Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Horrible start and end, but otherwise pretty good.

The good news is that the actual TEACHING portion of my day went very well. I made the kids laugh, cracked down on them when they weren't acting right, kept control of the classes, got them to specials and lunch, etc.

As some of you know, the beginning of my day sucked. I now have a $113 ticket--and so does one of the other teachers on my team--for pulling out of a line of backed-up traffic and driving up to the left-turn lane (to turn into our school) before the turn lane actually began. It was a two lane road, but because of an accident or something up ahead, there were no cars coming from the other direction, which meant that we were using that empty lane to get to our turn lane faster. It was the left turn lane to TURN INTO OUR SCHOOL, did I tell you that?!?!) To make it even worse, he pulled us over AT SCHOOL, in the parking lot. Both of us at once. (Almost every teacher who saw the incident later told us, "Hell, I did it too." We just happened to be the ones he busted.)

The other bad part of the day was the very end. Dismissal. They were using the same dismissal system they used last year (which I can't even begin to get into; it's too complicated to explain), but they only had 30o kids last year. They have 700 this year--and let's just say, that same system didn't work. It took us an hour and 45 minutes to get all those kids into their cars and out of here. Needless to say, we have some VERY upset parents, and by the end of it, the teachers were snapping at each other, too. We're trying a different method tomorrow but holy crap, I got cussed out pretty good by some parents today.

So ANYWAY, the "teaching" part of my day went well. It's the OTHER parts of my day that will cause me to go home and drink.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I haven't been teaching very long, but I almost always enjoy the actual "teaching" part of my days. It is always the other stuff that drives me crazy!

I hope you have a better day tomorrow.

Nik said...

Things will go just fine. It always takes a couple weeks for teachers,students, and parents to get into the groove and figure out what works and what doesn't, so don't stress out too much. Besides, IF anybody's gonna be an alcoholic in our family, I already have dibs!!
Things will work out great for you, I promise. Just try to avoid turning too soon from now on, okay, hehehe

keesh said...

wow, ok for a first day. it always takes a little while as Nik said. what is the new dismissal system going to be? I think a grade at a time would be better don't you? something like that. Glad you enjoy the teaching part!

Jen said...

Today went much better with dismissal, we were done by like 3:40. Still a while to wait for parents at the end of the line but we kept the cars moving a LOT better today.

And the actual teaching part of my day went great again, too. I had them working as partners on team interviews; the first "group activity" can sometimes be a disaster but they handled it pretty well. I'm especially surprised by one of my 7th graders; I'll call him A. Get familiar with him; I think I'll be talking about him a lot. Anyway, this was the kid I was warned about by one of the returning teachers--how he was trouble, didn't listen; I think she actually called him a "hoodlum." And this is a pretty tough teacher, so if he worried HER, I figured man, this kid must be horrible.

Well granted, it's only been 2 days, but I'm incredibly pleasantly surprised. He's very quiet and rarely smiles (I did make him crack one today, though he quickly recovered his poker face). But he doesn't give me any trouble, either. Today I took a chance and let him work with one of his "boys." I wasn't going to but then I thought, You know, that's not fair. He hasn't done anything to ME, in THIS class, to make me not trust him or give him the benefit of the doubt. So I let him and his boy work together and you know what, they did GREAT.

John Cowart said...

Once a cop stopped me for a broken taillight right outside my youngest daughter's school. All these kids hung on the chainlink fence commenting: "Look, Patty's dad is getting busted. He must be a drug dealer"
"Wonder if the cop is going to shoot him. I hope he does. I never saw anybody get shot before".
"Why doesn't he handcuff him?"

Patty didn't want to ride home with me.

Jen said...

Hahahhahahahha John. Those comments are priceless. Especially the "I hope they shoot him" one.

Jen said...

Thanks, Nee. =-)

The kids were a little more...."energetic" today. Maybe I spoke too soon. I did notice that last night was a full moon. According to teacher lore, do the kids act crazy the day BEFORE or AFTER a full moon?