Thanks for sharing....

This has been my first full week of classes with my new students. So far I have met with nearly 21 different classes...that's roughly 400 students! We have been going over classroom expectations and playing ice breaker art games and some classes even had time to do some drawing. My older grades have been making and "personalizing" their sketchbooks.
Yesterday I had a first grade class come in with a new student that started off yelling "Hi Art Teacher, when are we doing sculpture?", I replied that we will be doing it later in the year. He continued to interrupt throughout the entire period about 20 times asking "but how are sculptures made?", "when are we making sculptures?", "I want to make a sculpture!", "You haven't told us yet about our sculptures!", "When are you going to let us start on our sculptures!", "Your not paying attention to me I'm asking you about sculptures!!", etc. At first I thought 'ok this student is new and just needs to learn how to raise his hand and take his turn'. After about 10 minutes I thought 'maybe there is something up with this little guy and I need to handle it differently than I normally would'. After about 20 minutes I thought 'OK there is definitely something going on here and where is his IEP??" My energy was draining FAST and the class was starting to get restless cause I kept having to stop and direct my energy towards our new student.
After class their teacher came to pick up the class and walk them back. I gave her the "mayday mayday crashing and burning look" with my eyes. She told me that he was a new student that just got in on the lottery and this was his first day (school started a week ago), that they haven't received his IEP yet but that his parents have indicated that he is quick to anger, shouts out uncontrollably in class, has high functioning asperghers/autism and some ADD. She said "I probably should have given you a heads up."...in my mind I'm thinking "yeah that would have been helpful" but I just smiled (she is an amazing teacher and a dear friend) and just pretended like I had it under control. (fake it til' ya make it!) Well, if nothing else it has brought yet another weakness to the surface that I need to make a strength so I can help this little guy have a great year as well as the class and so I can maintain what semblance of sanity I have remaining.

Today in class I was teaching another 1st grade class. I was explaining to them that we need to sit with "all four stool legs firmly on the floor". I mentioned to them that we need to be safe and we might fall off the stools and hit our head and we just don't want to have any stitches. That was obviously the wrong thing to say as 7 hands shot up in the air to share their "stitches stories". One little boy blurted out as I tried to get back on track "My brother got stitches in his butt crack!"...."Oh my!" I replied. Well, thanks for sharing.....