They Can’t All be Awesome Days

The school bus pulls up in front of the house and I watch her blond head pop out of her seat and walk to the steps. She bounces across the street, runs up the sidewalk and flies through the front door – she exudes energy as she tosses her coat and backpack and kicks off her shoes. I ask how her day was and she yells “AWESOME!” as she skips to the kitchen for a snack. That scene plays out each day after school.

Two weeks ago she bounced into the house and I asked her about her day, she stopped moving, stared at the floor and mumbled “I had a yellow day.” {They have a behavior monitoring system of Green, Blue, Yellow and Red. At the end of each day her color for the day is recorded in her agenda along with any pertinent notes and I initial it that evening.} She has had 6 blue days this year and the rest were green until this day. I was surprised and when I asked why she said that she couldn’t talk about it and I should just read the note. She and her line partner had called some other kids a name. So we talked about name calling, I wrote a note back to her teacher in her agenda and that was the end of the discussion.

The blue days are always for talking during quiet work time, since she loves to talk I didn’t think anything of it. In fact I was surprised that she didn’t have more blue days.

I spent a few hours in her classroom on Valentines Day – I helped with a craft project and a special snack. The class was split into two groups and I worked with the student teacher. She started by explaining the first step to the group and then told them to raise their hand when they were ready for the next step. Some students were done with the entire project before others were done with the first step. When we switched to the second group which included Juliana she was the first one done – she didn’t rush, her project was completed correctly, she simply completed the steps efficiently. Juliana was done and bored and asked if she could get a book to read or do something else. The student teacher recommended that those who were done help the others finish instead.

She has mentioned in the past that they have quiet work time in the afternoon to finish their assignments, but she never has any work to do. I wonder how often she is done with her work and trying to stay busy. All the more amazing that she has so many green days and loves school so much.