Monday, Monday...

So for once, I actually got up *early* this morning!! I got to school (10 minutes) early, but it made a huge difference! I had time to get crap done! What are the odds?

Anyway, in the morning, I fluctuated back and forth between wanting to be here or not. It usually turns out that the kids say or do something goofy that makes me laugh, and then I forget what I was so upset about. Today was no exception. During our daily 5-minute stretching (which usually goes surprisingly smoothly), I was reaching really high up with my hands outstretched. The children were doing the same. At one point, one student raised her hand. I called on her (since there is NO talking without permission during stretching), and she said, "Nice tattoo." D'oh!!! I was discovered! I got a tattoo just a few weeks ago (over winter break) with my little sister, and I was hoping for it to remain private. Oh, well. So I told them the whole grueling story (about how I screamed and cried like a baby while I was getting it done), and they were cracking up. That made the day a lot less tense and quite a bit more enjoyable.

Over the weekend, I saw "Freedom Writers," a phenomenal movie about a very true story. I'd heard about the project years ago, so I was psyched to see the film. Wow. Though I don't work with inner-city high schoolers, I do work in a low-income district with adolescents who also face very real problems. I think I have the potential to do something amazing in the world, I just don't know *how*.

After school, we had a grade-level meeting (which happens to be the 4 teachers from grades 4-6). Ughhhhhh... Our principal was there, and we have to do these progress monitoring things to make sure that our students who are low in reading & math are being monitored weekly and that interventions are put in place to help them. While it's a wonderful idea, I have NO clue how or when to do this all on top of all the other crap I have to do. :P Boo hiss!! Each monitoring takes about 3 minutes, but that's per student, and I have 28 students. Yucky. If I had, I dunno, someone to help me with this, that'd be cool. Le sigh.

Anyway, the days are continuing to fly by; it's really freaky. I'm now officially more than halfway done with the school year. I think the kids *may* be learning stuff here & there (as I do occasional pop-quizzes), but it's still hard to tell. We're all used to each other now, so I'm having fewer and fewer discipline problems in the room, though I still have 2 students who don't really *do* anything during the day. Pish.

Hokay, that's all for now. Time to go home and plan, then take a mini vacation for the night. Peace out, faithful readers!