First Day of School

Today was my first day of kindergarten with students and it was . . . well read on if you want to know how it all went down.  Within the first hour of my day I had a girl pee her pants, a book lost, 5 kids fall out of chairs, one shelf ransacked, 2 students get lost, 1 kid from another class end up in my room, and 4 kids ask "is it time to go home yet?"  Dude you are here for 7 more hours, better get comfy!  We spent the first hour before recess learning how to stand and walk in a line.  Our next hour was spent figuring out who brought a lunch from home and who didn't.  It went something like this, "Who has . . " All hands go up.  "I haven't finished asking the question.  Put your hands down.  Now, who brought a lunch from home?"  All hands go up.  "Hmm ok, who is eating the school lunch?"  All hands go up.  Alrighty then.  And this is how we sorted it out.  "So and so bring me your backpack.  Ok you have sack lunch.  So and So your turn.  Ok you have hot lunch."  Kid starts crying.  "Why are you crying?"  "I have hot lunch."  Seriously?  And on and on until we had it figured out.  The next hour was spent trying to go from our seats to the rug.  So each table has a colored caddy on it.  As a class we went over our colors and what table was what color and yada yada.  I'm no fool I know you have to model and model I did - myself, other students, and on and on until every kid seemed to understand.  And once we were ready to try it as a class, this is how it went:  "Yellow table, please come to the rug."  Blank stares.  "If you have a yellow basket on your table please push your chairs in and come to the rug."  All kids get up but one.  "So and so what color is on your table?"  "Blue."  Wow!  At this point I read a story and we made "First Day Hooray" hats and surprisingly that all went well.  Then came time to go to lunch...seriously all I was able to do in half a day was line up, figure out who was eating what, and read a story??  Why did I even plan?  After lunch we did a name activity where they traced their name 4 times.   I modeled everything - how to get my pencil, how to hold it, how to trace, etc.  Once the papers were passed out one kid started trying to write with his eraser.  Honey, you might want to turn that thing around or you will have some problems.  Another kid exclaimed, "Teacher, look how good I did!"  His entire paper was colored black.  That's one way to trace . . . I guess.   We did some other stuff...yada yada.  Finally time for recess again.  HALLELUJAH!!  More time spent trying to get from seats to the line - "Sweety, you are at the YELLOW table."  When we got back it was almost time (ok we still had an hour) to go home.  But I had learned my lesson...things in kindergarten take time.  So we got out our backpacks and tried to put all the handouts in a folder and in to our backpacks.  I learned 5 year olds can't put paper in a folder.  I pretty much walked around and did it for them.  Finally, all papers were put away neatly in our folders and we had 5 minutes to go before we had to be out at the busses.  Too bad for me it took more than 5 minutes to put our folders in our backpacks and on our backs and get in a line and out the door.  Thank heavens Mark came in right at that moment and was able to take the bus kids so I could take the walkers and parent pick-up and amazingly enough... everyone ended up in the right line and I didn't lose anyone!  VICTORY!!  Did I mention the girl that could only say, "Ay Gaunt!"  (I learned that that means, "I can't!")  But at the end of the day managed to say perfectly clearly, "Teacher, you're beautiful."  And the boy who can't speak or understand English?  Or the girl that spent the whole day in great spirits and then started bawling the second she saw her mom, making her mom cry too, and then have her mom ask me, "what happened to her?"  "Um, I don't know...she was fine two minutes ago."  Smooth.  How about the time I lost two kids but thought I had only lost one only to have the principal find the one I didn't know I was missing and say, "I thought you said you were only missing one."  "Oh well, I ... um.... oops."  And so so so many more.  And I get to do it all again tomorrow!  The good news is that I wasn't the only one that lost kids and I wasn't the only one that only got through lines and lunches in a 7 hour day.  Apparently that is how kindergarten is.  One kinder teacher told me to expect to do procedures for the first 6 weeks.  6 weeks!  And that is the end of my ranting.  I hear it only gets better.  And for the sake of my sanity I have decided to focus on what we did accomplish.  By the end of the day we could: pretty much walk in a line, find our desks without help, and put our hands on our heads and close our mouths when I rang the attention getter bell.  YAY!!  And seriously I mean YAY!!  It took all day to accomplish those three things and I am right there with the veteran kindergarten teachers.  I am not behind!  Now that is something to be proud of!