A first-year teacher loses her temper

Good grief! I love my kids, I swear I do, but they just drive me crazy sometimes. Today was definitely one of those "sometimes."

So I try to mix it up a bit for the kids sometimes- playing games, doing pair work, etc. However, either I can't manage them right, or they just can't do it. I can't tell which. This morning, math was a bit boring (even for me), and we're just doing multiplication. I tried to spruce it up a bit with a game my mom bought me called Multiplication Math War. It's just a deck of cards with multiplication problems on them, and the kids go against each other to see who has the larger number. It worked well for a while, but they get so noisy so quickly. We had to stop the game (as usual) because, even after several warnings, they still would not just work quietly.

Reading was moderately successful, as they worked quietly on their own. After lunch, however, it all came tumbling down again. ALL we had to do before Art was S.S.R. (sustained silent reading) and a Social Studies activity. That's it! In fact, I was worried that we'd have extra time left over. Wrong! The reading went fine, but Social Studies drove me absolutely crazy!! We were learning a fun state song, which should've taken 15 minutes. We first reviewed the lyrics together, which has all 50 states and their capitals. We underlined each state as a class, then circled the capitals.

In an exercise that should've been quick, I asked students (at random) to tell me the capital of each state as I said the state's name. If you take a look at the lyrics, you'll see that each state's capital either directly precedes or follows the state. I was even pointing out each state on the overhead, while the students followed along on their own copies. HOWEVER, I'd call on people who would ask, "Where are we?" or "Which one are we on?" or "What are we doing?" Ugh!! It took sooooo long. I was extremely frustrated, especially since the answers were RIGHT THERE!!! I told them that we had to get through the review before we could go to Art. We ended up being almost 15 minutes late to Art because of so many students being off-task. One girl was even on the floor. Peer pressure ultimately got her back in her seat, but people were angry. Several girls even cried because of missing Art. I told them that I was upset, too, and that it's not fair for this to happen. I got stern and angry, and they knew it.

The rest of the day wasn't much better. I have one student who is totally ostracized from our class. Though I personally am fine with him, no one else in the class is. He also infuriates other teachers to the point where he gets kicked out of detention! Anyway, he made things difficult, and the whole class made it worse. During the last 10 minutes of the day, he got checked out early. The class actually cheered (while the poor kid was still there!), and I came down on them hard for it. I told them it is NOT OK to be that rude, disrespectful, and mean to another student EVER. I told them that every day I am annoyed at some point, but I don't complain (much) and I'm certainly not hurtful and mean toward people.

Anyway, I feel remarkably not like quitting, despite how annoyed I am at the moment. The librarian told me after school that she thinks it's good for the students to see that they're not going to wear me down. At least not this year. Heh.

Finally, I have to input grades now (an hour-long task) for progress reports. After that, it's Round 2 of massage classes! I NEED a massage now, after today!