Optimist In Trouble

Today was one of those days that made me want to pull my hair out. 


I didn't have *quite* enough time to add pictures to all the slides in my powerpoint for the 8th graders before my students arrived for the day.  One of the 6th graders came early and kept talking to me so I was even less productive.  Then the whole class chitchatted loudly while I was trying to listen to kids say their memory work.  And even though I reminded them to study, they're not listening to my advice and I know tomorrow morning is not going to be fun. 


One of the 6th grade girls has a boyfriend (I'm not allowing her to talk about it in school).  But everyone knows who it is anyway... she wants to do everything with him.  She'll pick the same Daily 5 round just so she can sit next to him.  Unfortunately, her brother is her "boyfriend's" best friend and the brother thinks he gets to work with the boyfriend... but the girl steals him away.  This makes brother mad... and make farting noises/talk thereby distracting the rest of the class.  Instead of letting it go, one of them shouts "QUIET!" at the top of his lungs (not really helping the whole quiet issue) and when brother doesn't stop, rage builds up until eventually it will explode.  So.  Instead of putting pictures in the powerpoint like I wanted to, I worked with brother so the rest of the class could stay sane.  Mrs. B was here this morning, but she corrected spelling for me and wasn't available to work with students.


I did finally get the pictures added... but not as many as I wanted to.  But just that feeling of not quite being prepared made me super crabby and not very happy and cheerful. 


Lunchtime, the girlfriend would only eat the same things as her boyfriend.  The class wanted to see how much she was changing for him, so they interviewed her about what foods she likes to eat.  All of a sudden (after finding out her bf doesn't like pb and j sandwiches) she doesn't like them either.  All through lunch.  And her brother occupied himself with making snide comments about her and how she was just doing it to impress her boyfriend and it really made me want to pull my hair out! 


After school, the cheerleaders came to my room to hang out before the basketball game.  To say they were wound up would be an understatement.  They occupied themselves building Joe a fort and playing with him.  I did get a little accomplished before the game.  But there's one student who owes me a project from before Christmas.  He kept forgetting to bring it in and when he finally did, he hadn't changed anything on it!  I had mentioned the assignment to his mom before Christmas, but she got sick over break and forgot about it.  So I sent it back home for him to work on.  And he did nothing.  "Oh, I forgot! It's sitting on my counter!" were his most-used excuses.  I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt and tried to let him handle it on his own and face the consequences on his own.  And now the quarter ends tomorrow, and he needs to turn something in. 


Mr. E said all work needs to be turned in to play basketball... so this kid had to sit in the office and work on his project.  He really needed someone to sit next to him and walk him through it, but I had the cheerleaders to take care of! So I couldn't do it!  And no one else was available!  When I told his mom, she was pretty ticked off... more about him not playing basketball than anything else.  But he did get to dress and sit on the bench with the rest of the team, so there's that.  I didn't have the heart to tell his mom that he hasn't said any memory work this week.  I'm hoping studying memory work and spelling is already on the agenda for tonight... if not, Mrs. B is coming in early tomorrow to help kids study memory, so I think we'll be okay with that.


Positives: The B squad boys won the game! It was neck and neck!  Down to the last second.  The cheerleaders were super peppy and loud and everyone exclaimed over how cute they all are.  Tomorrow is Friday.  It's a long weekend.  We have some cool field trips coming up.  Not that many spelling packets to correct tonight.  A lot of my holds came in at the library.  Okay, I'm feeling a little better about life.  Now, time to go home and do my weekly trip to New Ulm.