A poem written entirely from words found chalked on the sidewalks of my campus today.

Ahem.

Voices in Your Head
The Voices in Your Head!
Five dollars
$5 $5 $5
Just $5
Vagina
Voices in Your head
Who is it?
Spring fling
Dance
I love to dance!
VAGINA!
Just $5
Bond Bond Bond
Vagina
Vagina
Vagina
It�s over!

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Okay, mostly I was amused to find vaginas greeting me with every new bend of the sidewalk. No matter where I looked, I'd find another vagina. Or sometimes a VAGINA! The campus has never felt to friendly to my gender.

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So. AJ's last day of school. I dropped him off and said goodbye to his teachers who both said how much they'd enjoyed having AJ in class. One talked about how smart he was. The other talked about how much he made her laugh (I suspect he'd value that latter compliment more). My husband met him for the picnic. They shared their blanket with his best friend N. and his mom, who had forgotten to bring one. AJ told it like this:

"I sat next to N and he had a chicken and cheese sandwich and I had peanut butter and D came over and we rolled down the hill and then we rolled down the other side and we laughed and we had cookies."

Sounds like a successful day to me.

AJ got his first report card. What, you may ask, does a 4 year old get graded on? And now that you mention it, you might query further, how does one grade a 4 year old on anything?

Good questions. Thanks for asking! Apparently rather than apply needless pressure to preschoolers already bent under the weight of a strenuous curriculum of cutting and pasting and recess, the school grades them pass (or GP for "good progress") and fail (or W for "working on") in a variety of areas divided into the categories Social Development, Classroom Routine, Motor skills and Language skills.

We were pleased to learn that AJ
Participates in group activities
Shares and plays cooperatively
Interacts with others
Demonstrated self-control
Accepts and respects authority
Follows classroom rules and routine
Makes good use of time
Chooses a variety of activities
Enjoys cars, blocks and the sensory table
Runs, climbs, balances, etc. with confidence
Enjoys cutting, coloring, puzzles and painting
Can express needs in words
Speaks in sentences
Can follow 1-2 step directions
Demonstrates adequate attention span.

He still needs some work on
Waiting his turn
and cleaning up after play.

As I read through the list, I couldn�t help but feel glad that I am not graded on these criteria, as I fear I would not fare very well. I'm pretty sure I usually speak in sentences, but I'm not so sure about the running and climbing. And I'm absolutely positive I often do not make good use of time. And don't even get me started on accepting and respecting authority.

But despite these deficiencies, like AJ, I'm about to be graded. On Wednesday I�ll hand out evaluation forms to my students so that they may grade me in areas like course organization, clarity of lectures, whether or not I'm interesting, how I run discussions, whether I'm helpful outside of class, whether I motivate independent thinking�the list goes on and on. I'm sure the cutting and coloring are in there somewhere.

The whole evaluation process is quite a nail-biter. You just never know what students will do. The last time I taught at this particular institution the review forms were all essay forms instead of color-the-dots, like they are now. Consequently, in addition to reviewing my teaching, the students also reviewed my collection of footwear (fortunately both teaching and shoes received a thumbs up). I am trying to prepare myself for the fact that not everyone in my class is going to like it, because I know that I am the kind of person who, when she gets 22 fantastic reviews and 1 bad one, will see nothing but the bad one. Funny, I always thought I was a glass-half-full kind of girl. Apparently I like it half-empty.

[Second entry today. Click back for more blah blah blah)

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