And it's over

The weekend, that is. It was too short, and we didn't do a darn thing, except rearrange the living room! Which Sam did all by his lonesome, while I was at Petra's drinking beer and watching movies. Oh yeah, we also went to the Football game...which we won! It was so much fun. And our marching band is pretty awesome, at least, they blew the other teams band out of the water...Anyway, there's not really a whole lot I can ever post here anymore, since my life pretty much revolves around school, and I write about school on a different page. If you wanna know where to go to see it, give me a call or leave me a comment, I'll make sure you find out!
Love to all!

Grr.

I started a NEW blog, just for anonymous school stuff....but my profile was on it. As far as I can tell, there's no way to show my profile on one blog, but not the other. Whatever. I'm having a bad day. Sometimes doing what you're supposed to do makes you feel like a real jerk.

Darn

I thought I was being sufficiently vague and discrete on here, when talking about school stuff. But older and wiser heads have told me otherwise. So I deleted my most recent post, and I'll delete any others that you guys think are out of line. In the meantime, where am I supposed to bitch about school if not on my "bitch about school" page???

Non-school stuff: The fair was awesome! In no particular order I:
-Saw the biggest pig I've ever seen in my life
-Saw some mutant pigeons, and asked Sam if we could buy one (they were only $10! He said no.)
-Ate a foot long corny dog
-Watched the 18th year of the bird show
-Got slingshotted (or just shot? is slingshot even a verb?) 220 ft in the air in less than 3 seconds...twice (P.S., that's a GREAT website, it goes into extreme detail...in case you ever want to buy your own.)
-Sat in a Yaris, the new car I want when I get a new car
-Watched drunk Longhorns and Sooners harass each other
-Saw a sculpture of Marylin Monroe and Frank Sinatra....made entirely out of butter
-Saw a cross-stiched portrait of Clay Aiken (it got second prize)
-Oh yeah, ate some fudge too.

Also, Sam and I made our combination birthday (both of ours)/two year anniversary plans. We're going on vacation.....to Oklahoma! Right before Thanksgiving. It'll be better than it sounds. We're going to the casino that's only about 45 minutes from our house, but we're staying in the nicest little B&B while we're there. It's also right near Lake Murray and Turner Falls, in case I get tired of slot machines (yeah right!) or run out of allotted gambling money. I'm really looking forward to it, since we've never been on a real vacation together before. :)

Anyway, enough of this. Love to all, even the anonymous student who wrote "bitch" on my door. I'll take it as a good sign that I'm not being too much of a pushover!

Oopsie...

I finally lost my cool with my fifth period class. I believe my exact words were "Sit down and stop talking, RIGHT NOW. I WILL NOT tolerate this level of disrespect. I have tried to be as polite and respectful to y'all as I can, but this is not going to happen anymore. The next person who opens their mouth is out of my classroom!" I don't think they knew I could yell like that. I think I sent a total of like ten kids out of my room (not all at the same time), and after five minutes or so, I'd ask them if they could be quiet, and respectful. If they said yes, great, if they tried to argue that it wasn't fair, it wasn't their fault, blah blah blah, I left them out there for five more minutes. I was surprised that they stayed there! I always thought if I sent any of them out of the room that they would just take off. Anyway, allthough it worked today, yelling at my students is NOT a viable long term solution. I hope it cools them down enough so that we can start over with the established procedures that were never quite established in that class.

I also took up two computers yesterday, two today, AND a cell phone. I've gotten downright evil! Is it bad that I get a sick satisfaction out of confiscating their laptops? I guess it's cause it reminds me that I am the adult, and I really am the one in charge...

Last but not least, as soon as I can get everything cleaned out and cleaned up in here (my standard Friday routine), and make an appearance at the weekly science department ice cream social, I am outta here!! I have a long weekend. Well, not really. Monday is a teacher workday, which feels like a vacation, 'cause sitting through seminars all day is way easier than teaching class.

So anyway, I have a pseudo long weekend, AND....I'm going to the Fair on Saturday! Yay! You know how Kermit the Frog sounds when he gets all excited and shouts "Yaaaaaaaay!" and waves his arms in the air? That's me. I cannot WAIT. I've got two free tickets from work, plus a salary! Sam's never even been, poor thing! Gah, I'm going to explode. I need to use all this pent up energy to be productive so, I'll add more to this later. Love to all!

We made it...

...and it wasn't that bad. Except for fifth period. I have completely lost control of that class, I can't deny it any longer. I'm not sure how to get it back. Any suggestions would be nice, allthough I seem to have tried every progressive non-authoritative method I can think of. Now, how do I do the conservative authoritative thing? It's totally against my nature, but all the "nice" methods have thus far been unsuccesful for me. How do I do the mean "don't smile until Christmas" thing?

Also, my kids finally caught on that they've already done everything we're doing in my class! It took them 6 1/2 weeks, but we finally got to a part of the curriculum that most of them kinda remember. Of course, they didn't seem to remember the content during the informal "tell me everything you know about electricity" discussion we had, but the lab, they remember. In spite of a chorus of "Miss, we did this last year!" (or the years before that in some cases) they seemed to have a pretty good time playing with the circuits anyway. The teacher in me is tempted to add buzzers and dimmers to the mix tomorrow, but the rational human inside of me is saying "light bulbs and switches are plenty, they don't need buzzers, are you crazy???" I'll decide in the morning based on how up to it I feel. Anyway, I need to quit procrastinating, and get finished so I can get out of here and go HOME, that place I sleep at, and used to spend time at!

Love to all!

Lord Help Me

...and them, to get through another day. It's been a long week, and it's only Wednesday! Love to all!

My Teaching Fantasy

When I took this job at a poor, almost (but not quite) inner-city school, I told myself it was because the kids up in the rich white suburbs could succeed no matter who taught them, but that I could really make a difference down here (conceited, I know). But lately, i.e. while grading my first six weeks exams, I find myself fantasizing about teaching somewhere where all my students could speak english, could read, could do basic math, had a home to go to, didn't have kids of their own, cared about passing, and paid attention to me. Is that wrong? I'm just feeling ever so slightly jaded tonight, and I'm starting to doubt my ability to teach these kids anything, cause for all the hard work I've been doing, I'm not seeing a whole lot of evidence that they are improving at all...Maybe it's because the ones who need the most help are running down to content mastery where my resource teacher "helps" them by giving them the answers, or even just doing it for them. I graded more than one test tonight that was in her hand writing...and NOT because they are physically incapable of writing. But that's a story for another day, after I've had my discussion with the VP about the problem. Love to all, including my students, even if they frustrate me sometimes.

P.S. Good teacher thing I did: told the nurse about one of my students who can't see. She screened his vision to confirm and is trying to hook him up with free glasses from the Lions Club (I hope he wears them if he gets them...)