Mean Girls, Preschool Style

Today I had an early summer course preschool class. We were learning about using money to buy clothes. The students were very excited to have fake American dollars to spend at the "store." I was able to take a little break to find some lunch and go grocery shopping before I came back to work to try to tackle a huge stack of grading.

Tonight, I taught two small star classes. The first class is a class that my co-teacher and I are working hard on trying to get more in sync with our classroom styles. The class is hard. There is one little boy who always arrives late crying and another student who should be in a younger class that feed off each others' unhappiness. I've been doing some observing of other teacher's small star classes and have started to do some reflection on my teaching. I've also noticed that I just don't allow myself to be silly with them as I do with other classes since it is so hard to get them focused back in. Plus, there are these little girl cliques in the class. Girls will fight with one another to sit next to the "popular" girl in class. I can't really figure out why she's so the popular girl. It's mean girls, preschool style.