Posts I Will Write At Some Point

  • -Women's pants (yes, this is related to teaching)
  • County vs. township school districting
  • teachers are aliens from mars (or, "you eat lunch?")
  • Urban appendices to management books
  • Cultural differences in discipline
  • Ruby Payne's "A Framework for Understanding Poverty"

Monday, December 03, 2007

bleah.

I can feel myself getting meaner. Stretched thinner. More willing to yell. Afternoons are just impossible. I can't get them to sit quietly. I can't get them to listen. What's the line from Taylor Mali? "By 2:00 their blood sugar is so low they don't have the energy to do anything but beat each other up and scream." Two of my good girls got in an argument today -- or rather, one said something flippant which the other took personally -- and so I had two crying girls on top of the usual list of yelling girls, crazy boys, and general apathy and lunacy. I wonder what would happen if I started teaching math in the morning. I wonder if such a revolutionary course of action is permitted.

I can't seem to get the kids organized in any sort of effective way. The number of my kids that can't sit next to other kids (or will be obnoxious if they do) is ridiculous. The number who would prefer to sit alone makes up approximately the rest of the class. Everyone tells me to have them in groups, but I'd spend so much time stamping out brush fires if I did that I'd never get any teaching done. Maybe I just have to spend a while stamping out brush fires.

I get the feeling that I need to be more consistent about card-turning, or maybe just stricter. More of my kids should be sending notes home, maybe that would have an effect. (The funny thing is, all the strictness and yelling and arguments during the day doesn't stop them from giving me hugs and writing essays about how I am a wise person [prompt was to write about a wise person] and the best teacher ever. It almost makes me feel guilty for all the evil thoughts I think about them. Almost.)

I'm just so TIRED of all this. It's starting to spill over into the rest of my life as well. P and I had a lovely big argument over the weekend about approximately nothing. I'm not eating particularly well. I'm just so TIRED all the time.

(Incidentally, writing this one a zillion-year-old iMac at work is really obnoxious. I keep writing a sentence and a half, making a typo, and then having to wait two minutes for the text on the screen to catch up with what I've written. I miss my laptop. Hopefully I'll be able to get it fixed soon.)

Spent two hours this afternoon making posters and things so that when the school district does its walk through next week we'll have all the appropriate things on the walls. Really makes me wish I had more wall space... or at least walls with paint that tape can adhere to. Where I am supposed to put all this crap I am sure I don't know.

But at any rate, I do not intend to spend any more time in this building today. Off to call Attitude Girl's mom, and then head home. Spinning, tea, and maybe an audiobook on my iPod. Sounds about right to me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You have a plausible diagnosis (LBS by 2:00), you have a hypothesis for at least a partial treatment (switch math to morning). If there's a serious question about whether that's permitted, it would seem you'd want to ask.

Fast-forward 2 paragraphs: might they think you're "wise", etc., BECAUSE of the strictness, etc.? If they are going so far as to call you the best teacher ever, etc., it would seem that at least some part of what you are/do is getting through (as you describe them, they don't seem capable of guileful sucking up). Their own words a stepping-off point, or at least a coal to blow on?

You borrow the diagnosis from Mali. Does he speak of any treatments? Does he speak of pointing out to kids that they're better than some of the stuff they do (or is that someone else)?

If everyone says have them in groups, what does "everyone" say of brush-fires? I.e., is there anyone who can help you get a handle? You're one of the newest, if not THE newest teacher there, meaning the others have been at it a good deal longer. Surely there must be someone...?