Monday, September 13, 2010

just TRY and follow this one...

so today . . . was kenneth's last day in my classroom. thank goodness!

now before you light up your torches and prepare to run me out of town, let me just say that i like kenneth. but having him in my class for the last two weeks has created something of an issue...

kenneth was one of my pre-k students last year. while most of the students have moved onto their new classrooms for this coming school year, kenneth's new school doesn't begin until tomorrow. so he has been in my class for our first two weeks of kindergarten....

i also got a couple of new students this year. their names are luke and kevin. these are children who started out in public school, but when their parents realized they were going to be in a class with 28 other kindergarteners and one teacher, they went looking for a better child/teacher ratio...

today we read a story called "we are all alike, we are all different." it talks about how we all have similarities and differences. but my class was looking around like, "well, some of us are boys and some of us are girls, but that is where the differences end." because most of my students are asian. they have dark, smooth hair and dark eyes. i, of course, can tell them apart, but to the untrained eye, some of them do look similar...

i have taught for several years. a lot of students have come through my classrooms. it is always nerve-wracking when i see a previous student at jack-in-the-box or the mall. because they run up to me and call me by name, and their parents smile and look at me expectantly, and i just stand there smiling, saying something like, "hi! wow, look how big you have grown! what grade are you in now?" do you notice that the child's name never falls from my lips? that's because my brain is like a sieve when it comes to those names. once they are out of my class, their name goes too, because i have a whole new set of names to learn...

(don't worry, i am going to tie all of this together in a minute. keep reading.)

last year i had a megan and a michelle--two girls whose names both began with the letter m. although one was chinese and one was vietnamese, they both had medium length straight dark hair, they were both slim, and about the same height. i mixed their names up ALL YEAR. i was constantly calling them by the wrong name. they kept correcting me. i started getting it right some of the time. but i would look at one of them, the "m" would form on my lips, and i would blurt out the wrong name. they would just roll their eyes.

kenneth was in that same class. for some reason my brain refused to let me call him by his correct name. my brain thought he should be called kevin. so i did. and he corrected me. about mid-way through the year, he decided to go by ken (i think because it was shorter to write on all his papers.) you might think this would help me, but it didn't. i just couldn't call him ken. every time i started to say it, my mind would say i should be addressing a tall, slender, blonde-eyed, plastic man with flat feet--yes, barbie's boyfriend! thankfully, unlike poor megan and michelle, i did finally call kenneth by his correct name. most of the time.

but wait, i'm not done... sometimes a child just looks like someone else to me. this year i have a kaitlyn, who i am sure must really be a megan. she looks like a megan. except i also have a megan, who just confuses me, because i know i don't have two megans in my class. and since i want to call kaitlyn 'megan,' i just look at megan blankly...

and now i also have a kevin, which is what i used to call kenneth. so now i am back to calling kenneth 'kevin.' and of course i am also calling kevin 'kenneth.'

now do you understand why i am glad today was kenneth's last day? i am hoping that once he is out of the picture, i can at least get kevin's name right. although...

...this morning the kids were sitting on the rug as we prepared for story time. one little boy was squirrelly. he was wiggling and talking, and was turned around backwards. i kept saying, "brian, turn around. brian, listen to my words." he seemed to be ignorning me. i hate that. so i looked right at him and said, "brian, i am waiting for you to be ready to hear the story." by then, i was leaning toward him as he was repositioning himself. finally i looked into his eyes and said, "brian, are you ready for the story now?"

and he looked at me and said, "my name's not brian."

yep, it was kevin. that boy sure looks like a brian.

5 comments:

Carroll said...

I'm confused and I haven't seen those kids so good luck. Sounds like a zoo but aren't zoos supposed to be fun?
Love you!

Diandra Ann said...

hahahaha okay that one made me laugh right out loud :)

mom said...

I'm so glad to read this. Been there, done that. I would try to encourage you by saying it will get better but I know it just lives on. Happy year!!!

Jes said...

maybe have name tags on their faces, fronts and backs of the shirts!! hahha don't worry, it takes a while and you remember all the bad kids names first and fast!

Jewelielyn said...

it isn't that i can't remember the names--i just can't seem to get the right names with the right faces! and jes--there are no bad kids...there are just kids with challenging behaviors ;)