Day #4

Yesterday was all unicorns and butterflies; today, landmines and barbed wire.

Some of the no-shows from earlier this week arrived today at last. I want them to return to the pit of eldritch horror from whence they shambled. Whew! Back in my first months at the Book I had a young goblin named Montrice who could not stay in his seat for two minutes. Poor soul had no control over himself, making it hard ethically to discipline him, but he derailed class every day and made it more difficult to keep the other, barely restrained lunatics in line.

Suddenly my 2nd and 3rd period classes each have three or four Montrices, totally incapable of staying in their seats, let alone still and quiet during instruction or class work. When you have 31 kids in a room with 3 who are completely unreasonable and uncontrollable then the other 28 kids get up to mischief while you chase the 3 around. Some of these kids must have IEPs which I've not seen; it is obvious they are emotionally disturbed and/or hyperactive/ADHD.

So I called 16 parents today, and had detention with 8 students. I made them write letters to President Obama explaining how they behaved. Princess with a P wrote: "I cusst. I was rute in ckiss to the 2eacher. I dixrespect." I feel behind the 8 ball today. How am I going to get Princess with a P to grade level? How am I going to keep all the kids who have great paragraphing/sentence-level skills from slipping while I work with the strugglers? Argh! I need about 3 more of me in the class room.