So school dismisses at 3:00 everyday. What this means is that I have to start getting my students ready by 2:00 latest. I'm serious. I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to get them packed up if I started any later. Mrs. G wants the students learning till 2:45..which is a little difficult, but I keep trying to cut my dismissal time down. Right when I think my class knows how to line up, they fool me every time. It's all I can do to get the bus riders to go to Mrs. Courson and get my car riders and all others. Speaking of, I used to take both Kindergarden girls' classroom and both first grade classes. That was literally like 60+ kids! WOW. I'm not good with groups that large.
So after school ends, I walk students to their car. This actually means that I continually instruct students to stay by the windows till their we can walk them to their car so that no one gets hit by a car. Then, I have grade level meetings till 4 or try to work in the chaos that is considered my classroom/aftercare.
It broke my heart to find out that my room would be used for aftercare. All the hours, money, and work I put into it seems as if it will be wasted in no time. :/ The problem with having aftercare in my room is that students (not my own) were reading/rolling up books from my library, seats get moved on the daily, the scented wax spills on the carpet, and my teacher desk is always being moved. IN ADDITION to the loud students that I'm tired of hearing all day long and the fact that my room is so crowded that I can't get from A to B without squeezing past some student like I am a guest in my own room. ;(
Now as far as classroom management goes, I can't ever tell if I'm getting better. I've tried to start off strict, and I even had "boot camp Tuesday" because Monday was a day from hell. Bootcamp seemed to work and Wednesday was much better. In addition, I called the mom's of two students in my classroom who like to challenge me everyday. Speaking of calling parents, I had a conference with one mother today about the behavior of her daughter. This student is smart, but she is not deciding to make good choices about her behavior in the classroom. I was concerned about how the conference would go, but I was really, REALLY surprised and appreciative of how supportive her mother was. Not only did she explain the cold hard facts to her daughter about how she needs to change her behavior around, but she also explained it in a way that made complete sense to her daughter and showed her daughter that she loves her. I am so blessed to have this type of support from these three parents. Each parent has explained that I have their support and the issues I've been having with their child will be cleared up! That makes me so confident that I will be able to best serve and teach their student! We will have to see how the behavior from students continue to progress.
The table point/table laps idea I've been using the past two days has seemed to help too!
Lesson planning has been easy because our grade level chair usually does most of it. She is a great teacher and has really been helping me to focus on all other things that take my attention away.
Grading never ends. End of story.
Lunch last for about <15 minutes. I buy coffee from the gas station every morning and have eaten over half my lunches from the school because they are free and I haven't been shopping! I guess I should do that tonight......
Waking up is about the hardest thing I have to do everyday. I'm always tired and I wake up sick because a lot of my students are already sick.
However, another week is almost in the books.
-Ms. Stewart
