things are getting better at work. we have a new assistant principle and he's been rolling up his sleeves from day 1 and taking care of business. referrals are practically same day matters. improvement in the classroom is slow, but it is happening and i can see it happening.
i finally believe i just might survive this . . . and the kids will too.
most of them anyway.
there is this one student who finally hit my last nerve one too many times. i don't think my students have ever seen me that angry before -- and they wisely finally figured out what "work quietly" really means . . . except for the one student who can't shut up to save his life. i know what is going on with him, and i can't help but be pissed off at his mother for not doing something that i know from experience will help this child manage to have a more normal experience in the classroom. that she refuses to help him is just . . . wrong to me. at this point, the team's solution is to document his behavior and hopefully get him into a different classroom management situation since mom won't do what needs to be done. it won't help me much -- i expect the earliest any move would be made is in january -- but it should help the teacher i'm in for.
beyond him, though, most of our students seem to be coming into line. i do feel sorry for the new a.p. though. his first week has been pretty busy catching up on the discipline stuff and hearing from a number of unhappy teachers (and i've heard more than teacher is ready to walk out) in addition to adjusting to the new school.
i feel a lot better with him there, though. i had to go in tuesday and discuss some detentions that were about to become referrals because i had a good dozen of them . . . a bit much to send over to the i.s.s. room. we not only discussed how to manage the detentions (most were reassigned for the third time) but also talked about the problems with my homeroom/1st period class. the next day he stepped in during homeroom and you could have heard a pin drop. that afternoon, he started dealing with my troublemakers and back talkers.
i was in heaven.
and it felt like a load was lifted from my shoulders. i finally have support from someone in the administration. i'm not alone any more, and i'm not being blamed for the problems.
of course, them behaving better in general doesn't mean everyone is behaving better and that the rest of the job has gotten easier. i still of the wonderful children with the smart mouths and i'm now a day and a half behind. more squooshing coming right up! *sigh* with the way my grades are set up, and the information i'm supposed to cover to fulfill the county requirements, this is going to be very, very tricky. and that's putting it nicely. but at least the kids that are the most disruptive are finally being dealt with. sometimes that's the best you can hope for.
and now i need to go tackle some of the 2" pile of papers i need to grade. swamped indeed . . . but i'm not holding my breath that the grades are better, at least not yet. soon, very soon they should do better since better behavior and less disruption will be more conducive to them actually doing the work.
hey! i can dream, can't i?
word of the moment: picaresque
belonging to or characteristic of a type of prose fiction that features the adventures of a roguish hero and usually has a simple plot divided into separate episodes; relating to or characteristic of rogues or scoundrels; picaresque fiction - prose fiction featuring the adventures of a roguish hero
