Bus Duty

For the last ten years I've done a duty at our school fondly called "bus duty". This job consists of herding cars around the circle drive and offloading kids. There are some things that really bother me and I am not basically a whiner. Here are my Top Five Irritations About Parents Dropping Off Their Kids:

#5 Tardy parents
#4 No seatbelts or child restraint seats
#3 Parents who comb hair, write checks, and sign planners while holding up traffic
#2 Parents who talk on the cellphone while they are dropping off or picking up their kids. These people are not brain surgeons or international stock dealers, can't they wait 5 minutes to chat while they say goodbye to their kids!
#1 Cars that are full of trash, backseats covered with fast food and fast food wrappers. I'd bet their is a direct corrolation between junky cars and disorganized kids!

Skrbl

Here is Skrbl. Be careful what you write on the whiteboard. It stays there until someone starts a new one.

Tikatok

We just finished a book publishing project (grades 2-4) using Tikatok. It is pretty intuative to use, you type the text, you scan in the illustrations. The books can be viewed online and the best part is you (or parents) can buy hardback or paperback books from the site. The quaility of the finished book (we've seen both hardback and paperback) is amazing. The books are expensive when you buy them off the site but you can get educational pricing ($7.00 and $12.00). The gal that owns the site is very helpful and will get right back to you if you have questions.

As I teacher almost all my student projects are digital but as a parent I always loved those "hard copy" projects.

Bragging: Who's fault is it?

Comment on Ms Teacher's Blog

Yes, bragging/arrogance can be a problem with gifted kids---we discuss it our gifted ed class a couple of times a year. My experience has been that the bragging usually ends by 5th grade when it becomes socially unacceptable. BUT, I don't blame the kids I blame the parents and primary teachers and here's why---

There is nothing more fun than have gifted kids, I have three of them. When you have a two and a half year old who can read or a kindergartener who knows the stats of every major league baseball player you tend to drag them out to show-off at family gatherings. When a child enters school reading the teacher and other students put the kid is the academic spotlight, he's kind of a rock star! These students end up being teacher helpers, held up as examples of the "right way to do things" (both behavior and academic), tutors to slower kids and we wonder why they began to see themselves as what they do rather than who they are.

We put them on the pedestal and then wonder why they end up a bit arrogant. hmmmmm, what's wrong with this picture?