Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Today was basically an okay day, a day after the three-day Columbus holiday. Nothing major, just the usually headache. Example? Sticky-finger Fredda was in one of her playful moods. She blows a whistle in class in the middle of a lesson, then laughs. I take the whistle. About 2 minutes later, she is playing with a toy, so I take the toy. She laughs. About another 2 minutes later, she takes out a toy puzzle and proceeds to play with it on her desk...yes, in the middle of the lesson. I take the puzzle. Threatened to call her mother. And reminding her how her mother doesn't like hearing from me. With the reminder, she decides to start imitating a baseball player in front of the room with a balled up wad of paper as her ball(one of the "since I'm in trouble, I don't care" disruptive and/or distructive behaviors. I had had enough. I wanted to throw her out(dragging her into the hallway if necessary). Teachers are discouraged from putting kids in the hallway. I settled for sending her to a former teacher with some work to complete independently. Later of course, I spoke to the mother...yet again. I was surprised how attentive the mother seemed. Not the usually "I gotta go body language". After about 5 minutes, the mother asks when her daughter is coming out. It turned out the mother was only humoring me waiting for her daughter to come out. Mom didn't know that today was the first day of our schools after-school program. The empty sidewalk in front of the school should have been a clue.

I was planning to go to the gym, but feeling disorganized in the classroom and with the students' work, I changed my mind.

I ended up leaving the building about 6pm. At home, I spent about 1.5 hours preparing for an art project. With the students' researched report on different types of spiders, they are going to make spiders with arts & craft materials. A part of the bulletin board display would feature the students' spiders on a spun web background. To make the spun web background, the frames are paper plates with the center cut out, and 40 holes cut around the perimeter. I did the cutting and hole punching.

After the art prep, I relaxed in the bath and then fell asleep.


Post Date - Saturday, October 13, 2007 10:34pm