song

God is good. I feel like He's cleaning me out much like I am doing to my classroom.

Here is a song that has been running through my head today:

God is doing a work in me -
He's walking through my rooms and halls, checking every corner.
Tearing down the unsafe walls and letting in the light
And I am working hard ... to clean my house and set it straight, not let pride get in the way.
To catch an eternal vision of what I am to become.

Will you help me be new - will you hold me to the promises that I have made?
Will you let me be new - forgive my old self and my old mistakes?

It seems easier living out my life in Christ for those who do not know me,
To hide the thorn stuck in my side and all my secret faults
You know me well ... And it's you I want the most to see and recognize the changes
A word from you empowers me to press on for my goal

Will you help me be new - will you hold me to the promises that I have made?
Will you let me new - forgive my old self and my old mistakes?

When I feel condemned to live my old life, Remind me I've been given a new life in Christ ...

Will you - you know me well ...

So there I was.

I went back to my school for the first time yesterday. My oh my. My (new) room is a piece of work. So, no more 201 (it will always hold a special place in my heart), but now "403A" or B. I forget. Already.

I was there for about 15 minutes that first day before I got overwhelmed and had to leave. Here's a little description of my room:
- huge. about 50% larger than my room last year.
- sink without a faucet. the water squirts straight up.
- 1 teacher's desk. only 3 legs on it.
- 2 bookshelves, neither of which had shelves before this afternoon when i found some and put them in.
- 1 free standing locker with the side of it kicked in (rendering it fairly useless)
- 1 free standing cabinet with the handle hanging off - dangling, like a broken limb
- 1 mousetrap. fortunately only covered in dirt and crumbs.
- 2 small chalkboards in *corners*. one huge bulletin board right where a chalkboard should be.
- 1 set of maps with rips all the way through them (lying on the ground). this was perhaps the most painful.
- 1 projector screen. also lying on the ground.
- a bunch of student desks, only a few of which actually have tops *attached.*

So I went back today with my ipod and speakers, a broom/dustpan, 409 and paper towels, a carpet, and this time, wearing shorts and a tank top. Heading in tomorrow with 2 bookshelves I bought tonight.

And so it begins.

all done.

well i just got back from the wild west with my family, and sitting here at my apartment reminds me that the school year is, in fact, over. i have piles of books, notebooks, pencils, and markers all over the place and i have to remind myself that i won't see my kids tomorrow.

i saw one of them on my way to the airport last week. he was riding his bike and saw my car stopped at a light. i looked out the window to see him waving and yelling my name. he asked if i was on my way to kentucky. precious thing.

it's funny to me how much i already miss them. i sent each of them a postcard from wyoming and part of me didn't even really know what to say. "hope i don't have you next year, but have a great summer"? i am still having a hard time figuring out the love-hate relationship going on here.

some things makes all the hate-it part worthwhile - like when i listen to the message that one left on my machine last week. i couldn't understand most of it, but i caught that he hopes i am having a great time with my family and hopes that i have a great summer and hopes that he is in my class next year and goodbye he loves me.

like i said, worth it.

student awards

i'm trying to write awards for my kids and am having a difficult time coming up with good, non-lame awards for them. so far, i have best gardener, best poet, most generous, and most committed.

but the other ones that i am thinking of are the following:

most bipolar
most awkwardly affectionate
best flip-outs
most disruptive
most persistently angry
best at getting under my skin
most obnoxious
most funny shaped noggin
most inconsiderate
most inappropriate

and might i add

that this is my life the next 36 hours:

it's 11 pm right now. i have a take home final for one grad school class and writing new pieces into a case study for the other grad school class. both are due after school tomorrow. neither is finished.

after school (the last full day, might i add ...), i come home and shower fast and put on "semi-formal" clothes to go to grad school class then straight to some tfa thing that will last a while.

then i come home, load up the car, and crash with a carful of people in my apartment only to wake up around 4 or so tomorrow to drive to way way way upstate new york for robby's wedding and CAMPING(!) saturday night.

i just want to get to 3:19 tomorrow without dying :) and then i will be the happiest (and tiredest) lady alive.

i should say

that i am actually really really sad in *some* ways about the end of the school year. i mean, how on earth will i go a couple months without so much as even seeing my babies? these precious things.

one of them left school in the middle of the day today and probably won't come back again. he gave me a big hug when he left and said in his sweet sweet voice that he would miss me. i got all teary eyed.

booo.

And then there were none

That's what I feel like the next few days will be like at school.

Slowly they either get suspended or get in enough trouble that Mom keeps them home.

And then there was one ...

And then there were none ...

Now Playing, Thursday, June 15

8:40 - 9:00 Doors open. General Admission* Seating

9:00 - 10:40 am "The Princess Bride"

11:00 - 11:30 am Lunch

11:45 - 1:00 pm "Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" Act I

1:00-1:42 pm Intermission for Gym Class

2:00 - 2:50 pm "Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" Act II

2:50 - 3:19 pm Dismissal

******
* General Admission = Anyone from any class who feels like stopping in

the last week

so here we are, in my classroom, all blessed week long.

monday, we managed to stay minorly busy with small tasks. it still sort of felt like any other monday.

tuesday, my class was adamantly opposed to doing any kind of work whatsoever. okay, fine, i understand. we are like the only room in the building not watching a movie today. i get it. i got a couple kids to clean out one cabinet, turned on the computer and got out some popsicle sticks for craft time (seriously).

today, no one could handle it any more. three of my 11 were suspended (two of them for assaulting another teacher. long terrible story), and one's mom came to pick him up early, saying that she'd probably bring him back sometime but pick him up early again. hilarious. we had a veritable photo shoot when i got out my camera this morning - lasted about a half hour. we painted picture frames, we played more computer, and i cleaned a lot. and gave back everything in my room that's not mine (except the computer). so bye bye great little blocks the kids loved, bye to the math cds, bye to the many many books we hardly ever used. very few things will be missed.

tomorrow, the teacher next door will be absent. i have procured a tv and dvd player. i am bringing every movie i have that could possibly be of interest to 11 year olds.

friday, i'm hoping no one shows up. but seeing as they think i'm throwing a party (i *never* said such a thing), i think they all will come. water ice and pizza, here we come. sometimes i feel like my classroom is a big drain of money. if i buy something, it either gets broken or eaten. or thrown out the window.

end of the year

a haiku about the end of the year:

i can't believe it
summer break is in six days
i'll be normal soon

field day #2

these are some of my students, the most precious kids in the whole world.

field day #1

we had field day this week. my class got two days because we were "helping" (ms. matthews needed to bring her car to the field with equipment, basically).

so on wednesday (a rainy, yucky day), we went with the 3rd and 4th floors, which was okay. a day out of the classroom - who cares where we are or what we're doing ... but i don't know the teachers on those floors quite as well, and then there was quite the incident at the end of the day.

rumor has it that one kid had a gun there ... don't know how substantiated that is ... but i do know that a teacher got punched in the face by a mother who provoked her son into a fight (the teacher grabbed the other boy out of it). sweet.

but they still let us go the next day. i think the administration just wanted us out of the building.

the new kid

still seems new because i have barely had a conversation with him. today, he didn't come into my classroom (lingered in the hall, yes) until the end of the day ... and had the audacity to ask me if i was really going to call his mom and tell her how he was because he doesn't want to be on punishment.

should've thought of that this morning kiddo.

bless

the last few weeks have FLOWN by. the kids have been relatively chill, we've done some work ... and now, we just have FIVE full days of school (plus two half days but those don't really count) left. oh glory.

i have survived.

but ...

on the sick day, i got a call at about 4:30 from a fellow teacher who felt like she should fill me in on what had happened in my class at the end of the day.

i still don't have all the details, but it involved a toy - but VERY real looking - gun (i saw it), threats, a suspension, parents up at the school ... who then blamed me for some IEP non-compliance business. total garbage, but still, so annoying. this parent says she has asked me "multiple times" to redo her son's IEP and place him in a more restrictive environment. umm, she has never called me. not once. stopped up at school once to pick him up when he got arrested, which resulted in his father coming into my classroom and telling (yelling) the whole class that he would F* them and their parents the f* up if they f*ing messed with his son anymore.

yep. my fault. yeah right.

sick day 2

i didn't go to school on monday. i had sore muscles (from alllll the strenuous exercise i've been doing lately. um, wait. well ... anyway) and could literally not get out of bed.

on tuesday, my kids told me ALL day long about how much fun they had - why couldn't i be sick again, why don't we have free time all day, why don't we watch movies??????

they watched a movie called "nightmare on drug street." they said it taught them not to use drugs. and then they asked if they could watch it again. i asked them to tell me why they shouldn't use drugs. they gave me some good reasons, and so i concluded, sounds like you learned what you needed from that movie. i don't think you need to watch it again. they flipped out.

geez louise. who knew that me taking a day off would be so great for all of us?

the gameboy

the gameboy belonged to one of my girls (the one who calls me matthew - who also knows all the 10 commandments).

when she realized it was gone, she was upset, but more indignant that someone had the audacity to steal something. she kept saying, it won't be my problem when God judges them for bein' a thief. he says not to steal and you disobey well then you just gonna burn and if you wanna do that then that's your problem and it's just a gameboy why would you want to disobey God just for a gameboy ... (and on and on, rambling for, oh 20 minutes or so)

i told her i really appreciated her attitude about it.

new kid

i have a new kid in my class. this is his second week. he hasn't stayed in the classroom for longer than 20 minutes at any given time. he hasn't done any work, and the first words he used toward me were curse words. special.

he got kicked out of his other school for stealing, i think.

since he's been in our classroom, a calculator and a gameboy have gone missing.

awesome.

i love

days when it is just quiet and chill in my classroom.

today, 2 kids were suspended, 1 was absent, 1 ran around in the halls all day, and 1 was next door in another class all day.

that means 5 kids, all day long. we just hung out ... read together, did some math, played some games, set up a science experiment (sprouting seeds) ... just fun.

the countdown

man oh man. we are well under one month away from the end of school.

16 full days, 2 half days of school left. glory glory.