Sunday, January 24, 2010

A Week in Review

Since the beginning of the new year I've been trying to jot down notes about how school went. I'm keeping the entries short and sweet, just enough to remember all the crazy ups and downs of the classroom. Here's some of the more stressful moments of this week:
  • One student (Let's call him "D.H." for Dear in Headlights...what he looks like when he gets in trouble and tries to play dumb) threatened another student while playing chess...chess, of all things!
  • I called New Kid's mom's cell phone to let her know about the incident report coming home in his backpack. Didn't get to talk to mom, but listened to her ring back tone..."Birthday Sex" by Jeremih. (If you haven't heard it before, you might want to look it up and give it a listen. It gives this story so much more wrongness than you'd expect.)
  • I also had to call another student's house to let her mom know about the incident report in her backpack. Let's call this student Highlights. I didn't get to talk to Highlight's mom, but did talk to an older gentleman (grandpa, maybe?) who didn't want to take my name or phone number down. No surprise I haven't heard from Highlight's mom yet.
  • Took away New Kid's Ipod after risking a power struggle with him. When I "won" the battle, I felt like I was from that reality t.v. show, "World's Strictest Parents."
  • New Kid continues his crappy week, with lots of talking back, crawling under the tables, and refusing to do work. Called his mom at lunch, but all I got was another round of "Birthday Sex." New Kid was mad that I called home, so he refused to go to lunch. I had to call the principal to stay with him until she could get him calmed down and out of my room.
  • New Kid was playing too physical at recess. (Why was he playing when he was suppose to be walking around with the playground duty, hmmm?) Anyway, he got another write-up and wouldn't go to the office to calm down. This time I had to have the nurse come and deal with him since the principal was out of the building.
  • New Kid came back calm, but grew angry again when he realized he didn't get Friday Free Time due to missing homework. Had to get the nurse again.
  • Highlights pretended to flip off a classmate and then threatened to rip off two boys' ears and skin.

4 comments:

  1. Oh boy! Sounds like a crazy week! I can't believe the mom's ringtone was Birthday Sex, I have heard that song and WHAT?! lol.
    New kids are always the death of me every year, good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Geez! I thought I had it rough! I've just got one little hell raiser, but he's a whole different kind of crazy!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow! This sounds a lot like teaching in London schools to me. Are you in an inner city school in the States? Very interesting indeed. Great story about the ringtone! LOL.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Actually, it wasn't a horrible week, just a really not-so-great week. But put it together with the week before, and the horrible adjective starts to look pretty accurate. Thankfully though, my boyfriend greeted me that Friday with chocolates, flowers and wine (two bottles!). And as for the question about being in an inner city school, I teach in Seattle, but for what most would consider a "good" school. There's usually a few yahoos that make our life difficult, but this third grade class is over the limit for yahoos...watch out next year 4th grade teachers!

    ReplyDelete