19 days

I love teaching. Really, I do! But 19 days and I can breathe again!

First Week Down

I had forgotten how exhausting the first week of school is!!! I'm talking more exhausting than new baby waking every 45 minutes all night exhausting. Especially those first two days after the students went home, I was nearly crawling home at the end of the day. (Super thankful for the friend who brought a tall barstool by the house today! Tuesday should be a LOT better!)

I couldn't be more pleased with my class make up. I've got one gifted class of 20 and one advanced class of 26. This is the type of student I am accustomed to working with. These are the types of classes I taught 4 of my 6 years in the classroom before Jude was born.

Then I have a new challenge as well. Two of my classes are what is known as inclusion classes. In each of these classes I have 14 average level kids and 4 kids who are higher functioning special ed, as well as a co-teacher who is certified in teaching to the specific needs of special education students. I am super excited about the possibilities for these two classes. With only 18 kids in the room and 2 adults at their disposal, I think we can reach these kids in a way that a traditional special ed class can not. My goal is to see all 82 of my little darlings (and any of the new ones that I know will come in since our population around here is pretty transient) meet or exceed on their state test. But more importantly, I want them to catch a vision this year for their full potential.

Like me, some of these kids may be the first in their family to ever even consider college, let alone graduate from college. Whatever it takes, I want to do to get them to understand that no matter where they're coming from, they have what it takes to achieve the high goals they set for themselves.

Where'd it go?

Time, that is! I can't believe it's been two weeks since I last blogged. I was contacted by my former school and asked to do some part time work helping to bring a couple of new students up to speed. These two hours a day have turned out to be the two most exhausting hours of my day because of the difficult circumstances. The children are in State custody due to some really bad stuff and have never been in school a day in their lives. One of the boys is really smart, and we've moved him on to regular classes on a part time basis, but the other. Oh, the other. . .

He's a very nice boy. He just happens to not know his alphabet past the letter C, unless he's looking right at it. 12 years old and can't spell his own last name. Doesn't know what the letter Y is. Just learned how to multiply single digits, because I taught him how.

There's no way I would be able to continue this assignment out through the end of the school year if it weren't Jude's nap time after I get home. It gives me 2-3 hours to recoup and get re-energized enough to enjoy the rest of the day.

Speaking in Mr. Judah, we dealt with our first real stomach virus on Saturday night. His last diaper change before bed indicated that there might be a problem, then when he woke at 1 am wanting to nurse, I thought he was scared because the power was flickering in the crazy wind. But when he woke half an hour after I put him back to bed, and would not nurse, but just sat there with me, I knew we had a problem. That's when the throwing up began. In about an hour he threw up four times. And then he gave us one of those diaper problems that required a trip straight to the bath tub.

Poor guy. We dealt with this until just around 3am. He was so pale and just lay there with me, not moving, not wanting even water. I have never asked him if he wanted to nurse and had him tell me "no" before. I knew things were calming down around three because he sat up and kept babbling something, which I somehow figured out meant he wanted his water bottle. Then he lay there chewing on the spout and drinking every so often. He only takes the water bottle when he's falling asleep at night. So I decided to ask him if he was ready to go to bed. I wasn't expecting him to actually nod his head at this suggestion.

After sleeping in until almost 10am on Sunday, he woke up obviously on the mend, as his usual, busy self. Except for his light appetite, you'd never have known he was sick.

Next week is the kiddos' spring break, so I should be able to get something up that actually has pictures to it. Until then. . .

School's out for summer. . .

School's out forever! Who ever thought that the great philosopher, Alice Cooper, would have written a song about my life? (sooooo joking)

But really - I started my life as a "retired" person today. Now what I have to look forward to this fall is doing all I can to get ready for our new arrival:-)

24hrs. fever free!

I went 24 hours without a fever for the first time in 4 days. Yeay! I can not say enough how much I appreciated Jeff looking after me on the days that he was not on shift. It was probably good practice for the days that he's on the ambulance:-)

Now, tomorrow I will get my butt out of the bed for the first time since I went to sleep on Friday night, and go to work knowing that I gave the flu to at least 4 of my students on Friday. There were a total of 85 kids out sick today (the attendance clerk sends us an e-mail every day). That is creeping up toward the amount of kids that were out last year when the school board canceled school for two days. I had the flu those days, too. Guess I better start getting the flu shot again. I've been protesting these past fet years because the thing has tripled in cost since I first started getting them.

Wonder how many kids will be absent tomorrow.

Marathon Grading Day!

75 Reading Response Journals
75 Writer's Workshop Notebooks (notes section only, thank goodness! If I don't grade it, they fail to keep it organized.)
75 Word Stem Tests
75 Pieces of Expository Writing

I want to get as much of it done today as possible, even though grades are not due until 2:00 on the day we come back in January (the 7th) because I want to take home as little as possible. I already know the expository pieces will be coming home with me because I have wordy gifted kids (when we did narrative, some of them wrote 6, 7, 8, 12! pages.). But everything else will be in the grade book program before I leave today even if I have to stay until 5:00.

I remember when I started and I taught regular ed. and I had 120 kids. If I still had 120 kids now, I think I would have jumped off a cliff already. Or, maybe just dumped the grading off the cliff.

Bad Manners

The jury is still out on this one whether or not this was bad manners or if this woman just thought she was impressing me because I am an educator.

Tonight, I was enjoying a night out at dinner alone with my husband. Then, standing there at our table is the parent of one of my students (who happened to also be employed by the restaurant. She begins to question me about a certain grade in my grade book (our grade books are on line so parents can log in to their child's account to see how they are doing). First, it was a passing grade. Second, I don't think that I would ever walk up to her when she was out with her husband and demand to know why the price of a certain meal at her restaurant went up.

Maybe it is because I live in the South that she thought this was acceptable? Or maybe because we live in a small town? She was not being short, just questioning why I exempted her child from an assignment. But I would sure like to enjoy my dinner on a Sunday night without having to think about work.