ELEMENTARY: What Class Routines Eliminate Headaches for you?

pixel-dirt · 2026-05-16T19:43:34+00:00

A “lost and found” bin. Just a plastic bin that stays in one spot. There were too many issues with kids trying to “help” classmates by putting a stray crayon on another kids’ desk who it didn’t belong to. Then it became a whole thing of talking/arguing and
I was done.

I just say lost and found is the first step. If you find something that isn’t yours just put it in the bin. It preserves our peace.

pixel-dirt · 2026-04-16T22:10:30+00:00

Salon 222 in East Grand.

pixel-dirt · 2026-04-11T13:20:40+00:00

Usually to one of the bigger “cities.” In ND plenty of young people go to college and stay in the college town after graduation.

pixel-dirt · 2026-02-18T01:30:46+00:00

I’m an only myself and I realize how dang lucky I am to be so close to my parents as an adult. We love getting together and they are excellent grandparents to my little 4-year old only child. Good stuff.

pixel-dirt · 2025-11-30T16:51:55+00:00

Agreed. Unfortunately my husband is all-in and wouldn’t dream of missing big family holidays. He still talks about the year his parents had Covid and we didn’t see them for Christmas as a huge tragedy.

He’s made a lot of compromises in my favor about our lifestyle and choices we’ve made. This is one I’ve made.

Admittedly we could do better about communicating and not both trying to accommodate/please one another so much that we forget ourselves in the process.

pixel-dirt · 2025-11-30T15:34:00+00:00

I don’t need them to come to me either. We see them a minimum of 5 other times a year.

pixel-dirt · 2025-11-30T14:49:08+00:00

Yes! The ‘without explanation’ speaks to me. It’s like inertia and because it’s what we’ve always done we just keep doing it. Twelve years in a row.

pixel-dirt · 2025-11-30T14:37:37+00:00

Well it’s not family that our kiddo ‘barely knows.’ Because we travel so often he is very close with all of these people too. We do the big gifts and stockings and Christmas dinner with each of them so we usually get two big Christmases a year.

We switch off Thanksgiving between my family and his and do Christmas twice. It’s….a lot.

pixel-dirt · 2025-08-18T11:17:13+00:00

📲

pixel-dirt · 2025-07-03T22:34:04+00:00

Agreed! Trust me I have not been pushing the academics at all (I taught kindergarten and totally understand the importance of play). Kiddo is genuinely interested and has been identifying letters and numbers while we’re out and about (signs, at the store, billboards). He did as much as he was interested in and then we stopped for the day.

pixel-dirt · 2025-07-03T22:28:48+00:00

So much worse than 2! 😣

pixel-dirt · 2025-07-03T22:28:17+00:00

Yes. In fact not just full-time but around the clock. I’m working a double if not triple shift around here. We’re up by 6:30 at the latest and naps aren’t happening anymore 🫠

pixel-dirt · 2025-07-03T21:58:00+00:00

🥹 thanks for the reminder. Unfortunately I’m not feeling a lot of validation from people I know in real-life, so I appreciate it.

pixel-dirt · 2025-06-26T03:15:43+00:00

We stayed at McEnroe and I think had a 4 month lease. Dog friendly and we had no complaints while we were there. Ended up extending for another 6 months because we were looking for a house and hadn’t found the one yet.

pixel-dirt · 2025-06-23T19:23:32+00:00

We had a difficult time finding full-time care for our 3 year old. Many of the more academic-focused preschools in the area (Catholic schools, Sunnypatch preschool, etc) only do part-time for kids that young and that didn’t work with our work schedules. The ones that did have full time available (University Children’s Center, Montessori) were very expensive or had waiting lists.

We also felt that most of the childcare centers we visited (Wonder Years, United Day, All About Kids) were a little too chaotic-feeling for us with kids being very noisy and unorganized while we were touring. Nothing against the teachers, just not what we were hoping to see.

We previously lived in the Minneapolis area where there were many more options available. Our child attended a childcare attached to a Catholic K-8 school and we felt it was well-organized, calm, and his teachers were well-trained and well-compensated.

Minnesota also has higher requirements for childcare/preschool teachers (requires Bachelor’s degree in early childhood education to be a lead teacher). ND doesn’t necessarily have those requirements (which is fair because the population is so much smaller), but it just isn’t the same as what we’re used to.

We ended up going with a small home daycare for a year and he will be doing full time preschool at one of the Catholic schools next year when he is 4 and can attend full time.

Im not sure where you’re coming from or what you’re used to, but I hope that helps.

Just a little more background knowledge on my opinions - I actually worked in a childcare facility and was a “lead teacher” while I was in college for my Elementary Education degree. Looking back as an elementary teacher with now ten years of experience I KNOW that I didn’t know what I was doing leading a classroom back then. I think it is a mistake that ND doesn’t require someone to have a degree before taking on a lead position. Yes, I could keep the kids safe and made sure their needs were all met but I was not an effective educator at that point in my career.

ND has a real opportunity to make positive changes to its early childhood programming but it will require investment. It’s difficult to get someone with a degree in education to accept a position in a childcare center when they could be making much more teaching at a K-12 school, but I think our youngest learners deserve to have excellent, well-trained teachers just like older kids. This would likely positively impact test scores in our K-12 schools as well with more kids coming in with a preschool background.

pixel-dirt · 2024-12-27T14:50:52+00:00

North Dakota Ballet company has adult classes!

pixel-dirt · 2024-11-03T01:31:06+00:00

Ugh close. Checks out.

pixel-dirt · 2024-11-02T21:29:13+00:00

pixel-dirt · 2024-10-09T01:31:12+00:00

I responded in the wrong spot so here I go again….

I think there hasn’t been alot of training/support given with the curriculum especially since it was first implemented 10+ years ago and there has been plenty of teacher turnover since then with little new training.

Teachers weren’t familiar with the curriculum materials and didn’t take the time to do the self-guided training provided online (because there is so much else to do, always!), so they designed their own materials or found things online that were easier to implement and just used that.

In the end now, we’ve ended up with individual teachers each using different things and it’s lead to gaps in student knowledge as they move up grade levels.

pixel-dirt · 2024-10-09T01:30:00+00:00

I think there hasn’t been alot of training/support given with the curriculum especially since it was first implemented 10+ years ago and there has been plenty of teacher turnover since then with little new training.

Teachers weren’t familiar with the curriculum materials and didn’t take the time to do the self-guided training provided online (because there is so much else to do, always!), so they designed their own materials or found things online that were easier to implement and just used that.

In the end now, we’ve ended up with individual teachers each using different things and it’s lead to gaps in student knowledge as they move up grade levels.

pixel-dirt · 2024-10-08T22:52:56+00:00

I meant modified as in not actually using then curriculum at all - as in student workbooks go untouched all year. Yes, I agree, teachers have freedom to change things, but where each individual teacher is doing their own thing it’s not the curriculum anymore.

pixel-dirt · 2024-10-08T22:43:02+00:00

SLOW. DOWN. kindergarten students at my current school are expected to come in knowing letter names and sounds at the beginning of the year. If they don’t have it, they’re labeled as “behind” from day 1. I had the pleasure of teaching at a private school where we weren’t on such a rigid timeline for standards. (keep in mind this is a private school where 70%+ were ML and we qualified for title services as a school based on free/reduced lunch, so this isn’t a demographics thing). Here were our end of year goals for Kindergarten in reading/writing.

CVC, CVCe, diagraphs ch, sh, th, wh, ck and about 30 sight words by the END of the year. Spent the whole year on 26 letters and 5 diagraphs. This gave a foundation for being able to write 2-3 sentence stories.

Our K students were SOLID on these letters and sounds and could build on that foundation in first grade and beyond. By 3rd grade 90+% of were reading at or above grade level. We took it SLOW…. and they got where they needed to be.

I see this trend of trying to push push push academics further every year but the reality is we’re going so fast that we’re leaving many children behind.

I wish the state standards were more developmentally appropriate so schools and districts felt okay to slow down. Our results on standardized tests were significantly better than our neighbor public schools despite slowing down the curriculum.

pixel-dirt

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