My biggest challenge

At the school where I work we rotate teachers every couple of months (both for the kids' learning styles and access to accents and the teachers' sanity!). So this week I've rotated to Room 2, which is in general a very nice room. My biggest challenge this week (and I have a strange sensation that it will continue to be my biggest challenge until we rotate again on January 15th) comes on Mondays and Wednesdays at 5.40. It comes in the form of 10 very cute, very loud, very undeveloped 4 and 5 year olds! Ten of them. Together. In one class. For one hour.

Another day I will post my thoughts on what exactly parents can hope to get by putting their 4 year old in English class. But today I will limit myself to a little bit of pity and despair.

The hardest parts:
1. Learning names. There are ten children who look basically the same. They don't sit still in one place, so there's no chance of learning names in order. They answer to almost anything, because they haven't learned to resist against misinformation. The biggest loss of teacher momentum is found when you have to tell a child that they are doing something wrong and suddenly...you can't remember their name! Crap!
2. Energy. Wow. They move a lot! And are really loud! And are so so short! They're always sliding out of their chairs and shooting under their desks and sitting with their friend next to them or stealing another person's chair or coming up behind you and pulling your shirt or escaping to the bathroom or......the options are endless!
3. The coloring dilemma. While one child colors in minute detail, stopping every few seconds to think about the meaning of life or putting his head on the table, another dashes three scribbles in the form and announces "FINISHED! QUE HAGO??" (what do I do now?). Oh my goodness!
And every young child teacher knows that there is only so much coloring children will do. But how many options do you have when they can't even write their names and their attention spans don't allow for more than 4 new vocab words a week???
4. The sudden emotions. One moment a child is fine. The next, crying and pasting his face on the window to look for his "mama". One moment he or she is sitting normally in the chair, the next they are peeing down their legs. I know that it's probably normal, but it's enough to make you crazy!

Story: On Monday, we were all coloring (more or less) a picture of a train. I'm walking around the room (solving disputes over colors, motivating the slow colorers to get a move on, picking up things off the floor, herding lost children back to their seats), and notice little Miguel. Little Miguel has got little pieces of blue all over his face and even in his teeth. I'm wondering what in the world that could be, when I see his pencil. Hmmm.
Then we talked about coloring with the pencil and not eating it, and he reached for a green one. And now no one else wants to use this particular pencil, not that I blame them.