Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Day #122

Rough couple of days with the 7th grade boys class. Screamed at them yesterday, and today got so flustered by their obnoxious playing that I sent the paraeducator out with the 7 kids who could control themselves. "Get them through the lesson plan," I asked her, "and bring them back for the last couple of minutes of class."

The rest of the chuckleheads I kept behind. I gave them a punctuation worksheet and said "You don't leave until I get this paper completed accurately." Much whining and bitching followed, and then they moved to "why can't we do what we were supposed to do today?" and thence to "we're sorry can you please help us with our work" and finally to one of the biggest jerks staying behind an hour after school to sweep, scrub tables, and wipe boards completely unbidden. Tomorrow I shall do the same thing. Kids who are attentive and focused will leave with the paraeducator to learn a new skill and work on their short story assignment; the rest will stay with me and do a punctuation worksheet and they will learn nothing.

Had an adult show up in my room today who was angry because his nephew had lost his hat and said I had it. He called me unprofessional and hinted that I was incompetent and I pointed to the enormous pile of coats, hats, gloves, scarves, shirts, pants, and shoes in the corner of my room. "You expect me to keep track of a middle schooler's personal belongings? That is one day's worth of the stuff left in my room! I think it's great you bought your nephew a hat but it's not my responsibility to keep track of it." He stormed off in a huff. That set the tone for my day.

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