tell me, "it's all to make you more beautiful" and then one little girl screams, "we need more grease!" Still trying to figure this one out.
2. Discovering Little Boys' Problems with Being Easily Distracted: I learned very quickly that when a little boy is using the bathroom, that is the WORST time to say his name (unless, of course, you don't mind cleaning up urine off the floor, toilet seat, walls, step stool, his clothing and yours as well).
1. Potty Humor: I had a little boy who went #2 on the toilet and as I popped my head in to see if he was OK and asked, "hey, man is everything alright in here?" He lit up, hopped down from the toilet, turned around and bent over (spreading his cheeks wide open in front of me). I looked at his bum and then him and said, "you can wipe. Ms. Katie doesn't wipe" and walked away.