Pooped!

Well, today was equally as stressful and exhausting as yesterday.  Thankfully though, I only have one more day of trying to get through the lessons all by myself.  (Oh and that's just reading lessons, by the way.  There's no way I could get through reading and math for everyone without Dora.)  On Thursday Dora will be back in the classroom with me and things won't be so crazy.  I tell you what, though...give me a classroom full of 20-30 students all in the same grade and mostly on the same page any day.....this multi-level stuff is killer.  I'm learning a lot, but oh man!  Some days I feel like my head is spinning, and it's just going to fly through the roof.

I made it through everyone's reading lessons today, which was a huge accomplishment, but not without some major difficulties.  My first group of kids slowed everything way down.  It took forever to get through their reading lesson.  Their group consists of a boy who is working at grade level, a girl who is a little below, and another boy who is older than the other two, and is quite a ways below grade level.  Unfortunalely, and understandably, this causes some embarrassment and frustration.  The oldest boy can tell that he's not quite as fast at getting things as the other two, and he's afraid of getting things wrong and making mistakes.  If he knows that he doesn't know something, like how to read a word, he'll just refuse to do it so that he doesn't have to get it wrong.  If I can work with him by himself it's better because he's not comparing himself to the others, but I just don't have enough time to do that.  On top of that, all of the students will shut down (refuse to work or cooperate) throughout the day for various reasons....if they think they are in trouble, if somebody tells on them, if their work is too hard and they're frustrated, if they don't get a turn, if someone is mean to them, and so on, and so on.  This is something that they were having problems with before I got here, so it's been going on for a while, but it can be incredibly frustrating to deal with at times.  I think that it is probably at least partly the result of everyone in the classroom being related in some way, but there may be other causes, too.  So my first lesson today involved a lot of trying to help the oldest boy along enough so that he wouldn't make so many mistakes that he shut down, getting students to say sorry to one another when they were mean, and trying to convince everyone to work so we could get done.  This kind of thing is a constant battle every day....not one that I have typically had this much trouble with in a regular classroom setting.  It really takes a lot of time away from learning. 

Today in gym we also had some breakdowns, meltdowns, etc.  Gym time is always interesting because it's kind of just a waiting game to see how long the kids are going to be able to play with one another before somebody gets upset that so and so isn't taking turns, or someone won't let them play, or they were there first, etc.  Usually these little episodes happen one at a time so that I can deal with them as they come, but today there were about 3 or 4 different crises happening all at once.  I had a student who cut his finger on the bathroom door and was sitting in the doorway crying (as if his whole finger had been amputated.  It's amazing how dramatic kids can be when they want to).  That student blamed another student for pushing the door open and hurting him, so the boy who got blamed was upset and crying because he said he didn't do it.  Then I had a student who was upset and sitting in the corner because someone else wasn't playing fair.  I think there was something else going on at the same time too, but I can't remember what it was.  It was a fiasco.  I seriously don't know how gym teachers do it.  At least in the classroom students are sitting in their desks a lot and the only thing they can really get hurt with is their pencil and paper.....(this isn't always the case, but in general...)  In the gym there are balls flying all over the place, kids running, tagging, people throwing objects....it's a mad house.  There are so many things that could go wrong all the time.  I have definitely gained a new found respect for gym teachers.  They may get to play a lot of games and such, but there are a lot of ways that students could get hurt or upset.  Definitely not an easy job. 

Anyhow, that's pretty much how my day went today.  It was crazy and stressful, and I'm exhausted.  I just have to survive through tomorrow though and then I'll have Dora back.  Thank goodness for her.  I'll have to tell her how much I've missed her.  I think that I might have to go back to my apartment and make myself a batch of cookies from my tollhouse cookie dough.  I suppose that all of this stress is going to make me a better teacher and is an opportunity to learn, but man it's hard.