Day 4

Today as soon as I got to Mrs. T's class, she told me the kindergarten class would be doing stations instead of a project, and asked if I would like to take over. I was a bit nervous but thought, why not.

When the students have station days, they rotate every 5 minutes and usually each table as a turn at every station. At the beginning of class Mrs. T announced that I would be teaching for the day, and let me take over. Because I wanted to make sure everyone knew which way to rotate and what they were doing at each station, we got a bit of a late start with the day.

Because I've only worked with middle and high school students, I was way over my head in terms of how to discipline younger students. I wasn't explicit enough with my directions, and didn't realize that with kindergarten kids, or young students in general, they need step by step instructions for everything. I had thought that I made sure they all knew what they were supposed to do at each station and which tables to rotate to, but I didn't tell them how I wanted them to do these things. I didn't say they had to use their inside voices, to walk, not run, to each station, among many other simple directions I didn't even thing of. And so, the class was out of control. I struggled with having the students listen to most directions that I gave them, whether I was telling them to use their inside voices, to walk instead of run, to not color on the tables or punch each other. Normally Mrs. T has a microphone around her neck so that the students can hear her, but of course, it wasn't working today.

My biggest struggle was one particular student, who Mrs. T told me normally needed extra help. This girl was coloring on everything that shouldn't be colored on whenever she could get her hands on markers, even if that station didn't require them. I approached her and asked her to put away the markers because we wouldn't be working with them today. She turned away from me and continued to color on a pair of scissors. Then, I had told her that I was going to count to three and then she could either give me the scissors or take a time out.  She wouldn't give me the scissors and I didn't want to have a tug-o-war with her, but had no idea how to make her listen. Later, when the students were lining up to leave for their next class, this girl punched the boy who was standing behind her in the face. I was completely overwhelmed and had no idea what to do, especially when she went to keep hitting him and the boy was crying. Finally, Mrs. T stepped in and she pulled both aside and told me to walk the kids to their next class.  Before we left, I told them they needed to keep their mouths, hands and feet quiet when they were walking in the halls, which absolutely didn't happen.

It was very difficult for me to run the class because I didn't want to step on Mrs. T's toes with disciplining them, but at the same time if I didn't, the class would be completely out of control and nothing would get done.