Finally Friday

I have never been so scared of a day of school in my life.

On Monday, I warned the 5th graders their memory work was long; they needed to start studying it right away.  Wednesday came: no one said their memory.  Thursday: nothing.  All four of them had to say it before the bell rang.

They had a math test yesterday.  Since one particular student likes to dawdle, I told the class their test had to be finished before we could open presents. 

Ms. J. was gone today getting a head start on Christmas travels.  So I was going it solo, trying to get our poky student to say memory and finish the math test.

It was torture.  I felt like such a mean, crabby teacher having to lay the smack down.  No one got their entire memory work said before the bell rang.  We barely had enough time to work on the math test, so they had to stay in from recess to get it done.  Two of them still didn't finish so the rest of the class quickly wrapped their parent presents while the others tried to finish their test. 

The 7th and 8th graders wanted to watch Facing the Giants as our class movie.  Since it's two hours long, we'd have to eliminate most of our recess and have a really short class party, not giving us much time to finish up those math tests.  When there was ten minutes to go (before we were supposed to start the movie), there was still one student testing.  I told the rest of the class to gather up their presents and head to the reading corner.  The student began to cry. 

The class told me I should open my presents first so the testing student would still get to see the rest of the class open their presents.  So I opened all my presents.  And this student still wasn't done.  So I had the other three open my gift to them.  (I made mini-Joe's at my pottery class.  They loved them!)  Still crying, still not done.  So we took a break from presents to speed-clean the classroom.  At that point, it was time to start the movie.  I called down to Mr. E's room and told them they could start without us.  And FINALLY the test was finished.  Everyone opened their presents, everyone loved them, everyone was happy.  And then we watched the movie.  Whew!