Happy Saturday!

It's yet another special Saturday treat (in blog form). Mostly because I didn't blog yesterday. (I'M SORRY!) This blogging nonsense is awesome (for you and for me.) It's somewhat therapeutic and also informative... but it does take time. And time management has not always been my best quality. But since I love ya'll so much, I'm going to fill ya in on what happened yesterday!

School went well... yesterday was my last day of full teaching. Crazy! I didn't even realize it until last night. But next week the kids take the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) tests and so half of our time will be devoted to that. Plus my rockstar teacher is going to start teaching math again because we are studying money and time. Technically, the kids are not required to learn everything about money and time anymore (not sure why that seems like a good idea). But it's not in the standards and therefore there is not a lot of bonus time for it. I suppose we'll see how not (fully) teaching time or money works out when we have financially illiterate kids who also can't read an analog clock. Soooo yeah.

I can't remember anything specific about yesterday that was super awesome, and nothing was super bad either... except for one student. The one who (constantly) wants attention. He is a strange kid. Very immature, very controlling, pretty smart, but very annoying. He's been a tough one to deal with. Yesterday he was in trouble quite a few times for not participating and also for telling his partner during one activity that he was "clueless". I just about lost it when he said that. So my teacher and I gave this particular student an ultimatum. Because he is the one who choses whether or not to participate and what type of attitude he will have, HE is the one who will determine where he sits in class. If he makes good decisions to participate and pay attention then he gets to stay in his desk and work with the other students. If not, he (without warnings) will be sent to a desk in the back of the room that has a wooden divider/cubicle thing around the top so that he is isolated from the rest of the class. I know that it probably sounds crazy and harsh, but #1. it's not entirely my idea and #2. nothing else is working. There is no way that this student is going to "win" and continually be allowed to do whatever he pleases during class. I'll let ya know how that one goes too.

Now that I think about it, we did have one other not-so-good incident involving one of my students calling another student "a big stupid nerd and dumbo" or something like that. The student who was did the name calling (ironically enough) is always the one who claims to be bullied. It's ridiculous. I hate "bullying". The word, the concept, the whole nine yards. A lot of that stuff shouldn't happen anyway, so I am by no means trying to say that name calling is acceptable. But the amount of actions and words that are classified as "bullying" is getting to be ridiculous. Kids no longer have tough skin. They don't know how to handle other kids or people not liking them. Parents (by being very involved to "stop bullying") are not doing their kids a huge disservice. The reality is that world does not care about each individual kid. While the parents may have made their children the center of THEIR world, the rest world does not think that they are all special. The world will not cater to each child the way that their parents have, and if the kids are not prepared for the world, they will eventually fail. And (having no prior experience with the real world or failing) it will be devastating. Obviously this is not something that I can fix, but it is really something to think about. I hope in the future we will see more parents who have a realistic view of their children in the world. Keep your fingers crossed.

Well, now that i've done a significant amount of ranting, Let me break up the blog with a couple of my favorite journal entries from yesterday.

“Today is happe hour.” (TGIF. I wish it had been happy hour at school.)

“I want to be a placeman. I want to ride in a plaecar all day. Placemens because my favorite color is blue and there yonefrms are blue. I like placemen because they cach bad giys. Placemen are speshel because they cach the bad giys for us.” (This is what my student chose to write about. Out of all the things in the world, I think this is pretty neat.)

Well loyal blog readers, I'm off to enjoy my Saturday.

Until Monday (maybe)...

Peace, love, and country music,

Jayna