Quick day!

So as I get (ever so slightly) older, time goes by faster and faster. Even this Monday, which wasn't wonderful by any stretch, went extremely quickly. I had seven (count 'em, 7!!) students out today! It was soooo nice working with a smaller class all day. If I had 15-18 students, I would be golden.

I'm still having issues trying to find a balance in the classroom. I want the students to be able to express themselves and feel comfortable in the room, but I also need to make sure that we're learning things! It's difficult.

Today in science, we started a unit on classifying living things. The textbook brought up extinction and evolution... I wasn't worried about it, but when we were talking about different stages of the Earth, one girl said, "I don't believe that the Earth formed like that. I believe that God created it." Oy, I thought, here we go... So I asked her, "Why couldn't God have created the Earth AND it changed over time?" She thought for a moment and replied, "I guess I don't know."

Later, we were talking about the extinction of dinosaurs, and developing ideas about how they all died. The same girl as above said that she thought "the great flood" (from Noah's ark) took the lives of the dinosaurs. I tried explaining that humans and dinosaurs didn't exist at the same time, which was difficult for her to grasp. I told her that human and dinosaur bones are aged much differently, and were found in different layers of the earth. Hmm... at least they're interested!!

The students also freaked out when they found out that modern human embryos have tails and gills! I bet I'll get a few angry phone calls tomorrow, but I at least have the science book and Arizona state standards to back me up. So there. : P

Finally, today was interesting. The morning was wonderful, since we didn't switch for math and I had the whole class to myself. I had them working dilligently for a while, but after P.E., one of my acter-uppers decided to throw a fit. He kicked a chair at another student numerous times, and tried to break his desk. Awesome. I sent a student to get another adult to come in and remove him, which took quite some time. Yay. Also, another student told me her father is now in jail (for a rather disturbing crime), and that's why she wasn't in school most of last week. Ugh. I know it's not out of the ordinary, but I have kids who are homeless (living in tents), kids whose parents are in jail, kids whose parents do drugs, and so on. If the human race doesn't kill itself in a few decades, I'll truly be amazed.

That's all for now. Just another Monday, all in all.