Deh!

What. A. Day.

I have no words.

By far, the worst day of school to date.  The day started out pretty good.  The morning was fine.  But after lunch everything went downhill.

One of our families is going down to Florida until December first (take me with you, please!) so the teachers had to get their homework ready ahead of time.  Since one of the brothers had an appointment in the Cities this afternoon, they were pulling all their kids out of school in the middle of the day.  Well, the 7th grader had to take his history test for my class before he left, but he really wanted to go to recess, so he decided he wasn't going to take it.  Mr. E and I changed his mind.  He got done within ten minutes, so I'm not sure how well he did, but he got it done.  His 5th grade brother had to say his memory work before he left (which he hadn't studied much).  He ended up missing recess so he study his memory.  He didn't think he could do it.  But he did.  Maybe they weren't memorized as good as they should've been, but he got 'em said.

The 7th and 8th graders had a great review day once we got the teams picked out.  That was a drama in and of itself.  We always have a hard time coming up with teams so this time I told them to pick their teams before class.  It didn't work.  I thought something like this might happen, so this morning I came up with a backup plan.  Unfortunately, the backup plan fell through.  The program thing I used to create teams didn't work on my school computer so I was left with the old "pick the stick" option.  While I was out of the room, one of the girls switched the teams around and another girl wasn't happy with the changes, so she came tattling to me and then rubbed it in the other girl's face when I made them change the names back.  So we had to have a conversation about that.  And then no one wanted to do the review game so I gave them the option of sitting and working through the study guide together and then everyone wanted to do the review game again. 

After that, the 5th graders came back and we did history, which was great!  They remembered so much of the things we'd been talking about.  And then it tanked when I gave them the assignment.  I think the 5th grader who left early forgot his instructions at school.  And then the girl with the para completely shut down because she didn't have enough time to finish the assignment so she'd have to take it home for homework.  Plus she misbehaved in math so she was getting time taken away from playing tone chimes so she could work on her math (something she hates). 

We brought out the bells and that's when this girl decided she was going to finish her history instead of working on her math assignment like she was supposed to.  And then she stormed out of the room and ran up into the loft (an off-limits zone) and then we had to get Mr. E and he had to leave PE to have a talk with her in the office.  After the talk she stormed through the gym and into the classroom where she curled up under her book bag.  I tried to talk to her.  Didn't work.  We did the packing up with the timer again but one of the boys wasn't in the room when the timer started.  And then I did something I probably shouldn't have.  I gave him an extra fifteen seconds to pack up so we could watch the video. Wince.  I shouldn't have done that.  I know it's going to bite me in the butt later.  Sigh.  But I really wanted to watch the video!

It was the one with the opera singer who messes up and there's a picture of a cat that shows up... it's funny.  Well, the girl who'd been having the bad day thought the video was stupid, so she got even more upset and then we had the whole "I don't have a high; my entire day was bad" scenario all over again.  This time, I let the other kids go right after the prayer.  Ms. J and I had to block the exits so she couldn't leave without permission.  Her brother ended up coming in and still she made him stand around for another 15 minutes!  Finally she came up with something and I let her go.  Ugh!  I fell so petty doing that, but it's a power struggle, plain and simple.  Today she was seeing how long I would hold out against her.  And I won today, but it's not a proud victory. 

We called her mom after school to get some ideas of how to handle her complete disregard for authority and her tendency to ignore people she doesn't want to listen to.  Her mom gave us pointers straight out of the Love and Logic philosophy book.  I took notes during the thirty minute phone conversation and I think we have a good start on some more effective ways to deal with her behavior.  Sigh.  I just don't want another repeat of today.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.  Ending on a positive note: I don't have a lot of correcting to do tonight since I corrected the 5th graders' spelling books yesterday.  And the presentation last night went very well.  There were about 25ish people there and none of them fell asleep!  (haha, lame attempt at a joke).  But for real, I had a great time reliving the memories made on that trip.