Crazy Day

Well today was CrAzY!  Yesterday several special education teachers, workers, helpers etc. with the district flew into Perryville.  Their job is to travel from village to village within the district working with students who are identified as special needs and doing testing with students to see if any others qualify for special needs.  They do this about once a month I think, possibly less but I'm not quite sure.  Anyhow, there have been a lot of new faces in the building the past couple of days, and that always gets the kids excited.

Yesterday afternoon, after the special education teachers got here, we all took a walk down to the beach because it was such a beautiful day outside.  This was nice because I was not walking to the beach alone like I had been the previous day and was much less scared of bears since there were other people around.  We walked much further along the beach than I had the day before and I found lots of shells, rocks, crab shells, etc.  I'll post some more beach pictures later. 

Anyways, back to the crazy day I had.  So since the special education teachers were here for the full day today they took students out of the class throughout the day to work with them and do some testing with them.  They also spent a lot of time in my classroom observing the students.  Their goal was not to analyze my teaching at all, but it always makes me nervous when other people are in the classroom watching while I teach.  So all through the day today I was losing students and getting students back, so the schedule was a little wacky, and the kids were just a tad bit riled up because of all the excitement of having other people around. 

On top of all that confusion, it seemed that several of my students were not in the best of moods today.  I think that these kids do not always get to bed at a decent hour and when it comes time to go to school in the morning it certainly shows.  There was a specific student who was just having an absolute meltdown this morning during our reading lesson.  He was getting angry over every single little thing we did, and finally I sent him to the head teacher to cool down.  It turns out that he hadn't had any breakfast and was just cranky because he had an empty stomach.  As soon as he had something to munch on he was back to his regular self.  It's amazing what a little food and sleep can do for a person's (especially a child's) mood. 

So basically, today consisted of students coming and going from the classroom at random times...teaching lessons to the students I had and then teaching the lessons again to the students who came back...dealing with meltdowns...temper tantrums...crying children...flying by the seat of my pants in terms of the schedule...trying to keep all of the students occupied while I was teaching the students who were gone for their lessons...pulling out some last minute activities for the students to do...scrambling to get everyone finished with their lessons for the day...talking with the special education teachers abou thet students and what they observed...breaking up arguments...and generally running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  The sad part is that only some of that stuff is different from a "normal" day...if you can ever call it that.

 I am just glad the day is over.

This evening we are all going over to middle grade teacher's apartment for salmon pie.  I'm excited...both for salmon and to not have to cook for myself :-)     

Even though today was a crazy day, I have made it past the hardest part of the week.  School gets out early tomorrow because Thursday is parent-teacher conferences, so we get tomorrow afternoon to prepare.  I'm a little nervous to talk to all of the students' parents, but I've only been here for a week, so it's not like I'll have too much that I can share anyways.  Because there are parent-teacher conferences on Thursday, school will also get out early on that day.  And then every Friday is professional development day for teachers, so school gets out early on Fridays too.  So I only have three half days of school left this week!  Yay! 

Alrighty, well I'm calling it quits from grading for the night and heading on over to my apartment to relax and eat salmon pie.  Toodles!