Back to basics like identifying letters, like counting to 10, like naming the days of the week, like writing a sentence.  Very basic stuff, but really hard for the kids in my class. It’s definitely a change from middle school, definitely a challenge to remain patient, and definitely keeps me busy thinking of ways to make it interesting.

Things are getting better. I have a lot of great resources and people to help me – if I just had more time to utilize them then I’d be all set.  

But things are getting better.  I don’t feel like crying all day every day – just a couple times a day. 

I like some of my kids a lot. I’m working on liking all of them. :)  One girl still covers her eyes every time she walks in the room and sees me. She has trouble with transitions (to put it mildly).  

I asked the kids to write about what they did yesterday on their day off from school and a second grader told me he played in the backyard and got stuck in quick sand. I said, “You mean you pretended you were stuck in quick sand.” He insisted that it was really quick sand and I insisted that there was not quick sand in his backyard, but that seemed to be going nowhere so finally I just said, “Oh. Well, that’s interesting.” Because it sure would be if it was true.  

Don’t worry, I did not have the day off school yesterday like the kids did. I had inservice. I felt so grown up.  For some reason, going to inservice made me feel even more grown up than going to school and teaching all day.  

I’m still pretty buried in work and I can’t really see when I will have caught up, but the difference between this week and last week is that now I at least have HOPE that I will get the hang of it. 

I want to be an exceptional teacher, but I also desperately want to have a life outside school.  Balance right? 

GO PHILLIES! ;) 
(what has happened to me?)

Today I felt like an impostor.

How am I qualified for this job?

As various people told me their names and handed me papers and talked special ed. jarrgon to me I just wanted to say, “Don’t you realize I have no idea what I’m doing?” But I couldn’t say that because I have to pretend I do have a clue. I have to pretend until it’s true. I hope no one notices.

I believe tomorrow will be better and the next day will be even better and so on and so forth. I believe it because a little birdie told me. Actually, a couple birdies told me that. So it MUST be true.

At the middle school I have 7th grade lunch duty every day.  Every day.

Lunch duty is boring. Boooooring. I just stand around and wish there was at least something to lean on.  Occassionally I tell kids to sit down or stop screaming.  Occassionally I point at a kid across the room to give them permission to get up for whatever reason they’ve raised their hand for.

5 minutes before lunch time is over, another teacher blows a whistle. At this point everyone who hasn’t done so already, gets up to throw away their trash.  At this point, it gets a lot louder.  These 5 minutes are long.  It is really, really loud.  By the time we can dismiss the kids I am ready to pull my hair out and that is not just a cliche for a feeling I can’t describe.  I really want to pull my hair out.

And then I can escape, but I can only escape to the hallway which is even louder than the lunchroom. So I practically run back to my classroom.  Thankfully, the class I have after lunch is very small and very quiet.  At some point during the period I usually start to get annoyed with these kids for acting so dead, but at first I really appreciate not having to constantly tell them to be quiet.

Today in the lunchroom there was a bit of a mystery.  I turned around and saw a boy running back to his table leaving behind another boy standing up and saying, “Hey he took my chips!”  I went over to the boy who was yelling and he told me the other boy had just come over to the table and took his chips.  So I went to get the chips.  But the boy at the other table was just as sincerley convinced that they were his chips.  He was eating a matching bag of chips.  I wondered why he would bring 2 bags of chips.  He looked at me and seemed really offended that I would suggest he stole the chips.  He was so convinced that I went back to the other table to get the chips…again.  The kid who I thought had been stolen from was also eating a different bag of chips.

So which is more likely?  That someone would bring 2 bags of 2 different kids of chips? Or that someone would bring 2 bags of the same chips?

I ended up taking the chips because they were causing such a problem.  The boy said, “Thanks a lot for taking my lunch.” I felt bad, but someone was obviously lying to me.

I checked with another teacher who convinced me of what I had originally thought so I went to deliver the chips back to the “victim.”  The “theif” saw this and looked shocked. I said, “The other teacher saw you! He saw you go over and take the chips! You were caught.” But HE said, “But he took the chips from me before lunch! I was going to get them back!”

Oh man. Whatever. I gave up. The chips had already been eaten.  But I’m curious about what really happened.

It made lunch duty a little more interesting.  But, the whole situation was kind of ridiculous.  Like middle schoolers are kind of ridiculous sometimes.

In case anyone is confused, I am in middle school for possibly a couple more days.  I have not started my new job yet.