it's only october?

Not much new to report, but I find myself with a few minutes of free time, so I thought I'd update the blog.

Robbie started school again a few weeks ago, and is keeping busy with classes during the morning and time in the lab in the afternoons. And also time on his laptop when he comes home. I swear, the only time we ever really get to spend time together is when we're asleep!

As for me, I'm muddling through the school year. In one way, this year is much, much easier than last year, because I've already taught everything before and it's much less work to lesson plan and come up with new ideas and do fun activities. But I have a lot of new students this year, since my school has declining enrollment and we got rid of Intervention classes. So all the new students I have come with issues (most of them behavioral). I can handle that, but it is just exhausting. I've found myself snapping at my students a lot, which I definitely did not do last year. The combination of heightened stress from the MA program & their crappy behavior has me at the edge of my patience all the time, and I do feel bad when I take it out on my students. I had a conversation (or lecture, call it what you will) with my 6th period class yesterday. It went something like this:

Me: "I don't know if you noticed, but last week I was a little short with you."

My students: "Yeah, we noticed!"

Me: "And I wasn't like that last year, was I?"

My students: "No."

Me: "Well, there are two reasons for that. One is that I have a lot going on outside of school that is adding stress to my life, so my patience has gotten a lot shorter. The other reason is that I have extremely high expectations of you, since I had you last year and know that you are amazing. Do you think you're living up to those expectations?"

My students: (guiltily) "No."

Me: "You're right. And while I know that you're all friends, and that this is your last year here, I'm still disappointed in your behavior."

My students: total silence...

And they've been fantastic for the past two days. Nothing like a good guilt trip to get kids to stop acting like maniacs and start acting like the students I know & love!