Thursday, September 18, 2014

Is it worth it?

The question foremost in my mind right now is, should I go home before going over to church at 6:30?  Hmm.  We're setting up for the Silent Auction/Pork Chop Dinner at 6:30 and I had originally intended to plan next week's lessons and then go home.  Oh, and I had a meeting with the school nurse to go over how to give medications to students (how long could that take?) and a meeting with a lady who wanted to go over starting up the SCRIP program at our school. 


Yeah, I didn't get going on my school stuff until about 4:45.  However, this is the last thing I'm working on.  My plan for lessons next week is printed.  My desk is mostly cleared off (at least straightened up), the silent auction items are waiting on the table, and my teacher bag is packed.  So as soon as I organize my thoughts, I'm going to book it home!


I taught my class the "cool" pose, the first step in becoming tease-proof.  You whip that pose out when someone is putting you down or is saying something mean... after they're done with their mean stuff, you look at them and very calmly (with a smile on your face) say your "adult snappy one-liner" (meaning, it's mature and not something mean back).  The one I taught my class was, "Thank you for sharing that with me."  And then we practiced.  Some were serious about it.  Others treated it like a joke.  And one person did not want to come up with a cool pose (he's the one who probably needs this the most).  So we practiced some more.  I told them I was going to make them practice it tomorrow too.


The teasing levels were about the same as yesterday.  One boy, I just don't know what to do with him.  He isn't able to verbalize why he did something mean to a classmate.  I'll ask him why he did it and he just stares/zones out/shrugs.  I need to do more research or Google it or something. 


I was on a campaign to get all the late work turned in today.  Some students have been lax in turning in their English assignments.  So I laid the law down, "If your late work is not turned in, you do not get to work in the prairie garden this afternoon.  If it's still not finished by the time we have afternoon recess, you will need to stay in and work on it then too."  Spelling was due today too.  One girl had about three and a half pages left (out of five) to do.  She kept dinking around, watching what everyone else was doing... and when it was time to go outside, she was stuck inside.  When I let another student work on his work outside, she started bawling, "I want to work outside too!  How come he gets to and not me?" (she gets way too distracted)  She kept saying, "it isn't fair!"  But then we went over how she had made a lot of choices about not getting her work done, so it's her own fault she was stuck inside doing homework.  I made a deal if she got her spelling done and one of her late English assignments done, she could come play kickball.  She still didn't get it all finished and was panicking.  Our next deal: get it done before 6:30 and her mom could bring it to Pork Chop setup at church.  Well that seemed like a done deal to her.


Even though today is Thursday, the Bookmobile didn't come.  There were actually groans of disappointment from my students when I gave them the news.  However, I went to the library yesterday after school, so our book supply is replenished.  Just in time for Reading Buddies tomorrow!


And now I'm signing out.  I kind of forgot I didn't have a STEM lesson picked out for tomorrow... I think we're just going to watch a Bill Nye video on cells.  We're learning about them next week, so it's relevant.  It feels like a cop out, but really, I've been at school so much this week, I'm at the point where I need to leave and recharge and not think about school for a while.  So here goes nothing!

No comments:

Post a Comment