Yesterday, in my 2nd grade placement, there was a lot of craziness! My students were all over the place! I'll take you through my day....
To start off I was in charge of morning meeting. During this meeting everyone sits in a circle and says, "I'm glad you're here. How are you feeling today?" And every child in the circle has a turn to say how they are feeling on that particular day. During the meeting most of the children were sitting quietly and some were wriggling around (which is a totally normal behavior for many of the students). But, toward the end of the sharing circle many of the boys decided they would lay down in the center of the circle, which then led some of the other, easily influenced, students to be mixed up in the middle as well. I quickly decided to end the meeting after the last student had talked, and we moved on to new things. The mentor teacher was NOT HAPPY with the students and she let them know that their behavior was unacceptable.
During the middle of the day I was asked to watch the student who has an I.A. with him constantly because his I.A. was leaving to finish her lunch break. This particular child was having a rather difficult day because he had not had a good night's sleep the night before. During my time with him he decided that he was going to be upset and throw his "fidget", a toy that he uses to stay focused, across the room. I had to talk to him and ask him if that behavior was appropriate. He responded, "no". Then, he went across the room to pick up his fidget and decided to then throw it away in the recycle bin. As he did this he looked across the room at me with a face that said, "I wonder if Miss. Schulberg saw me do that and I know it was bad. I wonder if she'll do anything now...". I quickly went over and told him he needed to get his fidget out of the recycle bin. It was at this point that he decided he would crawl inside the bin to retrieve the fidget. He was in there for about a minute before I was able to get him to crawl out and take a walk outside with me. Out in the hall I had to ask him if his behaviors were appropriate and what he could have done differently. He started crying, probably because he was so tired and overwhelmed, and so we went for a walk around the school and talked about what he did over the weekend. Although he was upset and having a bad day he was still very in-tune to what I was saying to him, and he quickly recovered from his fit and was able to attend the general education classroom again.
Toward the end of the day I had to say goodbye to one of my students who was moving away to be closer to her family. This little girl tore at my heart when she came up to me and said,
"Miss Schulberg, I'm really going to miss you!" to which I replied,
"Oh, we are all going to miss you too!!!" to which she responded,
"My eyes are filling with water and I'm feeling kind of upset."
At this point I gave her a hug and said that we could keep in touch if she wanted to. It was one of the sadest moments I've experienced at my placement this far. And, to make matters worse, my mentor teacher had not planned any sort of goodbye for her. There was no card and no classroom talk about sending her on her way with happy thoughts. This really bothered me. I wish I would have taken it upon myself to make her a classroom card, but I thought maybe the mentor teacher was holding out to give her one at the end of the day. This never happened. I told many of the students to say goodbye because it was her last day. Many of them did, and then she was gone.
This was a sad day for me.
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