Teachers really love Christmas break too.

Christmas break has come and gone, and we were back at it this week. I have to say that going back to school on Tuesday was the worst. I had the absolute worst attitude in the world when I walked into my classroom that morning, and it didn’t really help that all 90 of my kids had equally bad attitudes. Needless to say…there wasn’t a whole lot of happiness and productivity that day. Wednesday was better, Thursday was much worse, and Friday was a Friday. Since being back, it’s felt a little bit like a whirlwind. I’ve dealt with a student taking a half hour bathroom break, a student breaking into my colleague’s math class to ask if her brother has been misbehaving, a fight involving two girls that happened inside my classroom during the ten seconds I was out in the hallway, students throwing everything another student owns onto the floor in a huge mess when I was helping someone across the room, a surprise informal observation by my Assistant Principal during my worst class, a student refusing to give me a cell phone he had in the middle of class (don’t worry…he got it), three cell phones, an iPod and a PSP all confiscated within the span of two days, and two students who were kicked out of the library because they were too loud and then decided to take twenty minutes to walk down the one hallway to get back to my classroom (they got it too). It’s been a little ridiculous and I’m fairly certain my children are nuts, but I still love them and they still manage to make me laugh out loud. Time for some recorded conversations, both overheard and participated in yesterday?

(while studying for the vocab/prefix quiz they were about to take, female student who will be called S and male student who will be called J had this conversation about the prefixes “intra” and “infra”…and yes. I’m evil for giving them both of those on the same quiz.)S: Intra.
J: Infra or intra?
S: Intra.
J: Infra?
S: No, intra!
J: Oh. It means below.
S: No, that’s infra. I said intra.
J: WHAT? No, intra is below and infra is inside!
S: No! You’re backwards!
J: MISS MELCHIONE! Is intra below?
Me: No, that’s infra. Intra is inside. Like intrastate. And intramural.
J: That’s what I said. Intra is inside, and infra is below.

Student: Are you going to go see “The Devil Inside” tonight?
Me: Nope.
Student: But you could meet a guy there! You could do this! (cuddles up to an invisible guy)
Me: What if I don’t need to?
Student: YOU COULD GO WITH ME!

My fifth block has been horrible. HORRIBLE. And it’s gotten to the point where it’s not even just about the fact that they’re disrupting my ability to teach them. It’s transitioned into this whole new realm where I’m truly disappointed in them and the decisions they are making that are changing who they are. This is such a vital time in their developmental process, and they make so many decisions right now in middle school that could potentially shape who they become as high schoolers and as adults. And it ticks me off a little bit to watch my kids start the year as wonderful, sweet, thoughtful kids turn into rude, mean, and destructive. So when they hit their pinnacle of frustrating on Thursday, I told them that. All of that. They were a little bit quieter the rest of the class period…and they were a lot better yesterday. We’ll see how it works in the long run, but I’m going to be having a lot of heart-to-hearts with my kids because I just refuse to watch it happen and not do anything.

They WERE better yesterday, though, and because of that they earned Friday free time for the first time. Ever. I wish you could have seen their cute excited faces. The funniest moment of my day came during that cherished free time, when male student who will be called E called to me from across the room SO excited because he had made an M out of dominoes on the desk in honor of my name and he wanted me to come knock them over. As I was making my way across the room to knock them over, male student who will be called K calmly and expressionlessly threw a Sharpie from across the room at the dominoes, sending them scattered in a million directions across the room. Usually, I try to keep my laughter at the children inside as much as possible, but at this point in my Friday afternoon and after the week it had been, I lost it. I honestly couldn’t stop laughing. E went ballistic on K and they pretend fought with E calling K some mildly inappropriate names (see the drugstore scene of the movie “Signs” as a reference). It was a good time. Welcome to 2012.