Almost As Good As A Cardboard Box

Everyone who spends any time with children knows that the box something comes in is usually more fun than the thing that was in the box, right?  The only thing better than those boxes are the REALLY big appliance boxes.  But, heaven forbid, your box gets boring, what should you do?

Cut holes in it!  A couple of teachers I work with came up with this creation for twos based on an activity they saw in a book (sorry, but I don’t know the title).  The holes are big enough to let extra large pom poms and paper towel/toilet paper tubes go through.  A few of the children figured out how to balance a tube in a hole and then roll pom poms into the box that way.

To spice it up we let them decorate the box, both inside and out, with crayon and marker drawings.  When the box was sitting on the floor some of the children got in the box to push the tubes and poms back out.  When no one felt like doing that, dumping was all the rage as it often is in our class.

So go raid your recycle bin and get some boxes!

Food Allergies at School: Keeping Kids Safe Without Making Ourselves Nuts (a working title)

What do you think of that title above?  That’s the name of my presentation at the next conference of the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children.  My proposal was accepted!  It’s April 9-10 in Indianapolis.  Now, I need some of your thoughts.

As I’m working on my presentation my list is getting huge for what I want teachers to know.  I only have a little over an hour to talk.  So I want to know what YOU think are the most important things.  This conference is for educators who work with children from birth through age 8 (second or third grade).

Parents:  If you could only tell a teacher 3 things about your child’s allergies, what would they be?  Alternatively, what things have you seen or had happen to you that could have been prevented if the teacher knew whatever-it-was?

Teachers:  What do you want to know?

If you leave me a comment please let me know if I can quote you during my presentation.  I’ll credit you with the name you leave with the comment but not pass out any other information about you.

If you’re in the midwest and you have a teacher in your life who’s attending, please ask them to leave me a note here on the blog so maybe we can chat for a few minutes at the conference.  I don’t expect attendance at my presentation to be huge considering it’s a niche topic on a Saturday afternoon.  I will not have a booth or anything because I want to attend sessions myself. 

I’m excited and a little worried that I’ll miss something important.  This is a great chance to get teachers on board with food allergies.  Help me out!

Patti Whines; NAEYC Responds

A looooong time ago I posted about my frustration with the whole NAEYC accreditation process.  A NAEYC person kindly responded to my post in a comment, but at the time I was only checking mail for emergency stuff because I was spending all my waking time on my classroom portfolio.  (Did I mention that one of our spouses calculated that we were all making about $.19/hr. during that time?  I kid you not.)  Then I decided to take the month of February off from the blog after the portfolio was done to recover, freshen up my classroom, and to start going through the observation requirements, so I am feeling very bad about not thanking the nice NAEYC person (I think her name is Gina).

In fact, a nice NAEYC person CALLED MY WORK to find out if I needed more support!  Honestly, I did not expect that.  It just goes to show you how un-anonymous this whole internet thing is.  So, I have now finally moderated the comment that was left and here I’m going to put my comments on the comment.  Does that make sense?

First, again, THANK YOU NAEYC for being helpful and responsive.  I could not have hoped for more and I admit to being shocked in a good way.  It’s nice to know you’re there for the lowly teacher.

Second, my only complaint at this point is that I just don’t have the time to access the wonderful resources she listed.  I do have a TORCH account, but as I don’t have a computer at work (the office has one computer, our director has a laptop, but those are for sharing and it’s not very convenient) and even when I bring in my own laptop I can only get internet access from parts of the building, it’s inconvenient.  If those materials were sent with our application information, I apologize because I didn’t know they were there.  Again, I work in a part time program.  I am using my own personal time in many cases to do classroom planning.  If I want to do anything other than set up or clean my room it’s pretty much going to be on my own time.  All the accreditation stuff is extra (though our director found a little money to give us as a reward, which was nice but, as she calls it, just a gesture).  Anytime I have to do more digging on my own it’s taking time away from my kids, my studies, and my other obligations.  I know the other teachers were feeling somewhat resentful by the end of the classroom portfolio period, so it’s not just me.

Now the portfolio is done and we’re waiting to find out when our visitation window is.  I’m feeling pretty good about my classroom, but I certainly don’t want to be the reason we fail to achieve reaccreditation.  So I’m dreaming about it at night and occasionally going over the lists again during the day.  I’m feeling calmer and more rested now so I can put it all in perspective. 

So I feel sheepish for not being a good thanker but I still believe some tweaking needs to be done to the process.

The Dance of Accreditation

This year we are going through NAEYC re-accreditation.  At the beginning of this process I looked on it as a way to reflect on my teaching and my classroom.  I had hoped that I would be able to find things that I should improve upon or at least think about.  Now, however, I’m just tired.

The accreditation process is geared toward full-time programs.  I work in a part-time program.  I have some children who I only see for four and a half hours each week.  Other teachers I know who are also being re-accredited work in places where planning time is built into their days, often for as many as two hours each day (I know, some of you barely have time to pee all day while others get nap time to themselves).  These people are in programs where the kids are with them for 40 hours or more each week.  While it’s a bit of a time pinch, they are able to spend a little time each day working on their classroom portfolios.  The teachers in my school only get paid time for set-up and clean-up each day.  We typically do planning on our own time and are often there long beyond what we are paid for.  To add accreditation on top of that is challenging, to say the least.  I chose my work because I’m available to volunteer at my own children’s school most afternoons, which means I’m not always available to spend all afternoon working on my classroom portfolio.  While we are getting paid a little extra because of the time burden, the fact of the matter is that I only have so much time to give.  You can pay me a million bucks, but I’m not going to stop seeing my family for this.

With the process being geared toward full-time programs, some of the criteria will be ones we can’t or won’t meet.  For example, we don’t use TVs or computers in our classrooms.  We don’t feel it’s developmentally appropriate, and we know that most of the kids get too much screen time at home anyway.  The criterion in question involves the appropriate use of “technology,” which could mean just about anything.  I’m going to write a paragraph on why we use physical objects rather than screens, but it seems like I shouldn’t have to prove something that should, in our minds, be standard practice.  We also don’t brush teeth.  The kids come to us after breakfast and the parents pick them up shortly after snack.  If I had to brush the teeth of each child even once a day, I’d have trouble doing all the other things I should be doing.  Heck, diaper changes sometimes eat up 20 minutes of my morning.  That’s a lot of time when the kids aren’t there that long.

Another small problem is that the classroom portfolio thing is new to the process.  We have an official IAEYC person who comes to advise us, but she doesn’t have all the answers and sometimes contradicts herself.  I went to a session at the national conference where I got to see an accepted portfolio and talk to teachers and an NAEYC person about the whole thing.  Some of the stuff we’re being told at the local level isn’t consistent with the national level perspective.  So which do we follow? 

The criteria themselves are a little strange.  Some of them are almost word-for-word copies of others, while some of them contain multiple requirements in one criterion.  So, I have to write up a separate thing for all of them, even if they’re almost the same.  I tried referencing similar ones to each other, but it got hard for my co-teachers and I to figure out which ones had been done already.  Organizationally confusing, you might say.

We are spending a ton of money on printing pictures (we’re printing wallet-size ones on regular paper, by the way, and using black-and-white rather than color when the picture is clear enough), copy paper, plastic sleeves, binders, and a host of other things.  I only use a picture when it seems to demonstrate the criterion in question.  It still seems wasteful.  I wanted to do mine all electronically, but I was told that I’d have to be able to provide a private place for the accreditors to view my portfolio.  We only have two computers for the whole school and they’re in the office, so that was a no-go.  Putting it on a CD wasn’t good enough since they assessors may or may not have a computer that could read it.

What’s also stressing is that all this time I’m spending is time that isn’t spent on the children.  I don’t have time to do extra things to make my planning or my classroom top-notch.  So, I’m documenting something that I’m not proud of.  It’s also changed how I view the children.  While I still plan for their interests, I’m also planning to get a good photo that demonstrates some criterion.  It’s pathetic.  Now I think, “Oh, if I do this activity so-and-so will totally get into it, which means I’ll have proof of such-and-such criteria.”  It’s aiming for the product rather than the process, which is against everything I believe in for early childhood education.  Of course, it’s me I’m talking about rather than the kids, so maybe I’m just feeling put out.  Sorry for the sniping.

Now, you may think that I think accreditation is a waste of time.  But the ideal is still good.  It’s good to know that an accredited program is at a certain level.  It’s important to know that the program to which you’re sending your child isn’t going to hurt them and that they are getting benefits from being there.  What I object to is the massive amount of wasted human resources.  Perhaps it’s just because of our status as a part-time program housed in a church where we don’t have control over the physical facilities (though they are great facilities, I must admit).  Maybe there needs to be a separate procedures for programs like ours.  I know that several programs similar to ours have decided not to get re-accredited this time.  When I see how great they are compared to some full-time programs that ARE accredited, I’m sad.  Some of those full-time programs aren’t that great, but they had the resources to get through the process.

NAEYC, are you listening?

Carnival of Educators for December 22, 2009

It’s my first time hosting a carnival!  Yeah!  I hope I got enough fairway food for everyone…

First up, a couple of items about brain research.  Always learning, we teachers are.  Joanne Jacobs gets us started with some information about learning styles.  Then Alvaro Fernandez shares “a stimulating interview with brain scientist Michael Merzenich. Who will be the "personal brain trainers" of the future? (perhaps educators can add this to their New Year Resolutions?)”  That comes to us from Sharp Brains.

In the There’s-No-Good-Answer-For-That Department, Siobhan Curious wants to know why Lia is so outraged (though she says she’s not) and what she can do to become a kinder teacher while figuring it out.  Andrea Hermitt wonders on Families.com what it is about homeschooled children that makes people think they can pick them out of a crowd easily.  Maybe we should test it in a lineup, just to make sure (I’m kidding about that, people).

On a happy note, have a little fun with a puppet challenge, sent to the carnival by Pamela Jorrick and the Blah, Blah, Blog.  As an adult I love such challenges, but as a kid, well, I found them challenging!

In the Resources section we’ve got online math games and lessons sent in by TutorFi, the top 45 websites to head for if you want a Christian scholarship sent in by Online University Reviews, and 50 essential blog posts on educational reform sent to us by Online Courses.org.

And finally, from the I-Can’t-Believe-This-Crazy-Weirdness-Happens-In-Our-Public-Schools file, Andrea Hermitt shares with us the story of a teacher driven to distraction by…hair.  Add a pair of scissors and you’ve got a heartbroken kid and a bizarre story to share with your relatives over the winter break.  At least you don’t do stuff like that where you work, right???  Right???

Hopefully you all get some well-deserved rest over the next couple of weeks.  I don’t want to hear any reports of strange teacher behavior when you go back to your classrooms!

Christmas in the Twos Room

By now your school Christmas celebrations are over and all the kids have started their winter break.  Now that you have a chance to breathe, I’ll share with you what we did (or didn’t) do.  I’ll warn you, it’s a little non-traditional!

My nursery school is housed in a church, which considers us a ministry of the church.  They are very generous with our program and many of the things are able to do are because of their generosity.  Luckily, they are also a very inclusive faith community.  We do very little that’s strictly Christian and most classes have one or more students whose families wouldn’t describe themselves as Christian.

In our twos classes we were very low key this year.  I had a ficus tree that I strung with some simple lights and we plugged it in for the last week before break.  Each classroom is supposed to have a nativity set to play with (we don’t instruct about it, we just set it out), but ours somehow lost pieces between last year and this one so we left it packed up.  We used red and green paint, glue, and some glitter the last week and we talked about the upcoming break during snack.  We had a holiday party on the last day where parents brought in healthy snacks, hung out, and let us give them a gift we made with the children’s art work.

And that was it.  (Don’t have a heart attack.)

Now, I love the holiday season as much as the next person, but when it comes to little ones, less is more.  In all other areas of their lives they are bombarded with Christmas decorations, music, advertisements, and the gimmies.  If they don’t celebrate Christmas then they are left out completely.  Their little brains need a rest.  They don’t need more sugar and they don’t need more glitz.  They need their usual routines with just a *little* dazzle added.  Not the whole bag of dazzle, if you get my meaning.  Twos are truly experiencing all the special times of the year for the first time since they don’t usually remember the last time clearly.  It doesn’t help to overdo it.

I will admit that other classrooms in the building worked a little harder at the holiday thing.  And that’s ok.  The threes remember the previous year so it’s not completely foreign.  They get that something’s different than regular times of the year.  The fours know enough to look forward to it.  But for twos it’s a crazy enough time.  Relatives may be visiting or they may be traveling.  Parents are stressed.  We tried our best to make our classroom a haven from the winter holiday crazies that seem to take everyone over at this time.

Whatever your personal winter holiday traditions, enjoy them with love and generosity toward others.  And stay tuned for the Carnival of Educators just a few days from now, right here!

Under (Very Little) Pressure

It's really difficult to teach something as subtle as “gentle” to a two-year-old.  Last year I had a kid who thought that “gentle” meant he was supposed to give a hug!  Pressure is a difficult concept, particularly when children are still learning what their little bodies can do.  And let’s face it, in preschool we’re always trying to get them to more, not less, so it’s easy to understand why asking for less of something would be confusing.

I like to use gak to let children experience pressure.  I’ve talked about gak before, once with a picture and once without.  It’s a substance that’s fluid when you allow it to move slowly and more solid when you interact quickly with it.

We made gak as a class last week.  This week I set it out on little trays (more about the trays in a sec).  The trick with gak and markers is that the markers only make a nice mark if you use a gentle hand with almost no pressure.  Once you poke it in the marker gets gunked up and doesn’t do much of anything other than make a hole (which is a fine experiment all on its own).  After your gak gets colorful you can fold it or flip it to write some more.

Gak will get to a strange purple-y color after awhile when you’re writing on it.  That’s ok.  Before all the colors mush together you can extend the learning a little bit by folding the gak like you would pastry dough each time you want a clean slate.  Then you can cut into the gak to see all the layers of color you’ve made.  If you’re really on top of it you can have some examples of rocks with layers for comparison.

You will have children who either can’t or won’t press lightly.  If the child in question is frustrated, don’t push it.  Just suggest another activity.  If that child is frustrated but still trying to figure it out, offer assistance but don’t do it for him or her without asking.  With permission, take his or her arm in your hand and demonstrate what it feels like to use very little pressure.  For the ones who insist on poking, give them their own gak (it’s hard to write on bumpy gak) and make sure they have markers that are already dead or something else you can clean off easily.

When I pulled out my gak this time I couldn’t find my handy mini crate from the last time but I found something in the supply room that was almost as good: a dishwasher basket!  It was so fun.  Our gak was a little on the firm side so it didn’t flow as fast, but it was still cool. 

Oh yeah, about the trays.  The trays we use for stuff like this come in two different sizes and are FREE.  We live in a town with several biotech firms.  One of them uses these trays to store sterilized parts for medical devices before they are assembled.  Then they leave stacks of these trays at the recycle center.  They are so clean I really would eat off of them without washing them first (I do wash for the children at school though!).  We use the trays to contain a lot of messy things and for drying artwork.  We tend to use them until they are totally gross and can’t be cleaned out anymore and then we recycle them.  I scored some totally new ones for these photos.  They are so slick to the touch it makes me happy.  Yes, I’m weird.

NAEYC 2009-Bound

Yeah, I know I’ve been a slacker.  But between accreditation, working 5 days with 2 different teachers, and preparing for the NAEYC conference, it’s been busy!  We leave Wednesday afternoon for the conference and won’t be back until late Saturday night.  Is anyone else going?  If so, let’s meet at the Tweetup spot they’ve got scheduled!

Preventing Food Allergy Emergencies

I am in the midst of an occasional series on food allergies for classroom teachers. I hope to eventually put the posts all together for a presentation at a conference next year, but I’m having trouble deciding what teachers need to know. As a parent of food allergic children, I know a lot more than teachers should be expected to remember or take care of. I need to find the right balance of information. I’d love to have specific feedback on these posts in order to make them accurate, understandable, and helpful. Other topics were/will include: Food Allergy Basics, How to Handle Food Allergy Emergencies, and Instructional Implications for Food-Allergic Students. Thanks for your input!

How can I avoid an allergy emergency?
Planning! Assess the times when children in your care will be around food in order to manage their exposure.

1. Lunch. If a child has an allergy that requires epinephrine, consider creating an allergen-free zone at a table with signs. Only children who do not have that food in their lunches can sit there. It takes teacher support for this to work without becoming alienating.  Some schools make this a special treat for the non-allergic kids.  There’s nothing sweeter to a parent’s ears when their kid comes home and beams, “The peanut-free table was PACKED today!”  You do not need a separate table for each allergy, just the ones that may be lethal.  For example, my own son has multiple allergies, but there’s only a peanut-free table at school.  That’s totally reasonable, since, in his case, he’s unlikely to go into anaphylactic shock with his other allergies.

As children age, the “free” zone should be re-evaluated, depending on the allergy.  A kid with a severe contact sensitivity to something that can easily be spilled (like milk) may have to be separated for quite awhile.  And though peanuts are often a severe allergy, since they don’t tend to spill you may be able to eliminate the separate table once all the children are aware of good etiquette depending on the allergic response.  The age will depend, but my personal feeling is that somewhere around second or third grade is a good time to start moving to shared tables.  You can even talk to children that age about allergies and let them know to get a teacher immediately if they think a classmate has been exposed by accident.  You may want to make a strict “no sharing food” rule at lunch.  Make sure you enforce it.

For preschools, if an adult will be sitting at the table with the children you can share the table.  Just make sure the food-allergic children will be unlikely to come in contact with the allergen.  If you are lucky enough to use several small tables for snacks or meals, then it’s easier to quietly designate one where the allergen won’t be served.  The children don’t even have to know about it.

If your school has children wipe the tables (a good, responsibility-teaching job), make sure any allergic students clean tables that are unlikely to have their allergen, wear protective gloves (which may be problematic socially), or do another, similar chore.  Do not let them get out of doing work or other children will notice and they will feel as though they aren’t good enough to contribute.  Don’t make a big deal about it, but make sure they do something so no one feels it’s unfair if you’re asked.

2. Snack. Provide safe snack foods. If you don’t have control over what’s served, make sure your food allergic students have a safe backup snack you can serve them on days when the provided snack isn’t safe for them.  Learn to read labels (and do it every time, even for things you’ve served before) or have the parent of a food allergic child do it for you if that’s practical.  Another alternative is to request that each child bring in his or her own snack and don’t permit sharing.  If parents bring snack, remind them to bring in any packaging that came with the snack or ingredients for the snack.  I remember one nice family making chocolate chip cookies for my son’s class using a recipe that didn’t include any of my son’s allergens.  They gave me the recipe so I could check it, but didn’t bring the package for the chocolate chips so I couldn’t let my son have the cookies.

For both lunch and snack, it is advisable to wash hands not only before but after eating when an allergen has been consumed by the rest of the class. Allergens are not washed away with hand sanitizer. Mechanical removal is required. Hand wipes are acceptable if the children are taught to wipe the fronts, backs, fingers, and between fingers. Ask for wipes as part of your supply list if you know a food allergic student will be in your class or arrange for the parent of the food allergic child to supply them. Some wipes have allergens, so ask for brand recommendations.

3. Class Events. Let the parent of the food allergic child know IN ADVANCE that there will be a class event that involves food and what that food will be if you know. Ask the parent to provide something similar for the food allergic child. If possible provide food that everyone can eat so you don’t have to think about it. Parents of food allergic children are happy to provide recipes! Even if all the food you will be providing is safe, parents of food allergic children like to know that an event will occur so they can be available in case the worst happens by accident. If you plan to leave the classroom and food will be involved, bring the epinephrine with you as well as an antihistamine if it is in the child’s action plan.

The reality is that a food allergic student is much more likely to have a reaction in times and places that are not normal food times.  Parties, field trips, and class treats can turn into a nightmare if you’re not prepared.  Plan a little in advance, communicate with parents and helpers, and you can make sure everyone has a good time.

4. General Measures. Communication and practice are the keys to prevention. As a school you should have procedures in place to ensure that all adults who are responsible for the well-being of children are ready to provide emergency assistance. Your communication plan should include classroom teachers, aids, specials teachers, office staff, field trip chaperones, substitute teachers, extended care providers, cafeteria personnel, and cafeteria helpers.  Do a run-through of an emergency.  Remind specials teachers at least once during the school year who has what allergies.  Since specials teachers deal with many more students each week than a classroom teacher does they tend to forget unless they are especially sensitized to allergy issues.

In regards to the food allergic children themselves, remind to ask “Is this safe?” of any food they don’t normally eat.  Children trust the adults in their lives, but they need to learn to look out for themselves.  Even the most diligent parent of a food allergic child has accidentally given that child an allergen.  You can’t expect more from a teacher with more children to take care of.  Food allergic children should always question the caregivers in their lives and their caregivers should encourage this without getting annoyed.  The 130th time you are asked may be the time you forgot to check the ingredient list and the manufacturer just happened to change the ingredients.  Being asked may remind you to check, so encourage it.

Questions?  Comments?  Post them here!