annnnd ...

to top it all off ... a comment from my assistant principal (who i love, to whom i was expressing some "frustrations"):

ms. matthews, but now, how many students do you have?

only 10! that's why i'm so ...

mm mm no ms. matthews. you have 10 kids with 4 personalities each. that's 40 students as far as i'm concerned. you're fine.

and

today included (... not nearly as bad b/c there were only 6 there ...)

1. phone call from the principal asking if i knew anything about a parent assaulting a tss worker.

2. phone message from said tss worker (incidentally, the one who sort of asked me out) saying that "it is time for me to move on, professionally and personally" - so monday is his last day. if the TSS WORKERS ARE QUITTING, HOW DO YOU THINK THAT MAKES ME FEEL??! arggggh.

3. two different parents visiting the school to have a little "talk" with their boys.

4. stopping in to clarify some situations with the principal and having her click away at her email and not look me in the eye more than once in the whole 3 minutes i was in there.

5. proofreading a letter from the principal to the state senator and finding at least 6 errors (punctuation and spelling, mostly, although there would be more if i counted inappropriately large words).

6. proofreading a sample assignment from the *reading* curriculum coordinator and finding a couple terrible questions and the word "Except" in the middle of a sentence. just like that. capital E.

7. terrible professional development during which numbers 5 and 6 took place and a terrible, overwhelmed, disturbed sensation took over me and caused me to look for mistakes other people were making. ack.

in fact

yesterday (thursday) was far worse than wednesday.

i have talked to the principal more in the last two days than i have total since the day she hired me.

thursday's drama(s) included two teeth, a backpack and a broken (like shattered, books all over the floor) bookcase, three suspensions, three thrown trash cans, one boy's private parts and one girl's accusations, a few rough parent phone calls, a few tears (not in front of them), and one question: "ms. matthews, i know you're frustrated but i don't get number 6."

i expected

that today would be bad, but i didn't expect to want to quit.

today made me want to quit.

i won't, but one of the kids asked me today if i got hurt really badly, if i would quit. i said no, but they probably wouldn't let me come back, AND one of you would be in jail. so let's make sure that doesn't happen.

welcome back!

so today, we didn't go to school. that is, we didn't go to *our* school. something happened with the power in the building and instead of cancelling school (which is actually nice b/c we would've had a makeup day ...), we split up - i went with the 5th and 6th graders to a nearby school/ prison (not literally, but from the building, you'd think so) and hung out in the auditorium all day. we were supposed to watch movies, but hercules was the only one we made it through. the kids were sort of well behaved (until the end and i had to chase my kids onto the buses in order to get them onto the correct ones ...) and it, like so many things in life, was one of those things that now i am shaking my head going, did that just happen?

whoops again

no news doesn't necessarily mean good news ... the week before christmas i had a kid bring in little pellets of tobacco (stuffed in rubber shells), i had a super awkward interaction with a tss worker (which involved him calling me one night "just to see how my trip to the bookstore was and to talk" ... ACK!), one kid told me that jewish people were going to be waiting a long time for the messiah (we talked about hannukah and judaism on monday) "because Jesus already been come," me feeling rather sick for about half the week, and of course, the field trip downtown. actually, the kids were well behaved except for at one point when one girl got totally overstimulated and literally froze up for about 45 minutes - couldn't move (she was a dead weight), talk, move her eyes, blink ... nothing. it was sort of scary and mostly just weird. and we had 'christmas' on friday in our classroom, which revealed the kids at their most preciousness. my family had sent stockings and little wrapped gifts and big boxes of school supplies, which my class was obviously ELATED to get. realllly cute. and a couple of my boys have crushes on my sister elizabeth now. wow.

so then, the long awaited and much needed break (and the long drive home. thank you traffic on I-76).