first day back

so today was good and bad.

it was my first day back after my long weekend. i came back to find out that my students accomplished next to nothing yesterday and my best student was thrown out of the classroom by the sub. so.

my kids were all sorts of off today.

3rd period was good today, 7th period was not.

i ended up getting locked out of my classroom by one of my oh so lovely students.

they knew they had gone too far though when i got back in (it was literally about ten seconds when i had to tell students to let me in) because they were silent. completely silent.

i felt like i was breathing fire i was so angry.

but my kids said they were happy to see me this morning and 3rd period was good. a topsy turvey day overall.

not related to teaching, but....

I HATE MISSOURI DRIVERS!

literally every morning and every afternoon i say this (or possibly yell) in my car. i've gotten cut off more times on the highway, had to swerve because someone was drifting in my lane, gotten behind people going 55 in the fast line (OK, OK, it's the speed limit, but everyone knows that the left-most lane is for people who are going faster, i'll admit, i shouldn't speed, but if you guys want to criticize me there talk to my father..or laura. haha).

LITERALLY EVERYDAY.

everyday i also think about how the road i take to and from school, I-70, will take me all the way to DC (well, frederick, but same difference really). i promise. i've driven it!

i miss DC, so far STL is not my favorite city, i'm not gonna lie. i think part of it is cause all i ever do is work (or do classes as is the case currently) and it is such a HUGE change from college. waking up at 6 am everyday sucks. going to bed every night at 9pm is depressing. being too tired to do anything on weekends is boring.

i think that i would have these same issues if i was in DC, the adjustment from college to working life is going to be hard for anybody. i guess my biggest thing is that when i do things in DC i know what to expect, i'm still discovering STL, which seems like more work than i'm willing to do right now.

anyways, sorry for the slightly pessimistic blog post.... TFA has warned us that october is called "black october" because basically now is the time when all new teachers are starting to see that

1. they haven't accomplished very much (which is understandable, but unacceptable, which is hard to deal with)

2. the "honeymoon period" is over and the kids, while they may like you (as is the case with me) still will be crazy

3. all of the above kicks in, before it was kind of exciting, now you're just tired

4. it's getting darker.

ok

i promise, i will work on the pessimism, but i really do hate missouri drivers!!!

quote of the day

"ms b, were you fat and have acne when you were little? cause white people are all fat and have acne when they were little"

the most exhausting day of teaching thus far

hey guys!

so last friday had to be the most exhausting day of teaching i've had yet. i think part of this may be due to the fact that i managed to get a cold and so was not on top form anyways, but, it was a TIRING DAY.

first hour we finished up our testing (finally). Third hour we had our publishing party. I had all of the kids title their stories, and then i had about 6 of them share what their narratives were about. in hindsight i think that i should have structured what they said about their narratives better--maybe had them read straight from their narratives, because some of the kids got a little off-topic. oh well. to make sure they were listening i made them write a letter to one of their classmates who shared (the letter was not actually going to be seen by the student, just me) and thanking them. i made them put specifics in their letters. i also had to threaten them with bookwork if they couldn't pay attention to their classmates.

fourth hour (directly AFTER the publishing party) we held our talent show. my kids are quite talented!! we had poetry reading, rapping (original!), singing, dancing... the principal came in and watched and asked the kids to sing out our assembly on monday!!

it was exhausting though, keeping all my kids on-task, well behaved, and respectful to their other classmates. i came home immediately after school and passed out until about 5ish. for those of you who don't know, my school day is over at 2:07 and i can leave at 2:17. anyways.

that's it for now. i have to grade narratives.