One Of My New Little Friends

One of the first little friends I noticed, when I began student teaching in the at-risk preschool program at Sky Elementary, was Ani. Ani is a little boy who barely talks. When you say hello to him, he stares at the ground. When you ask him how his bus ride was, he stares at the ground. He can talk... at calendar time he will participate if the mood strikes him. Today he talked about the cookies we ate at the grocery store on our field trip last week. He'll make noises when he's playing in the toy area... which usually means he's shoving animals and people figurines down the trap door of the Fisher Price castle. But most of the time he will only nod, shake his head, or ignore you when you talk to him..The longest sentence I ever heard him say was "I don't want to," when I tried to get him to take off his backpack in order to put his seatbelt on on the bus. He usually refuses to do the tasks all the preschoolers do, like painting a polar bear white or sorting buttons by color. But when the teacher gives him an ultimatum... do the work, or no playing... Ani will go in the other direction, concentrating with all his might and refusing to stop when the teacher says its time to be done. "Its his way, or no way," the classroom aide explained. 
When I first started at Sky Elementary, Ani looked like he was glaring at me all the time. But by the end the first week, he'd started getting used to me. One day he came up to me and stomped his feet, to show me that he'd gotten new boots. Another day he showed me a large, silver thumb ring with skulls and crossbones engraved in it. "Mine," he said, before he hid it away in his backpack. 
Today when Ani got off the bus, I asked him to sit down with the rest of the kids, in the hallway where they wait for all of the bussers to arrive. Ani shook his head.
I don't know the kids well enough to be too firm... I'm still a guest in their classroom... so I tried to make him smile. "You won't sit down? What will you do instead?" I asked. "Will you stand on your head? Will you do jumping jacks? Will you swing from the ceiling like a monkey?" Ani almost smiled at that! But then he caught himself and  looked away, rolling his eyes. 
Ani is three. 
"Why is Ani so angry at life?" I asked Mrs. Wing, during a brief moment when the kids were out of earshot. 
"He has a very messed up home life," she replied. She didn't elaborate, and I didn't want to seem nosey by asking more, but I just can't help wondering.
The three year olds I've known throughout the years are emotional rollercoasters. They're laughing and being silly one minute, screaming and throwing a tantrum the next minute, and planting sloppy kisses on your cheek and declaring their undying love for you the next. Even the preschoolers I worked with who were in foster care and had Reactive Attachment Disorder were no exception. If anything, they were just bigger rollercoasters, with more violent lows and more joyous highs. But Ani is just... there. What happens to make a three year old withdraw like that?
A lot of the kids in the class have questionable home lives. The other day I asked you guys if you know what makes a child qualify as being at risk. Today I found the answer in an online manual for the state's at-risk preschool program. Basically, when screened, children are given numbers of points for different factors that put them at risk. For factors that involve their biological and physical needs, such as being on the federal free lunch program, living in subsidized housing, being homeless, having a chronic illness, having been exposed to lead , being malnourished, having a teenaged mother, having low birth weight, having been exposed to drugs or alcohol as a fetus, etc, they would get four points for each, because these factors are considered the most pressing. Safety needs... having parents with poor behavior management skills, an unstable family structure, having been abused or neglected, being in foster care or under DCFS supervision, having an incarcerated parent, etc... would score them three points each. Factors that are considered "belongingness and love needs," such as speech issues (I'm not sure why thats grouped in with belongingness and love, unless they rule out that the child has an actual speech delay and decide that his speech issues have to do with his home life,) lack of self control, lack of self esteem, having been through a trauma or serious loss, etc... score two points each. (Having a non-English primary home language is also listed in this category, inexplicably!) Finally, "esteem needs," such as a short attention span or poor gross motor skills (???!!!) score one point each. So whoever is screening the child eventually adds all of these points up. Then, the children with the most total points get spots in the preschool program. If there was a program with one hundred spaces, the one hundred worst-off children screened would get them. 
Yep.
So basically, in order for a child to be in the program, a lot has to have gone wrong for them in their short three or four years of life! 
This is another reason why I feel like, if (hopefully when) I am a teacher, I want to make school as safe and happy a place as possible. I don't want to complain about the preschool program I'm at, because Mrs. Wing is great and the school is great and everything... but I just feel like something is missing. The joy is missing. 
I feel like a child like Ani should be able to come to school and have it be a shining spot in his day, a magical place where he feels safe and loved and has chances to try new things, to succeed at things, to be proud of himself. But here it just seems like its all about teaching them what they need to do... teaching them to sit quietly and raise their hands, to walk in a single file line, to clean up the toys and hold their pencils correctly and learn beginning academic skills... and not at all about their emotional needs. 
Its frustrating for me because I'm only there for five weeks, and I cannot make a difference there. I mean, even if I reach out to kids like Ani, in five weeks I'll be gone.
I love student teaching in the preschool! But sometimes it also makes me so sad. 

Who Is At Risk?

Hi everyone! I've just survived my fourth day of interning in the special ed and at risk early childhood program at Sky Elementary School.* I have to say, I'm really enjoying it! I love being with the early childhood kids. They are sweet, and fun, and funny! They try so hard at everything, and are so fascinated by things.

I have a question I would love for someone to try to answer for me! , I was meaning to ask my cooperating teacher about this, but it slipped my mind! The particular kids in this class do not have serious diagnosed special needs. Most of them are there because they've been identified as being "at risk." I am not exactly sure how a child gets identified as being "at risk" as opposed to having an actual special need. Its a little confusing to me. The morning class kids are all identified as "at risk," and some of them also have a label of speech delay, autism, developmental delay, etc. These kids get some extra services. For instance, the school has to provide a free snack to them. The afternoon kids have speech delays, autism, or developmental delays, but are not considered to be at risk. I've been trying to Google it, but every website I've found seems to skate around defining what puts a child at risk. One website gave examples that the child may have a teenaged mother, a mother who abuses drugs or alcohol, or a parent with a severe emotional disorder. That could be true. Of the kids I know of who are identified as "at risk," one lives with his parents and three siblings in a motel room because his father lost his job. Another child has to go to the nurse any time he comes to school with a bruise or other injury, no matter how mild, because the family is being investigated for child abuse. Another lives in a kinship foster care placement but does not get much actual care or attention there. But if a child's home situation is what puts him "at risk," how would they get people to sign kids up for the program? Would they say, "You seem to be doing poorly at this parenting business! We have a great free preschool program for your child!" My question to you more knowledgeable teachers is, what is the difference between a preschooler with a speech delay or developmental delay, and an "at-risk" preschooler?

At any rate, it could be that early childhood is the grade level for me. I've worked in a preschool program before, for children in foster care. And I taught a preschool curriculum at home to the children I used to care full time for. Whenever I am at the classroom, my mind is wild with things that I would do if it were my classroom. Not that the teacher doesn't do a great job! Mrs. Wing is awesome! Its just that I can't help envisioning my classroom! I think to myself, "I would do finger plays and rhymes with the children during morning circle! I would have music playing during play time and snack! I would open up a computer center and a science center! I would have specific activities in each center! To get the children to spend some time in  different centers, instead of just living in the block center the way these kids seem to, I would give them a weekly 'passport' and have them collect stickers for trying new things! I would do more open-ended art projects with them! I would do movement games with them in the gym instead of just having them bounce balls every day!" I think the thing I like best about preschool is the teacher's freedom to design her own lessons and activities, instead of sticking to a prescribed curriculum like teachers at some schools have to do. In some schools I've observed at, for instance, a fourth grade teacher cannot do an activity with her students unless she's talked about it at the grade level meeting and all of the fourth grade teachers have agreed to do the same activity, in the same way, on the same day at the same time. In preschool, it seems like the sky is the limit!

We got to go on a field trip yesterday, to the grocery store. The preschoolers got a behind-the-scenes tour. Every department gave them food! Those children ate so much! French fries. Cookies. Cheese. Meat. Oranges. But when we got back to school they still asked, "When is snack?"

Here is a cartoonized picture of my new little friends in the special hats the grocery store manager gave them, so they could pretend like they worked there! All of the hats but one were smashed by the time we got back to school, of course. But it was fun for a while!

On a lighter note, here is a funny moment...  The teacher was teaching the children about the letter C. She was trying to get them to come up with words that begin with C. Mrs. Wing suggested, "What about cup? Do your parents drink coffee in a cup?" Rhea piped up, "No! My Daddy drinks liqour!" In case we didn't hear him right, he repeated it about ten times!

Thanks for reading my post! I'd love to hear what you think, about the at-risk question and about anything else.