Pencil Problems

Another late night for me at school.  Volleyball practice 'til 4:00.  Then putting up the new volleyball net.  Followed by the Ice Cream Social at church for supper.  And by that time it was 6:00; time for the PTL meeting.  No time for lesson plans in between.  Sigh.

Sometimes you just have days like that.


The last hour of the day was pretty discouraging.  The hand bells arrived on Monday, so I picked out a song to do with the 6-8th graders.  And we highlighted notes.  And the 6th graders didn't know what they were doing.  And they couldn't figure out which note was theirs.  And they didn't know when they were supposed to play.  And I didn't know what/how to teach them.  And you could kind of tell what song we were playing (it's a patriotic song that I can't remember the name of right now...).  But it took the 6th graders FOREVER to put the bell stuff away.  They didn't know where it went and I didn't know where it went either...  It took 10 minutes to put away the bell stuff.  Which cut 10 minutes into our science lab time.  Which cut 10 minutes into PE.  (Mr. E was actually happy about that because it was in the low 50s today and PE was outside to practice soccer.  So some good came of our lateness.)  Sigh.


Sometimes you just have days like that.


The lab... well.  Not my shining moment as a teacher.  The students didn't read the lab through all the way, so they didn't know what they were doing (even though we took class time to look it over).  I was going to make groups using a fancy-schmancy website, but it wasn't working.  So I drew sticks.  And two students who don't normally get along were put in a group together.  But I put them together anyway.  And there were students who didn't get along with their partners and didn't take turns and ran around and didn't follow the rules.  And then there were groups that did everything super fast and were done right away and needed some guidance in writing down stuff on their lab sheets.  And it was PE time, so we didn't have time to do any of that.  And we didn't have enough time to discuss what they discovered.  Sigh. 


Sometimes you just have days like that.


The "funniest" incident of the day had to do with pencil ownership.  First of all, if I find a pencil lying somewhere in the classroom, I put it in the Sharp/Not-Sharp jars for anyone to use.  How am I to know whose pencil it is?  This morning I found one.  Later on, one of the 6th graders suddenly yelled, "Hey! You stole my pencil!"  The boy looked at her, puzzled, "I just got it from the Sharp container."  "No, it's mine!  You must've taken it from my desk."  I explained I had found it on the table and stuck it there.  Still, she was adamant she had put it away in her desk.  Well, the student using it didn't want to give it back.  She wanted to trade him for it, but he said no.  So she argued and tried to convince him for about 10 minutes until I finally confiscated the pencil.


Lunchtime comes.  The boy's pencil rolled off his desk and landed on the ground, clearly next to his desk.  The girl whose pencil was "stolen" picked it up, put it in the Sharp jar, and took it back out to use.  When the boy said, "Hey, that's my pencil!"  She looked at him innocently and said, "I got it from the Sharp jar."  (Later, she told me she had picked it off the floor and put it in there herself).  AUGH!  So I confiscated that pencil too.  Sigh. 


Sometimes you just have days like that.  Good thing tomorrow is another day.