Names!!!

Hey ya'll. My roomies and I were enjoying our last night together before we all go our seperate ways and we got on the topic of baby names. I have no idea why, we were watching Blue Collar Comedy Tour and then we were talking about what we wanted to name our kids. Go figure. Anyways, I thought I'd just post a short list of the names I like and the reason's I like them so here goes:

Adele--I remember watching a documentary, about 5 or 6 years ago, that was done at a children's hospital in England. On the documentary there was a little girl who was probably about 8 years old and she was dying waiting for a liver transplant. I fell in love with this little girl. I was glued to my tv just absorbing everything I could from this documentary and her name, Adele, stuck with me. I still love it to this day.

Jane--I like this name because I had a boss who's name was Jane. She was the sweetest woman I have ever met. She was like a second mother to me. She took me in when my mom was absent from the parenting world-(long story...i'll post about it another day). I, in turn, watched her 2 kids and basically I was their big sister. I don't ever remember feeling afraid, shunned, put down, or belittled by her. Every time I interacted with her, I felt better about myself. She is truly an amazing person :)

Molly--One of my best friends in grade school. I was basically an outcast in elementary school and Molly stuck with me through and through. She didn't judge me, didn't join in and make fun of me when the other kids did. I remember one day I was playing hopscotch on the playground and I fell and ripped my brand new tights. She offered to switch tights with me just so that I wouldn't get beaten when I got home. God I miss her.

Zachary--My rival in math class during elementary school. I remember we used to play a game where we would go around and room and one by one we would stand up, read the multiplication problem on the flash card that the teacher held up, and give her the answer. If we got the answer right, we would get to go to the next card, if we got the answer wrong, we would have to sit down and it was the next kids turn. Well, it always came down to me and Zach. He was also a person who never made fun of me and always made me feel better about myself after I interacted with him. He moved when I was in 2nd grade, came back for the end of 3rd grade, and then I was pulled out of school in 4th grade. I haven't seen him since.

Dawson--No, it's not Dawson's Creek..I hate that show. I just really really really like this name. It's cute, but yet sophisticated enough so that it can carry through adulthood. I once watched a little boy named Dawson, cute as a button!

Well, that's it. 5 names. Short list, I know. I stick to what I like. What are some of your favorite names--and why?

Yelling vs. Spanking

Do you yell at your kids? Or know somebody who does? If so, you might want to take a look at this article. http://family.msn.com/tool/article.aspx?dept=raising&sdept=rks&name=me_033005_yellingvsspanking&signup=true&offer=2&GT1=6428 I am definately a yeller. I found the article to be really interesting. I especially like some of the techniques they offer to prevent yourself from yelling. I know at the Center I work at I have used the Invading the Child's Space. I've only had to do this 3 or 4 times since I began working there almost a year ago, and it works wonders. All of the teachers use the Insist Once, Act Immediately. The first is just a simple warning, "if you do ___ again, you will be asked to leave the area." If they do it again, they are asked to leave the area. If the behavior continues, they are put in time out. The kids all know this and we have little or no arguing. I have also had a teacher watch my area and go off to floor to take 5 minutes to cool down. This doesn't always work though because by the time I come back either the teacher has neglected to watch the area or has let the kids make a mess and then leave. So I'm stuck cleaning up.

What techniques do you use with your preschoolers?

Quotes

I was looking through my Preschool Classroom Management textbook and saw quite a few quotes that I liked. So I'm going to post them here:

1."A classroom is a place with four walls with tomorrow inside." -Claudia Lesman Boysen
2. "A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops." -Henry Adams
3. "Play is the foundation of growth, learning, and development for children." -Bill Page
4. "Think of what a better world it would be if we all had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon."-Robert Fulghum
5. "Good discipline is a series of little victories in which a teacher, through small decencies, reaches a child's heart."-Haim Ginott
6. "We must see that every child has equal opportunity not to become equal, but to become different-to realize the unique potential he or she possesses."-John Fischer
7. "A teacher is one who brings us tools and enables us to use them."-Keam Toomer

My personal favorites are 3 and 4. I am forever getting questioned by parents about what time of day we stop playing and start teaching their kids. If incorporated correctly, play is the most effective and valuable medium for kids to learn through. In addition, I get comments like "why are you so tired, all you do is play all day!" Part of me wants to smack these people, and the other part of me wants to have them do my job for a day.
I like 4 because 3 o'clock is our snack time and I know I'm dying for some chocolate chip cookies at about that time. If nothing else, just to have a little bit of comfort before diving back into the pool of piranha's-er...kids.

What's your favorite?

Feelings, Stress, and Other Random Stuff

Do you ever get the feeling that you're just not good enough? Everyday when I walk into work I have all intentions of doing well and being a good teacher and treating the kids with the respect and dignity that every person on this earth deserves. Then certain kids-(or teachers)-keep pushing and pushing until I snap. I get to a point sometimes where I just feel like I'm not good enough to be a teacher, girlfriend, daughter, roommate or student. That's kind of where I'm at right now. I'm feeling very down, very out of it. All I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep. I don't want to get up tomorrow to go to work. I don't even want to be there. I love the kids, my boss is wonderful, and I really do enjoy working there. But I just don't feel that I'm good enough to be there.

I guess it might be because it was not a good day today at work. I generally do a lot of extra things at work just to take the workload off of the other teachers because I know how it can be when you have a million things to do in a small amount of time. One of the teachers today went to go get her lunch so in addition to washing and setting the tables, like I always do for lunchtime, I took the time to go through all of the children's lunches-(18 of them)-and put out what needed to be heated up so that when the teacher who went to go get her lunch got back, all she had to do was throw them in the microwave and not worry about going through all the lunchboxes. Well, I missed one. I opened it and I didn't see the item that needed to be heated up. It was a simple mistake, I was in a hurry, and I just missed it altogether. Well, this particular teacher started in on me with comments like "God Jen, way to miss one." and other shit like that. I snapped. It had been a long morning, I was the only one on the floor from 7-9am. I was tired, and lunchtime is always stressful because we're always rushing to get things out on time because the kids are usually starving by noon.

I don't want to go in tomorrow. I don't want to face my boss because I know I shouldn't have snapped, I don't want to face this teacher because I'm still aggravated over the whole thing. And another thing, this incident with this teacher is not an isolated incident. Every day she's there-(3 days a week) she makes some kind of rude, sarcastic, or totally unnecessary comment and I really just can't handle it anymore.

I'm stressed out like hell because I've got exams coming up, plus moving, summer school, and trying to find a job. I need a soft place to fall and I don't have one. I feel like the more I search for a soft place to fall, the further away from it I get. Sometimes you just need a shoulder, or somewhere to relax. At the moment, I don't have one. Any ideas?

Teachers that drive me up the wall...

You know how sometimes you just want to strangle your co-workers. Well, I work with a number of other teachers and respect them, sometimes they just don't think.
Like the teacher who put out paint and markers for the kids to play with at the art table and then walked away and ignored them. She didn't ask anybody to watch the kids for her for a few minutes, she didn't sit with them, she didn't tell them to put paint smocks on so they wouldn't get their clothes too messy. No, she put the stuff on the table and walked away. Obviously, there was a HUGE mess when the kids were done. And better yet, she complained about the mess and even went as far as to say "why didn't anybody watch them?" Um..HELLO!!! When you put materials out for the kids to play with, especially messy materials, YOU are responsible for either watching them yourself or getting somebody else to watch them. That's your JOB.

Or how about the teacher who gets out glue, paper, paint, and stuff to glue to the paper, but neglects to put newspaper down on the table. She then tells 2 & 3 year olds to "not get any paint on the table." Um, okay. Now, let's think about this. When the kids dip the paintbrush into the paint, it is naturally going to drip. And glue, kids that age use WAY to much glue for everything so that gets all over. And if you put out stuff in a container for the kids to glue to the paper, they're almost always going to dump it out. What gets me the most is that she'll clean up the stuff just before she has to leave to go to a class and then I'm stuck washing off the table. Glue does not come off of these tables easily.

Why don't people think? I mean, really. Who in their right mind would give a 2 year old a marker and say "here, go ahead." Then walk away. What the hell do you think is going to happen?????? Then the teacher gets mad at the kid for doing what any normal 2 year old would do with a marker and no supervision--color all over himself and everything else. Or better yet, take the top off and just walk around with it in his hand, not paying attention to what he's marking up--like kids shirts, teacher's pants, tables, shelves, toys, books...The list goes on.