Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Kindergarten = Insane Asylum

I am subbing at one of my favorite schools today, in the morning for a fifth grade teacher and in the afternoon for a kindergarten teacher.  Fifth grade was a breeze.  Fun, easy, rewarding.  I felt like I was really something special after that.  Teacher of the year!  

Then I came into this kindergarten class and they are slowly but surely eating me alive.  This may be the last thing I ever write because they are at lunch right now and I only have another 15 minutes until they get back.  I forgot how fucking crazy kindergarteners are.  As soon as their teacher left, we were doing an activity on the smartboard, putting pictures that started with S next to the big S and putting pictures that started with M next to the big M (easy).  They started arguing with each other about who was going to get to pick which picture, and who was in line first, and who got to be in line first last time blah blah blah.... pandemonium.  

We finished that awful activity and then we went to the gym to play Duck Duck Goose.  Total chaos.  The "it" person would go around the circle and touch each person's head and say "duck" but you could always tell when they were about to goose someone because it went like this:  duck...., duck.., duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, Duck, Duck, DUCK,DUCKDUCKDUCK!, with each new kid getting slapped just a little harder in the head until someone got goosed, I meanGOOSEd!!! and then those two were running around the whole gym like a couple of maniacs, and the Goose person would go after the It person with such a vengeance that when the It person finally got tagged by the Goose person the It person usually fell on the floor from the sheer force of five-year-old excitement/gooseslap-rage.  Holy shit!  Calm down, people!  And THEN the people who were tagged were supposed to sit inside the yellow circle, but they wouldn't stay there.  If I turned my back they would slide their little bodies out of the circle and try to trip the Goose person and the It person when they were running around like maniacs.  

Then we had to go to the bathroom and there was almost a class brawl while they argued about if they are supposed to line up next to the wall, or on the black line.  First of all, I didn't see any black lines anywhere, so I don't know what the hell they were talking about, and second of all, just line the fuck up and shut your toothless little traps!  

And then we came back to the classroom and they were supposed to have center time.  It was total chaos trying to tell them what to do at each of the four centers.  When I'd go to help one center, the three I wasn't at would start yelling poop and pee words and laughing hysterically (it was kind of funny) and wouldn't do their center activity.  One kid had to sit in time-out because he instigated the whole poop conversation amongst his peers and whipped them into a poop/fart/pee frenzy.  (Kady, you would have been in hysterics.)  I have to go pick them up now.  Farewell...

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I'm home now.  I survived the afternoon.  I have a headache of massive proportions.  After lunch went better than before lunch.  The most alarming thing about those little people is that they really like me. Why???  I try to be a hardass and make them a little afraid of me, but they won't be intimidated.  When I was standing in front of them when they were lining up to go to the bathroom, the kids in the front were petting my stomach fat with their tiny monkey hands, and telling me how beautiful I am and how beautiful my clothes are yadda yadda yadda, and when I walked them down the hall the line leader held my hand.  Then the fat kid couldn't get his pants unbuttoned so I had to do it, then he couldn't get them buttoned so I had to do it, and whenever I would turn my eyes away, another one was running away, or getting in trouble.  

One girl lost her tooth during story time and wanted me to hold up her disgusting bloody little tooth-stump and show the class.  Gross.  

The worst part was at the end of the day when we were getting ready to leave.  The teacher didn't give me any directions about what time to get them started, or her procedures for having them get their stuff on or anything, so I was basically winging it and gave them 15 minutes to get their stuff on.  About a third of the class was ready in two minutes and then standing in line causing problems, another third took about ten or fifteen minutes (and were causing problems while they were dressing), and then the last third were making me sweat because they hadn't even located their jackets by the time the bell rang and it was time to get on the bus. 

One kid said he was mad at his classmates for some reason so he just wasn't getting ready to go home.  Um, what?  I said,"YOU'RE GOING TO MISS THE BUS!"  He didn't care.  

But then mixed in with the utter chaos were moments where they were so cute I could barely stand it.  During their story (Over the River and Through the Woods) there was a picture of a woman rolling out dough with a rolling pin.  I asked them what they thought she was making and one kid said, "Cookies!" another one said, "Pumpkin pie!" and a third said, "Green beans!" another said, "Chicken!" which led to this argument:

Kid 1: You don't make chicken, you kill it!
Kid 2:  Well, if you don't have a chicken to kill, then you just make it.  
Kid 1: ...Oh, okay.  

They were talking about their class "tuwkey" named Albuquerque and they told me that he gets a new feather every day they are really good.  He had some really nice, shiny, foil feathers.  They really wanted a yellow one today, hint hint... 

Ha ha... revenge is sweet.  TFB, Albuquerque.