DAY135

This school year is about to end! I am looking forward to reading this entire blog and reviewing the whole experience.

Today I did half a day in Kindergarten at a Detroit charter school. I had a parapro with me the entire time, and only 14 of the 32 kids came to school today (their graduation is tomorrow). They had gym and lunch. I read them a story, helped clean up the breakfast mess, helped them with a Language Arts page, taught them how to draw a sea turtle and then got free pizza as part of their end of the year party at 11:30. Not a difficult day, by any means, but I gave them all the encouragement I could to keep reading all summer and writing clearly. I tell them that if they don’t make their numbers correctly, the bank teller will give them the wrong amount of money. 🙂 I tell them that there are important thoughts inside their heads and if they don’t write clearly, people will not understand what they want to say.

And I tell some of them that they write better than a lot of adults, because it’s true.

I also monitored restroom time. They have a hallway between their room and the first grade – and off of that hallway is a restroom with 4 tiny stalls with tiny but strong wooden doors on them. Because of students causing problems, they do not keep toilet tissue in the restroom. Rather, kids have to get some from the roll in the classroom and take it in with them. The “bathroom helper” stands nearby giving out squirts of soap and pieces of paper towel when needed.