Friday, September 04, 2009

Day #5

A long, hard slog of a day. Constantly asking for quiet, putting names on the board, etc. Kids out of seats, restless, whining, talking. I broke each one about half-way through, but it was exhausting work, emotionally draining, and the kids will be nuts again after the 3-day weekend.

1st period was pretty smooth today. 2nd period took a half-hour to rein in. One young lady told me "get outta my face" and once I made an example of her the entire class shut up and got on task. Last period was a trainwreck for 40 minutes before I got them in line, and I have a co-teacher and a special ed assistant that period. The co-teacher has been teaching for 30 years and she takes notes on what I'm doing because she likes the way I manage the classroom. I'm like "you call this managing a classroom?" and she's like "yeah. In B'more this is as close as it gets!" I typically have he sit with students and assist as they do their class work, or simply patrol as another set of eyes, because her content knowledge is pretty bad. But she is pretty good with discipline one-on-one. The special ed assistant was hired and shipped in from Manila. We have a couple dozen of them at the March. They are excellent educators, but the kids give them a tremendous raft of shit. She's going to have a hard time with the 6 IEPs in my class. A very defiant, very mobile group!

As I was lining up the last period class one of my students tried to sneak out. I reached around behind me without looking, intending to snag him by the hoody, and I felt something soft and smooth. I turned to look and there was the 6th grade administrator with my hand on her boob! D'oh. I was mortified and apologized but she didn't even really seem to register what was happening in the crush of 6th grade bodies.

I should spend some time planning this weekend, but I'm so pooped I doubt that will happen.

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