Ho, ho, ho

Today was not altogether a bad day. Crazy, yes, but not awful.

This morning, the 4th graders had their math test (which some 5th graders later graded and entered in my gradebook for me!!). We had library, where I got a lot of grading done, and then grammar, practice, and spelling tests. Not too bad, all in all. We then had our practice spelling bee, which went relatively well. We have our real one on Monday, which angered one girl a great deal. Her grandmother will be taking her to Mexico on Monday (don't ask me why), so she begged that we have the bee today. I apologized, but said that our bee is Monday. She was furious for the next hour. Awesome.

We did, however, have our practice bee today. It went quite well. We'll see who our "official" class winners are on Monday. The top three students will go to the school spelling bee the second week we're back from break in January. Score. As a spelling bee coordinator, I have my work cut out for me. The other teacher and I have to organize the entire fiasco. What's more, for some reason, the *county* spelling bee will be held at our tiny little school. That'll be interesting!

Anyway, after recess, I had the students use their books to fill in a map of the states of the Midwest. Ok- could I have made this any easier? ... We reviewed the states last week and this week, and today I let them use their books to fill in the maps. We then had an open-note test where I put the exact same map on the overhead that they had just filled out. The students numbered a paper from 1-36. I put numbers in each state, asking the students to name each state on the corresponding number (1-12) on their paper. Then I erased the numbers and put more numbers (13-24) on, asking for the capitals of each state. Finally, I erased the numbers once more and put another set (25-36) on, asking for the 2-letter abbreviation of each state. Piece of cake, right? Wrong!! Several students became frustrated, saying, "I don't know these! I don't know how to spell these!" Come ON, kids... We've spent a week reviewing them, AND I gave them the answers before the dang test that they could USE on the test!! I still have people who failed it. You have to TRY to fail that badly.

Ahmem. After that, we did a final review of the states, and we were off to our school's holiday sing-along. Eeesh. Imagine students grades K-8 (about 350 students total) packed into a gym, plus teachers, plus bleachers full of parents and families. Wow. The sing-along itself was fun, and I took mad pictures. (Too bad there are sickos out there, or I'd post the pictures on my blog!) After the sing-along, however, disaster occurred. A few "organizing" teachers opted to "organize" some holiday games for the kids. I use "organize" in quotes because there was no sense of order whatsoever. It was loud and unruly and just plain crazy. One by one, teachers took their classes outside instead. I joined them with 15 minutes left in the day.

Anyway, it wasn't an awful day. The worst part of today (and many days) was just dealing with the anger some of these kids have. They're just so full of negative feelings. The girl who gave me grief yesterday did the same today. Some students lately have been helping sweep the floor during downtime in the day. I told this girl that she couldn't sweep at the time because I had previously told another student he could. She became irate, and screamed, "I HATE THIS SCHOOL!" Wow. Displaced anger much? It's just something every day with her. Also, I had one student become extremely upset because he couldn't go outside until I dismissed him. (This is the same rule to which every other student is subjected.) He threw down a chair on another desk. Of course, I also have the girl who was furious about missing the spelling bee because she's going on an early vacation.

Why are these kids so angry??? I can see how their lives aren't easy (parents are on drugs or in jail, they're homeless, they don't have good role models, etc.), but the constant overreacting really is ridiculous. I'm trying to help them cope. I've already given two of my overreactors journals, which helps on occasion.