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  • Got Ya

    I switched jobs back in January and I now teach pre-K at an inner city school where most of my children come from low income families. It's tough work but it's so rewarding, I've had an absolute blast there for the past 5 months.

    I have one child in my class who basically tries to do my job over me. If I'm leading circle she tries to take the attention from the board and direct it to her. She talks over me as I'm reading, bosses around the other children and if my coteacher or I redirects her she rolls her eyes and smirks, or pouts and hides her face.

    Mom is aware as we've been working together. We both believe she's bored of the school (she's 5 1/2 and just waiting for kindergarten in the fall, she's been here two years already) and that's what's causing the behavior.


    Yesterday I was trying to read a book about dinosaurs to the class and I couldn't even get two pages in, she kept talking over me. After the third time I quietly closed the book and slid it over to her. "If you aren't going to let me do my job," I told her, "you can do it."

    Right on cue another child in the circle made a "Wahh wahh wahhhhhhhh" losing horn noise, and I busted a gut laughing with the other kids. I feel awful for doing so but the timing honestly couldn't have been more perfect.

    Either way, she didn't interrupt me the rest of the day.

  • #2
    Quoth Nashida View Post
    she's 5 1/2 and just waiting for kindergarten in the fall, she's been here two years already
    Is there no 4 or 5 year old kindergarten that she could've been placed in already?

    Some sort of testing to see if she can be skipped to 1st grade?
    Unseen but seeing
    oh dear, now they're masquerading as sane-KiaKat
    There isn't enough interpretive dance in the workplace these days-Irv
    3rd shift needs love, too
    RIP, mo bhrionglóid

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    • #3
      She's got a Decemeber birthday so she turned 5 last year and her mom wants her in one of the "better" kindergartens so she missed the cutoff date by a few months. The kindergarten cutoff around here are weird, leaving a number of kids to turn 5 by January and still be with us through the summers.

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      • #4
        Ah.

        Cutoffs were (are? Don't know, I don't have children) weird when I was a little girl, but my mom fought to get me and my twin sister placed in our grades in such a way that we ended up graduating high school a month before our 18th birthday instead of waiting a year and being almost 19.
        Unseen but seeing
        oh dear, now they're masquerading as sane-KiaKat
        There isn't enough interpretive dance in the workplace these days-Irv
        3rd shift needs love, too
        RIP, mo bhrionglóid

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        • #5
          I would have been near the cutoff, since my birthday is in September. My mom felt it would be better for me to wait, instead of starting Kindergarten exactly when I turned 5, which is how the timing would have worked. I remember being in Kindergarten and thinking "these kids don't know how to do anything!" I didn't go to pre-school, but I was around other kids and got all socialized and could read pretty well and stuff. The school was super stressful so by 1st grade I was already behind, but when I switched schools I got ahead again. ETA: I realize I sound mean to pre-schools, but I'm not I promise! I'm being mean to the specific school system I was in before transferring.
          Last edited by notalwaysright; 06-11-2016, 06:33 PM.
          Replace anger management with stupidity management.

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          • #6
            I really should have waited a year before starting first grade, as I was very immature for my age. The cutoff where I lived was October 10; my birthday was October 8, so I was still 5 years old when I started first grade. Keep in mind that this was the middle 1960s. My first grade teacher was always slapping me or hitting me with a ruler, and the day I came home with bruises my mother hit the ceiling. Until this happened the teacher was always calling my parents and telling them how I never did my work and messed around in class. In reality, I was way ahead in reading, but way behind in math, and for some reason this teacher apparently thought that slapping me with a ruler when I did something wrong was the way to make me do it right. My parents were focused on trying to get me to do better in school, and that day I came home with bruises was the turning point. My mother went to the school and told the teacher that if she ever touched me again my mother would have the teacher's head, and since my mom had quite a temper the teacher believed her. So, for the rest of the school year, she pretended I wasn't there.

            I'm surprised I did as well in school as I did, in view of the way I started out. Add high intelligence to immaturity and a nasty teacher, and you come up with a very troubled student. Fortunately a lot of that was reversed by subsequent teachers who were really wonderful at what they did.

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            • #7
              Most of my family is prime examples of the frustrations of dealing with cut off dates, as three of us have Sept birthdays, all of which fall after Sept 1st, the cut off date for our state's kindergarten. I'm dreading my youngest, because his cousin born in March will get to go to kindergarten a year ahead of him.
              If I make no sense, I apologize. I'm constantly interrupted by an actual toddler.

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              • #8
                Nashida, I think you and the mom are right about the kid being bored. I was like that in my early school years, and I was a little jackass too, at times. I'm told that my first grade teacher complained to my parents that I would get all my work done too quickly, then wouldn't have anything to do. I'm sure you know that's a recipe for a kid to get into trouble, and I was not the exception to that.

                In my case, the teacher came up with some additional "activities" that could be done quietly while waiting for the rest of the class to catch up, or just let me grab a classroom book and read at my desk. Eventually, they started placing me in more demanding classes, and a lot of the behavior issues disappeared. Particularly when I was of age where I could just carry a couple of reading books with me for when I finished my classwork.

                I don't know how much control you have with the curriculum, but maybe a bit more challenge thrown at the kid might be useful until she moves on?
                The Rich keep getting richer because they keep doing what it was that made them rich. Ditto the Poor.
                "Hy kan tell dey is schmot qvestions, dey is makink my head hurt."
                Hoc spatio locantur.

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