The weekend was not long enough, but I'm glad it ended when it did. This weekend there was a Sunday school program for our church meeting and my five to six year old's in my Sunday school class perform their parts. We had our two hour rehearsal on Saturday at 9 am where my kids basically sat for an hour and half doing nothing. If dear reader, you are not one who commonly associates with six year old children I may inform you that this is quite difficult for children this small. By the end of the program I had to pull five boys off each other in a wrestling match in front of the pulpit, and try to catch the four girls who were picking their noses wandering in the wrong direction.
Sunday the kids performed and were complete angels. (hooray- you have NO IDEA how ecstatic I was). Suz. Stone, my teaching partner for the class sat with one rambunctious end keeping them from rocking off the chairs, and my husband distracted two of the more wild boys by playing a drawing game. One little girl D., was so adorable! She started playing rock paper scissors with me and B., another cute six year old. I don't think either of them quite understood the game, apparently 'scissors' can crush rock and paper can 'saw' through anything, but it was fun and it kept them quiet.
For the children's singing time after the program, one child was especially difficult to handle. This boy R., is incredibly smart. He's a fast thinker and can make incredibly connections to the world and whatever he is doing at hand, the only problem is he has too much energy. He loves to play and cannot focus or listen, and I think he has a hard time taking others seriously. R. was so excited after the program that he crawled around on the floor and was making loud noises. When asked to participate in class games he refused and eventually would start trying to play with the other children during the game. When the others didn't respond he would start to hit or kick them. He didn't have any malicious intent towards them and was just being playful, but he was being loud and upsetting the others. Suz. Stone and I gave him warnings to calm down, but eventually it got to the point where I needed to take him out into the hall and wait in the foyer on the couches for his mom to come. He didn't want to go and I had to drag him to a chair for us to wait. He scratched my arm and dug his small nails in quite hard. When his mom came she just said he had a hard week. He shut down completely and said he was feeling sick.
As someone who will one day teach high school, this makes me concerned. He could be just a kid who has ADHD and his two brothers act the same way. I didn't sense any actual fear or anger from R., just frustration. I still wonder if something is going on. Should I get involved?
I hope I don't have any kids similar to R. when I teach high school, unless he is in a small class. I think being around a lot of people makes R. excited or unable to focus. R. really is a cute kid and if he learns to calm down, could really go far as he grows up. He needs one on one time with a teacher or parent to help him practice on focusing on learning. Then as he learns to concentrate and focus, a few more kids could be used to create a learning group so R. can function in a regular class.
Americas classrooms have a lot of kids like R. who for whatever reason, can't focus or learn. I wish I could do something to impact their learning, so we don't lose them by the time they're in high school. Not everything I think is perfect however, and perhaps R. just needs something else entirely obvious that I can't quite think of. Anyway, that is it for my educator-in-training blogpost for today.
-Lis
.jpg)