Fair-Square

Afternoon recess... instead of playing four-square, we played fair-square.  Well, we started out with normal 4-square, but the kid in the first square kept making dirty plays... hitting it in the corner, spiking it at players, etc.  So I kept making him redo it.  And then he got out and was all up in someone's face about it, just being a bad sport in general. 


So I told him to stop, and when he didn't, I gave him the choice of sitting in the office.  Well, he acted like that was the best idea in the world! And he sat in the office for the rest of recess.  When it was time to go home, he pretended the office was so fun he didn't want to leave (or, I'm assuming he's pretending; I don't know why he'd like to be stuck in there).  As for the rest of the class, we had a great time! The kids kept remarking on how much fun it was to play "fair-square".  People got out, didn't complain, and we rotated everyone in super fast!


I remembered to show my students the wild cucumbers today.  They were suitably impressed.  Even more of the pods had popped open.  Eileen gave me enough for one for each of my students, so I passed them out and let them explore/experiment.  Some of the kids asked if we could plant them, but judging by the amount of wild cucumbers growing on my parents' tree back home, I don't think we need to introduce it to school (or any of my student's homes).  The last thing we did was to squish the pods open and compare the seeds to ones that popped open naturally.  Water squished all over the classroom... we went through a good number of paper towels and wet-wipes today!


Our volleyball games went okay.  We won the set (lost, won, won), but we didn't play very good.  Lots of hitting the ball out of bounds, in the net, backwards... and even letting the ball drop.  Good thing there's practice tomorrow!


One thing that's been on my mind a lot today was a comment from a coworker this morning... he prefaced this comment with something along the lines of, "I'm sorry you're having such a tough year this year." And then he said that he's noticed that my personality this year has changed.  And I got the impression he didn't think it was in a positive way.  So now I'm curious.  Have I changed? Is it really my personality? Or is it just my mood?  This year it seems like I've had more issues with more students than in past years (and parents too), which always makes me stressed.  I'm debating whether I should ask this coworker what he meant, or if I should just let it drop.  Hmm...


Right now there's a Pork Chop Dinner meeting going on in my classroom.  Every once in a while they ask for my two cents, so here I am, sitting at my computer working in the background.  The main topic is Silent Auction items, which technically I'm "in charge" of.  Actually, my classroom is in charge of the whole dinner (or the parents are).  Hopefully this meeting ends pretty quick, cause I'm getting hungry!