Just. Go.

I hate letting students out of my room. First off, they tend to play when in the bathroom or on the way to the water fountain. Second, my class periods are only 45 minutes ... 45 short, precious minutes to shape young minds. Every second is important.

However, I am not heartless. There are exceptions to my strictness. The obvious is vomit. If you have to hurl, you R-U-N to the bathroom. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Just. Go.

The other is blood. Lots and lots of blood. If you are bleeding profusely, you need to take care of that. You do NOT need to do what Joseph (nope, that is not his name ... it's not even close) did during my class the other day. When his nose started bleeding, he did not get up and head to the bathroom. He calmly sat at his desk with one hand over his nose and the other hand in the air. I admit I ignored him because I was finishing an assignment explanation and thought that I might answer his question during the talk. But when I was done, and I called on him, I noticed a weird shadow on his chin. As he started asking if he could leave to go to the bathroom, I realized the kid had blood pouring out of his nose and down his face. It was everywhere. This falls under the "Just Go" rule. Joseph clearly did not get that memo.

Sadly this was the second time in the week that a student sat at his desk with blood running down his face.It's like they're terrified to get up and go take care of their minor disasters. Perhaps I should lighten up just a bit ... or just make them MORE terrified of sitting there getting blood all over everything than of going AWOL.

Aesop's Fables

I admit that I have become completely dependent on technology. Most everything I teach is on a power point, I find clips and songs with You Tube, and I have never had to average my own grades thanks to my online grade book. So when my computer began freezing when more than one program was open, and timing out when trying to open an internet page, I put in an SOS with the tech department.

The tech accessed my computer, and within an hour, the problem was fixed. Sounds good, right? Wrong. She stripped my hard drive down to the factory settings, completely wiping out everything stored on my hard drive. Ev. Ry. Thing. I even had to reinstall my printer when it was all said and done.

I am not ashamed to admit that I cried, in front of my students, no less, and I had to get it together before I could call the tech department. To say I was in a panic would be an understatement. I am in my 10th year of teaching; there was a LOT of data that was just ... gone. After 24 hours, and two recovery programs, I managed to get back everything from before April 2010. While better than nothing, I am now left with the task on re-creating many, many documents and Excel sheets - hours of work at the least. I am still slightly miffed by the whole thing.

So I ask myself, what went wrong? There was no warning ... there was no tip-off ... just a wipe-down of my hard drive. In fact, at one point, she had me on the phone to ask me a question. Where was the warning to back-up my hard drive? A hint, even, would've been nice. But the nothing, the no warning, well, that was a way to go, too, I guess.

Therefore, the moral of the story is when tech is going to be breathing in the general direction of your hard drive, back up Ev. Ry. Thing.

"Hi. Is this Mrs. Edwards?"

As an educator, I am all too aware of the faults of my own children. Don't get me wrong; I love them more than life itself, and I hope and pray they will take their education very seriously. However, I also know my children, and I know exactly the kind of phone calls I am going to get when they are finally enrolled in school.

There's the first-born, only ten months away from being in kindergarten. She is very bright and has reasoning skills that surpass even some of my 8th grade students. But the girl loves to talk ... a lot. In kind, she is a narrator of her life. Truthfully, though, she is a lesson in being patient with a 4-year-old. "Mom, I'm going to put this right here so you can see it. No, I think I'll put it here instead because over there is might get wet. Wait, here it might get knocked off, so I'm gonna go put it in my room. When I get there, I'll also put shorts on because I'm hot. And, Mom, do you think I could go ahead an put my flip-flops on? I know we're going to the mall later, and I want to be ready. I'm going to wear my pink ones because I'm wearing pink, so my pink flip-flops will match." And all of this is being said while my 2-year-old is screaming and kicking because he doesn't want me to wipe the boogers off of his nose. It takes a lot of brain-power out of me for the day, and I've discovered that is a non-renewable source of processing power.

So, for the girl, I'll be getting called into conferences to see what we can do about her endless chatter and the small seizure-type fits she will throw when the teacher doesn't acknowledge her answer/idea/thought every single time her hand is up. (Seriously, she goes all stiff, trembles from head to toe, and makes a weird noise in her throat ... it's almost a demon-possession kind of moment.) I'm not sure yet how we will deal with this, but I have 10 months to figure this out.

The boy is a completely different story. He's very intelligent in his own way. He observes, watches, and learns then amazes you by spitting out the information one day ... information you had no idea he possessed. However, he has anger management issues. He screams, throws, hits, slaps, kicks, and throws himself to the floor (coincidentally, this also has a weird demon-possessed vibe to it). While I realize some of this may occur because he's two and gets dissappointed when he realizes he is not in charge, some of it is just my son. For example, the other night at dinner in a local establishment, he became enraged when we wouldn't allow him to pig out on fries and insisted he eat something with some nutritional value. He screamed, slapped the table, and dug deep for some crocodile tears. It was incredibly embarrassing, and, despite the fact that I knew I was doing the right thing by ignoring his mad fit, made me question whether or not I was doing a good job of being his mother.

So, for my husband's son, I'll be called down to pick him up from a fight because someone will make him mad and he'll haul off and punch the kid in the face. I mean, between now and then I will try to curb the aggression and teach him to better handle adversity. I will work with him on temper and non-violent ways to handle problems, and that may come naturally as his communication skills improve and I can reason with him better. But in the end, he may just be a difficult child, so I am bracing myself for impact.

My saving grace for them both? They are smart, so I may get called to approve their placement in AP classes. They love to read, so, as long as I keep fostering that love, I may get a call about the upcoming awards ceremony. They love music, so I may get a call about enrolling them in a fine arts program (if they still exist then ... no, really ... that's an IF statement).

Most importantly, though, is that I am willing to work with them on whatever accomplishments or trials they may have. And why? Because I am their mom ... it's my job. Doing anything less would be a total breach in the trust they have in me ... and could potentially lead to the complete mental break down of their teachers.

Who Are You Kids and Where Are My Real Students?

Each day I give my students 10 minutes of time to read the novels they have selected from the library. Today the timer went off, and I looked up to find that not one student had moved. No books closed, no one was looking up, no one even flinched. Do you know what it feels like to be met with the silence of kids reading when the timer lets them know they can stop reading? It gives me actual chills and a sense of awe. I could sit and watch them read all day. They just kept reading...like they liked it or something. However, I also had a lesson they had to master for their writing piece, so I quietly announced that reading time was over, and that's when the whining started.
"Do we have to stop?"
"That was not 10 minutes."
"Miss, look how far I am to the end of the chapter. Can't I finish it?"
"Five more minutes, miss. Please. "

I even warned them they would probably have homework if we did this, but they didn't care. So what could I do? I set the timer for five more minutes and let them keep reading. Then I fought back the tears. In my entire career, this has never happened...ever. Thank you, Readers/Writers Workshop.

The truly amazing thing was when the same situation repeated itself three hours later. Awesome day, indeed. I love my job!

2am ... the First Sign That Tomorrow's Gonna Suck

My least favorite duty of being a teacher is grades. They are rather complicated these days. No longer can you give a student a 100 for completing that assignment; you need rubrics before the assignment goes out to ensure expectations are clear and can be met; you need to write comments and give feedback on the assignment when you're not giving full credit; you have to allow the student to reassess any test grade below an 84 AND fix it so that any grades on the assignments leading up to the test that were below the test grade no longer hurt the student's average ... 'cause now they've shown growth. Honestly, it's exhausting.

So idiot me decided I could grade my papers "real quick" last night when I pulled them out at 9pm. 3 1/2 hours later, I was ready to put the grades into the online gradebook. It took another 1 1/2 hours to get the grades in, sew up my daughter's dress (oh yea, picture day was today, and the dress she wanted to wear had a hole in it. I've actually known about this hole for at least 5 weeks now, but this just further illustrates my point.), and get ready for bed. I seriously underestimated the complexity of grading (and the time it would take to fix the dress hole). Plus, I have about 40 more students this year than I did last year, so I am still adjusting to that insane amount of extra time it takes to get everything graded.

The sad thing is, this didn't have to happen. I had plenty of time all weekend to get this done in a reasonable time frame, but I put it off and put it off until there was no option but to start. I guess this makes me a hypocrite because I am constantly encouraging my students to not put things off until the last minute.

No ... not hypocrite ... a do-as-I-say, learn-from-my-mistakes kind of girl.

What's in a Name?

I'm good with names. Really good. I can look at a list of 1,000 children's names and pick out my 120 students in a flash. I remember the names of many of the people I graduated high school with or went to college with. I remember the names of the kids from the neighborhood where I grew up, and I remember the names of way too many of my former students.

I'm good with faces. I see a face and I know that I know that person. I can identify my students in the halls by sight only a few days into the school year. That kid right there ... he's a student at this school and he is in the second row of my seventh period class.

Put the two together, though, and it is a disaster. Today, for example, I said "Good morning, Alex." Seemingly harmless ... except the kid's name is Adam ... and I have three Adams in this particular class so, really, you'd think the odds of getting this particular name correct would be great. But no ... Alex it was. I did the same thing to Jennifer (actually Lesly), Ale (her name was actually ALSO Leslie), and Johnathan (nope, Paul). I also keep calling our daytime janitor Jose, but, alas, his name is Juan. So. Unbelievably. Embarrassing.

Oh, and it's already the fifth week of school (which means I've actually been around Juan for six weeks) which makes me a regular lame-wad.

Once I learn a name and match it to a face, it doesn't stick forever. It lasts as long as we are in close proximity and talking on a daily basis, and then it's gone. My former students come back, and I can picture them sitting in my classroom, but I cannot remember who they are. So I'm all, "Heeeeeyyyyy (insert awkward pause here) you!" And then I want to die because, for the life of me, I honestly cannot remember their names. I am running through the list of former students in my head, but the match, the all important match, cannot be made.

I'm also that annoying person who can't concentrate on the movie she's watching because I've recognized an actor on the screen but can't think of his name. So I finally have to pause the movie and go look it up on IMDB while  you wait patiently on the couch. And that's at home ... it's really bad in a movie theatre.

I see my co-teachers calling their students by name somewhere around the second week of school. It is depressing that it's going to be another month or so until I can join them. The name thing is a huge handicap as a teacher. It is difficult to count a kid tardy when you're having to glance around the room and try to remember what the late child was wearing, then match that kid to the seating chart. It is difficult to correct behavior in transit in the hall when you have to call a kid out by the shoes he's wearing ("Hey, Nike-wearing kid ... no ... the one behind you ... yeah, you ... knock it off!" - so not effective!!). It is difficult to praise kids or acknowledge kids or be around them when you have to use pronouns all the time.

I do apologize to the kids the first day. I know this is a problem I have. But it is a problem I have with confidence. When I do call a child by the wrong name, it is not a question, it is not a guess, it is right ... that is his name, whether it actually is or not. And if he doesn't correct me, it will be his name for all eternity. Because once I learn a name, I won't forget it ... until we don't talk daily ... and then I'll have no idea who you are anymore.

In with the Calm ... Out with the Chaos

Patience is a virtue. And, really, I want to be virtuous. But it's just so difficult. In fact, the last time I asked God to give me patience, he instead allowed me to practice patience by granting me my 6th period at the time. Since then, I have been very careful about what I pray for.

My real problem is that I deal with middle school students on a daily basis. I love these kids, but their brains function in some strange alternate universe where reality is taking a nap and common sense is out to lunch. So ... I need patience ... and lots of it ... because they require buckets of it ... and I don't ususally get that much. They don't mean take all of my patience, but sadly that suck it dry almost everyday. Somedays I can't even make it to the end of the day before it's gone ... then I'm just running on fumes and prayers so I don't inadvertently frighten some poor kid who asked what he thought was an innocent question.

So it's back to prayer. Carefully, I ask God to help me when I am practicing patience. I try to remember that my students are not all out to get me ... it is not a great conspiracy or a huge plan to send me to the crazy house (right??). I try taking a deep breath when I feel the irritation come on. It makes for a better relationship with my students, and that makes my day go smoother. However, I'm pretty sure I'm getting an ulcer ... or a brain tumor ... or at least a permanent twitch in my eye. But that's okay because my students will be well-adjusted citizens while I break down into a mess of deep breaths, prayers, and twitches.