Friday Five: Back to School Edition

Five things I learned in kindergarten this week

1.  In Haiti, the first day of school never starts on time.  Ever.

2.  Getting straw mats for my classroom was the best thing I could have possibly done.  Joining my students on the mat – instead of in a chair – was the second best.

3. Coloring is NOT an incentive for my students.  You would think I had asked them to sit in silence with their heads down by the way they reacted.

(This was try #2...24 hours after their initial reaction!)

4. Starting a new school year means I have to start training a new group of kids that vigorously tapping my arm and shoving their papers in my face are NOT appropriate ways to get my attention.

5. Between the itchy straw mat and the rough concrete floor…and the fact that I don’t have a teacher’s chair…my knees are going to have a rough year!

Five of our favorite things

1. Centers

2. Magnetic games

3. Play-doh

4. Whole Brain Learning

For all you Whole Brain teachers out there, yes, it is possible to do WBT in a non-traditional classroom.  Class-yes, hands and eyes, mirror, scoreboard game (give me an oh yeah!), the five rules…we do it all!

5. New friends

Five photos to make your heart melt

1. Kids Falling in love with books.

2. Johannah’s back-to-school smile

3 Ederly (middle)’s Yeah, I’m in kindergarten.  That’s what’s up face.

4. The attempted thumbs-up picture

5. Kids just being kids

Kingdom-Worthy Classroom

Apparently, mourning over my classroom is going to be an annual part of my new-school-year preparations in Haiti.

Yesterday was the first chance I had to get into my classroom to start cleaning, organizing, and decorating.  As I hung posters, calendars, and maps, I felt good about each addition to my classroom…until I stepped back to look at the room as a whole.  When I did so, there was only one word to describe it.  Pathetic.  The brown walls were ugly and stained, there were two-by-fours running across the walls in the most awkward and inconvenient places, the posters kept falling because sticky tack and tape aren’t great on plywood, and there wasn’t much I could do to change any of that.

Last night, as I perused Pinterest trying to get ideas on what to do with those depressing walls, I longed for a bulletin board…or butcher paper…was a little paint too much to ask??  Each picture on Pinterest made my classroom seem more and more inadequate.  I looked jealously at adorable reading nooks with fancy carpets, shelves upon shelves of books, and comfy-looking beanbag chairs.  And here I was, hoping to get a single straw mat so that we could have “carpet” time without getting the kids’ uniforms filthy on the dusty floor (which apparently is gray, not brown.  Who knew?)

I spent a restless night dreaming of beautiful bulletin boards and painted walls and classrooms lit with more than two half-open windows.

Defeatedly, I thought to myself my classroom will never be Pinterest-worthy.  And that’s when I heard a voice in my ear whisper but it is Kingdom-worthy.

Kingdom-worthy?  What did that mean?

That’s when I started to learn: kingdom-worthy means love.  It means joy.  Intimacy.  Safety.  Compassion.  Relationships.  Hope.  It means that I can hang up a sign that says There are no orphans of God and know that within those ugly, stained, awkwardly-separated plywood walls, that statement is true.  There are no orphans of God.

Kingdom-worthy means that decorating with bulletin boards and fancy signs doesn’t matter.  What matters is decorating with Melissa as we turn up the music so that we can sing and dance while we work.  Decorating while Schnaidher reads in the corner, excited about new books.  Decorating with Anderson, who is hammering nails into those awkwardly-placed two-by-fours so that I can keep my calendar pieces next to the calendar instead of across the room.  Laughing hysterically when the banging of the hammer makes the window slam shut and scare the bageezes out of me.

Kingdom-worthy means that getting those straw mats is exciting…not so that we can have a beautiful “carpet” area, but so that we can meet together as a class to share in learning and fun.

Kingdom-worthy means having lesson plans in both English and Creole on my “teacher desk” so that I can collaborate with Madame J, sharing my expertise with her and learning from a veteran teacher.

Kingdom-worthy means that my classroom doesn’t glorify me.  It glorifies God.