Kinder Don't Do Poetry

Day 1- April 30th, 2019

I was a little nervous on my first day. I went to the kindergarten recess area because I figured the classrooms would be around there, but soon realized the classrooms close to the playground was pre-k. I finally found room 8 on the other side of campus and walked in. The kids were leaving for recess as I walked up, and two boys were staying in the classroom because they had fought with each other at recess the day before. My nervousness subsided when I met the teacher. She graduated college in 2016 so she’s soooo much younger than I expected. And even though she takes care of like 20 kids a day, like she’s each of their moms, she’s very relaxed and funny.

They have this app on an ipad called “ClassDojo” for the kid’s behavior and she told me I was going to be in charge of it when they went to Mr. Nicholas’ classroom for art. I met all of the students individually one by one, as they lined up in front of me and Val, my partner from our "Community Matters" class. They had to use their sight words for the week, “Who” and “Good”. So they approached me saying, “Who are you?” and I would say, “My name is Kayla.” And they would say, “It’s good to meet you.” And I continued with, “You too, and what’s your name?” Every kid did this, but it takes me a while to remember names so when I was trying to put praise on a student I would have to pass by to try to read their name off of their face portrait they were working on in art class. Except they still can barely write so some of their letters don't look like letters.

The options on the ClassDojo included things like “Using their ears”, “Helping others,” “Using their eyes,” “Keeping to their self,” “On task,” “Working hard,” etc. I was told to just look for positive actions but I saw there was also a “Needs Work” tab. The teacher doesn't use that feature because the app connects to the parent's phones if they want it too. Some had up to 17 little notifications that show how many stars they have, and some had none at all.

After our introductions we walked over to Mr. Nicholas’ classroom where they were using pastel chalk to make a face portrait of themselves. They were reminded to not use their whole hands when blending the chalk together, but a few didn’t listen. He guided them in specific facial features and it was so cute to watch them randomly decide where they thought the nose went or where the cheeks started on their face. He forgot to remind the ones with long sleeve shirts to roll them up, so I helped a few girls. I walked around the classroom a few times trying to find students that were displaying good actions. One girl at my table started helping another girl because she was putting too much chalk on her drawn face at once.

Many of them were doing really good at watching and listening, but some I had to try to get them to pay attention instead of spreading chalk all over their hands. One girl started smearing random bright colors on the sides of her drawing and wouldn’t stop when I tried telling her she shouldn’t do that. I noticed Val disappeared for a few minutes but it was because she took one of the girls to the bathroom. Ms. McWard reminded the students once she came back from a little break that I was watching for good behavior and the focus in the room increased a little. I helped one girl turn the sink on because she wanted the chalk off her hands to take her jacket off so it wasn’t in the way. Kindergarteners sure do need a lot of help.

The girls were having way more fun with this as they took a lot of time choosing which egg they wanted to open and then running behind a pillar-like it was a secret from the other girl. They did this back and forth, surprising each other what word was inside the egg, even if neither of them knew how to say it. The girls were also more creative with keeping the eggs we already opened separate from the ones that we hadn’t by propping them up inside the branches of a succulent that was sitting on the picnic bench. They were excited to run back inside to grab the next two students who would work with me, but that’s when I realized it was time to go. face they liked best. I had two boys first, and then two girls, before I realized it was already time to leave. Ms. McWard probably noticed that I was really surprised when it was already 11:30, because I really wanted to keep going.

The knowledge was pretty equal between the boys and girls, some words they still had trouble reading. The words were: what, play, too, where, this, help, who, and they. With words like what, where, this, and they, they had to sound it out to be able to say them. I broke them down by how each letter sounds, so we went through each letter of a word slowly to put it all together. Putting the words into a sentence wasn’t too difficult for them, except one of the boys just kept repeating what the other one said, but I made sure to ask him to think of another one on his own.

The girls were having way more fun with this as they took a lot of time choosing which egg they wanted to open and then running behind a pillar like it was a secret from the other girl. They did this back and forth, surprising each other what word was inside the egg, even if neither of them knew how to say it. The girls were also more creative with keeping the eggs we already opened separate from the ones that we hadn’t by propping them up inside the branches of a succulent that was sitting on the picnic bench. They were excited to run back inside to grab the next two students who would work with me, but that’s when I realized it was time to go.

Day 2- May 2nd, 2019

I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be alone on Thursdays, as I knew one girl from my class came at the same time on Tuesdays but wasn’t aware another girl came in on Thursdays staying a couple of hours later than me. She signed up for this specific class because they do composting on Thursdays, and she has a very strong love for gardening. She was the one a day earlier who made it aware to our community matters class that the kindergarten teacher we were volunteering for was completely stressed out and lost with the kids. I didn’t notice this on my first day however, because I was mostly trying to figure out how to engage with the kindergarteners.

But on this Thursday, as I was paying attention I realized that a day without the amount of help she was getting from us must be complete torture for her because it seemed like she didn't know how to handle the amount of kids she has to take care of. Courtney expressed to our class that on her first day helping out, she was with the teacher in the printing lab and she said something along the lines of “these f**king kids.” In addition to not seeing this unpreparedness by the teacher, I also didn’t experience the bad behavior that the kids more than likely act on an everyday basis until Thursday.

To start off the hour and a half I’m there, we did prep for the teacher such as making copies of workbook pages and cutting out little images in squares. Courtney stayed back to tear out pages in a workbook while I did these tasks in the printing room. The teacher mentioned that she saw I signed up for DojoMaster, and I laughed to explain that I did that to learn more about it to be able to explain it in a blog post. She nicely told me that she’s always open for any ideas that we can do in the classroom, and that I can try them out myself if I really wanted to.

I finally noticed her extreme stress while she tried to pour cheerios for two students who didn’t have a snack for recess into a coffee filter, while proceeding to hand a coffee filter full of Cheerios to one of the kids and having it spill all over the floor. She demanded them to clean it up while she finally poured it correctly.

It was Kenny’s bday so Courtney and I sat criss cross apple sauce on the reading carpet with the kids to show a good example, as we all sang happy birthday to him. His mom was there and brought every student two sticks of bubbles each. They were all so excited but had to be reminded that the color of the bubbles they were getting didn’t matter, they should take what they can get because it was a gift. We then watched as they performed their alphabet sounds. The teacher would announce what letter it was and they had a little dance move they memorized for each one, as they repeated the sound of the letter three times. They did this for every letter as the assistant teacher used dojomaster to award stars to students that were participating good.

As they started an activity inside the classroom, I continued my sight word activity with the rest of the students that needed to do it. The first pair of kids were great, but when the second pair came out I knew right away that it was going to be a mission. I sat them down at the picnic bench and the boy complained that he couldn’t see anything because the sun was in his eyes. So I told him to sit on the other side of the table so the sun would be behind him, but then he complained that the window of the classroom was reflecting the sun. He was being very overdramatic, acting like he couldn’t open his eyes at all to even speak to me. This went on for five minutes as I kept giving him options to sit around the table, and he ended up sitting on the ground in the shade. This wasn’t going to work though, I needed him to listen to me and follow directions that we’d be sitting at the table to get this activity finished. His defiant behavior sparked the girl’s as they both continuously tried grabbing the Easter eggs out of the bucket when I kept telling them not to.

Once the boy finally settled down and decided he could see again, we started the activity but it took a lot of effort to finally reach the end. Most of the time consisted of them fighting about who picked which egg, trying to put the eggs back together providing them something to do instead of the activity, running around the table trying to find where I hid the eggs so they would stop playing with them, scribbling on each other’s papers and almost coming to tears when it was done to them, running to the bathroom because they saw another student in the class go to the bathroom, and arguing and getting off topic. My main struggle was that I wasn’t sure how stern to be with them, because I felt like I was being a little too mean. But once it came to the point where they were going wild because they knew the teacher wasn’t watching, I raised my voice, stood up, and threatened to tell the teacher. This one line hit the jackpot every time, because they knew the worse thing would be for the teacher to be interrupted and have to deal with their bad behavior.

The one thing that confused me was that the teacher knows the students best and she was the one to group the names in pairs on my roll sheet, so why would she pair these two kids up when they were by far the hardest ones to keep on task and take care of in general? Other than these two students, every single group went so well. Even the ones who were still pretty rusty on reading the words I gave them aloud, they were engaged, listening, and I can safely say they were actually learning something. The other two kids on the other hand, were more focused on doing the exact opposite I was telling them to do and trying to get on the other’s nerves.

In the middle of their distractions, they actually started fighting by wrestling with one of the eggs. They started yelling and pulling even harder to get the egg, which I don’t know the reason for, so I pried their little hands apart, grabbed the egg, and said, “Do we want to be nice to each other today or do we want to be mean??” This made them calm down and I asked for them to say sorry to each other. I cut the activity a little early because they also started writing in the last word on the worksheet when I repeated asked them to stop because we hadn’t picked the egg yet. They continued to ignore me so I told them that since they already wrote in the last word we weren’t going to do the last egg and that they were finished. Once all the eggs were back in the tub, they both took them all apart again to make a mess. Then to top it off, when sending them back into the classroom I reminded them to be quiet since the rest of the class was in the middle of an activity, so they decided to scream instead.

I thought about letting the teacher know what had happened, but when I walked back into the classroom I immediately realized the teacher wasn't having the easiest time either. As she struggled to get the class to settle down on the rug, she realized it was time for me to leave and I saw a little bit of worry in her eyes. It was hard for me to leave after every session because I knew how much she appreciated my help, but there was only so much I could do.

Having this be my first impression of kindergarten is a little off-putting, but I feel with practice and more classroom management, it's do-able. After all, they are kindergarteners. They're young and easily influenced and cranky when they're hungry and tired and this is their first experience in school. And the teacher is what makes all the difference.