Bad Moon Rising

I see the bad moon arising / I see trouble on the way / I see earthquakes and lightnin’ / I see bad times today.  ~John Fogerty

Holy shit, if this doesn't describe my classroom today.  Maybe, also, dumpster fire.  That may work as well.  I follow Fixing Education (@WhyTeaching) on Twitter and this Tweet today nailed it: "One of my biggest struggles is having to keep from screaming profanities at my students."  When I stumbled into the lunch room at 12:30 after being called a bitch in Spanish (like I don't know what 'puta' means), I googled the moon phases.  Oh yeah, there it is, full moon. 

Why?!  Why does that have impact on people?  It's not just teachers.  Ask any nurse in any hospital and they'll tell you the same thing.  I understand the whole moon phase/tides thing, but for the love of God, could we manage to not let it control us as well?  Oy!

I'm not proud of the way I acted today, specifically this morning.  I owe a kid an apology.  No matter what he did, it's no excuse for the way I acted.  I could have let him know in a different way how his actions were effecting me and the class.  You know what?  I don't feel like apologizing.  I really don't think he deserves it.   I'll still do it because it's the adult thing to do, but I'll hate every second of it.  

I have a meeting tomorrow with the parent of the most troublesome kid in my room.  I have a list of things to talk about.  He's nervous because he doesn't want his mother to know these things, yet he continues to do them.  One minute he's all talk and bravado, the next he's begging me not to talk to her.  He's trying so hard to be the cool kid, the one who doesn't care about anyone or anything.  I still don't know which way to go with him.  I believe in natural consequences, but his actions are impacting others in the room. 

I keep reminding myself that we're only a month into the year, but at the same time we're already a month into the year.  Does that make sense?  When is this going to gel?  When will all the kinks be worked out?  Gah!  

Hubby asked me this weekend if I'm overwhelmed...If I have too much to do for this job...If I've bitten off more than I can chew.  Oh yeah, absolutely.  But I'm really enjoying it.  Last year was an extremely stressful, overwhelming year.  Probably the worst in 20 years, and I hated that job by the end.  What's the difference?  Administration.  Plain and simple.  Teachers don't quit schools.  They quit principals and admin.  Aside from being a puta (honestly, the kid's not wrong) I really love this job.  

See you next week.  

Ich werde überleben

Anyone who is learning a language on DuoLingo knows this feeling.  We are stalked by this Linguistic Strigiformes daily.  This is often accompanied by the message, "These reminders don't seam to be working. We'll stop sending them for now."  Know how long that is?  Like a day and a half.  

I'm learning German for the hell of it.  It's a part of my ancestry and I'm a nerd who likes to learn new things.  While I was out of work, I had more time to devote to this endeavor.  Now that I'm trying to rebuild this classroom I inherited, I haven't been as faithful to the owl.  I had a serious streak going for a while, but lost it.  And the bird is relentless about it.  Had I known I was going to be teaching in a school with such a large Hispanic population, I may have considered learning Spanish.  Maybe that will be the next language.  For now, I'm enjoying German quite a bit.  

Today in math when I asked my struggling third grade learners (two of which are ELL) how many toes they have, I was met with a series of incorrect answers.  When I asked how many foot fingers they have, they all knew there are 10.  You may use the terminology, foot fingers, if you wish.  I haven't patented that yet. 

Toes aside, we actually had a successful math rotation today.  I was quite proud of my para and myself.  For just meeting two weeks ago, we really gel as a team.  Her knowledge of the classroom and students from last year is a huge plus.

I had to have a hallway conversation with our newest student today. Any teacher will tell you, hallway talks are never good.  He is a Caucasian child in a classroom with 3 African-American students, and he harbors some ill will about their race.  Comments such as, "I hate Martin Luther King. I don't like African-Americans," are made on the daily.  I let him know that he doesn't have to like the people in his class, but I will not tolerate this sort of thing in my room.  That was met with, "Well you're not doing your job. They think they're better than me and you're not taking my side."  Sigh.  

Note, this child is on the autism spectrum so things need to be explained in a concrete way.  I told him, "If you keep saying these things and making them mad, they're going to beat the crap out of you. Is that what you're looking for?"  That seemed to get through. We're now working on how to ignore things we don't like.  It's a work in progress.

I really like this job. Seriously.