When my kids are being difficult and/or I feel very bad things towards them, I don’t blog as much. I don’t want to be that blogger that thinks that because she has a blog she gets a free pass to whine and complain about how terrible her job is. And I don’t want to be that employee that goes home at night and whines and complains on the internet about how unhappy she is with how she spends her work week. So when those phases come (and they are just phases), I keep quiet, ride it out, and wait for funny stories to surface again. If you’re one of the approximately six people who look for my blog posts regularly, that’s why you haven’t seen one in a while.
I should have seen this valley coming when a student walked into class one afternoon, asked me if she could go talk to the band teacher, and then responded to my “no” by throwing her book across the room. That should have tipped me off that my kids were about to spiral back out of control, but for whatever reason I didn’t catch on right away. You can bet that I caught on, though, when I found myself kicking kids out of my class, yelling much more, and ending last week with two classes in which I didn’t teach. Tried to start class and they wouldn’t shut up, so I just calmly went back to my desk, took attendance, and started grading papers. I did this in my homeroom and set a timer to see how long it would take them to catch on…and twenty minutes later I got up without a word and passed out the quiz. Once everyone had one, I said loudly “Number one…” and read the first spelling word. That shut them up. After the quiz I casually collected them, placed them on my desk, and said “So let’s talk about the fact that only ten of you passed the benchmark yesterday.” Silence. I didn’t mention that everyone who failed was within a four question window of passing, which really excited me…this was reality check time and I told them the positive spin a different day. It was awesome. They were actually quiet and respectful the rest of the class. I tried to accomplish a similar thing with my infamous 5th block and it didn’t work…oh well. After trying to get them quiet several different ways, I ended up trying to have the “a whole lot of you failed the benchmark” talk with them and when a student made an extremely rude and sarcastic comment in response I just told them to put their heads down and I didn’t want to see or hear them for the rest of the class. And that’s what we did. Until the announcements came on and they left for the weekend. I patted myself on the back for not killing that kid or any of his classmates.
Eventually, my kids are going to get it that I’m not playing.
Things have been better, though. I think this week has been a lot better…everyone usually starts new marking periods with better attitudes. I know I do. Right now I’m all “I love poetry! I’m so organized with this research paper I have to teach them! I have so many great activities for The Westing Game!” I’m fully aware that in a few weeks I’ll probably be saying “Poetry is stupid. Teaching kids how to research is impossible. Who has time for fun activities?” But…we’re not there yet. And everyone is happy. And mad about the “Unsatisfactories” that I put on their report cards that keep them from playing basketball (heeheehee) so I’ve got these boys following me around like little puppies trying to help me and be great and sweet so I tell their coach that they’ve improved. Life is pretty good.
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