Day 13

This is almost a week late but I won $100 from Wal-Mart and wasn’t even at the staff meeting when my name was drawn out of the hat!!! This is why:

“Through the Teacher Rewards program, Wal-Mart will provide more than $4 million to over 45,000 teachers like yourself across the U.S. during the 2010
back-to-school season. These funds will help offset the approximately $500* that
teachers spend out of their own pockets each year for classroom supplies.

We applaud the difference that you are making in the lives of your students. Your reward card can be used to purchase school supplies and nutritious snacks for students that may not have regular access to food. Thank you for all you do for America's future.”
*Apr 2007: The Reader's Survey, Edutopia magazine

So, thank you Wal-Mart! I already loved you so much and now you have made it $100 easier to buy things for my classroom at your store! J

On to Day 13... 2 more referrals, same student. You just can’t tell people you want to kill them. Sorry. It also doesn’t help you to lie to me about it when I heard you say it.

I had to lay claim to another fart today. Then when some kid kept laughing about it and carrying on that I ‘farted,’ I proceeded to make them feel bad for hurting my feelings. Hopefully my feelings won’t get hurt about this anymore. At one point in this, I had to turn my head away because in my head, I pictured kids going home saying, “Mrs. Snow farts all the time at school.”

I have one child who claims to have been born with a lightning fast body. Really kid? I have yet to see you move at lightning speed, except when you are running down the hall, leaping off the steps or talking into your flip flop phone. However, you do work faster when you are not sitting at a table with other kids. It’s amazing how much can get accomplished when you focus on your work and not entertaining the table.

While I am adapting to the little people, I still feel so lost teaching kindergarten. I walked into a former kindergarten teacher’s room (she voluntarily became a Pre-K teacher) and said, “How do you teach kids to write their numbers?” I guess what I should have said was, “How do you teach these kids to write anything???” I like it when they come to me reading and writing and knowing how to RECOGNIZE letters and numbers and SPELL THEIR NAME. Is that too much to ask for?