jenniferh

That sucked.

It’s the first week of school, and it’s a new school, and the Math lab is a brand new concept in our district, so everything is in flux.  Schedules are being changed daily, and I have 3 or 4 students each period somedays either added to or taken from my roster.  So I haven’t learned everyone’s names yet. 

But I know Bill. (Name concealed to protect the innocent )

I know where Bill sits, and when I went to take attendance, using my handy-dandy, ever-updating seating chart, Bill was not in his place.  So I told him he had to move, made a general announcement to class that if they wanted credit for being there, they needed to be IN their OWN SEATS, as assigned when they first came into my room.  Bill let me know he couldn’t sit in his seat because some other girl was there.

I don’t know her name. 

I asked her what her name was, so I could say, “So and so, you sit there ” (and gesture to the correct desk.  Apparently, she didn’t have a copy of the script, because she gets this sneer spread across her face as she answers my question: “What is your name?” with “Bill.”

I said, “Nooooo, THAT is Bill and you are in his seat.  You need to move to your own seat.”

She said, “I’M Bill.  I’m not moving.”

Well, crap.

So I didn’t want to deal, I wanted to start TEACHING (GASP! Imagine that!) so I told her to leave.  I wrote a note that said, “AP (assistant principal), This student is disrupting my class.” Signed it, and told her again, “Get out.  Go figure out what your name is with your AP.”

My class was aghast.  They said, “Miss! You gonna write her up?  How you gonna write her up?  You don’t even know her name!”

I turned to the girl who was at that point standing at the door smirking at me, and still facing her, I told the class, “It doesn’t matter if I know her name or not.  Her seat is empty, she’s absent.” 

Then I started teaching my lesson and the girl left.

Not good.  My goal was to KEEP those kids in my class! 

Done is done, I figured I’d deal with their AP later.

Well.

Fifteen minutes into class, she was knocking on my classroom door, crying and asking to be let back in.  I don’t know who her AP is, but her AP put the fear of God (or at least the fear of AP’S!) into her. 

Tomorrow is another day.

Edited the next morning to add: Except I came home and ate.  A lot.  And now that it is tomorrow, I’m a pound heavier and still worried that I’ve set a negative tone for the rest of the year.

The Algebra team got together today to make a 30 second video to introduce the idea of “functions” to our group.  Our fearless leader brought brownies, and I skipped the sweetness.  I came home and had a yogurt, instead.

Yay me!

I got a forward that says to wear red on Fridays to show solidarity and support for our soldiers away from home.  I’m gladly going to participate, and I’m asking my friends to also consider choosing to wear red on Fridays to signify that our prayers and thoughts are with those who cannot be at home with their families, those who are in constant danger.  I also would like to share this poem with you that I wrote while in college, called Liberty’s Gown (you can google it, you’ll find a PDF file of my college paper with my poem, I swear it’s mine).

Her purity and innocence

     Are signified by white

Vigilance and justice

     Are the blue of shadowed night

Fearlessness and valor

     Painted red her vivid gown

And for this She’ll never fade,

     Or run, or be worn down

For everyone, she proudly wears

     Pure white and midnight blue

But defenders of her home

     She wears the red for you.

She’s followed you to foreign lands

     Cried for your battle scars

Because she knows you suffered

     For her stripes and shining stars

Lately she’s been braiding

     Yellow ribbons in her hair

To show she won’t forget you,

     And she will always care

She bares her heart for all to see

     Be they steadfast or untrue

But defenders of her home

     She wears the red for you

I’m really getting tired of having to run up to the high school at 8:30 every night.  I’m TIRED.  I got up at 4:45 this morning because I needed to work out before getting my shower, getting dressed, getting Riley up and ready and leaving the house by 6:30 because I had to drive halfway into Houston for a training this morning.  I want to be in bed, already, and it’s only 6:30.

On the bright side, since Rebecca had to get her schedule and her locker assignment tonight, we walked for an hour ”discovering” where all her classes are, which staircases NOT to go up because the 2nd floor doesn’t go all the way across at the middle…  So I’m good for exercise today.

Food: breakfast was coffee.  lunch was a vegetarian burrito bowl at Chipotle, and dinner was 2 frozen waffles and a heat and serve sausage link.  At least I got some veggies with lunch.  As it stands, I could go for a bowl of oatmeal right now and I think I might do that. 

 Tonight I need to: run a load of laundry, make a list of alternative assessment ideas for week 2 of Algebra lab, read through a book of exercises for the TI-84 calculator that another teacher loaned me, check out the Texas Instruments website and see if I can get free “teacher stuff,”  get Riley in the bath, lay out her clothes for tomorrow including her bathing suit to go with her to daycare for “splash day” (this is me, rolling my eyes), clean out her lunch box and get her sippy-cups washed for tomorrow, pick Rachel up from band, and i’m sure there are half a dozen other things that will crop up… and yet, all I want to do is crawl into bed and pretend I don’t have to do anything.

Off I go.  See y’all later.

I think I’m going to need 20 minutes in the afternoons before I go pick up my daughter from daycare.  She gets her nap before I come get her, and I am wiped out by the time I get home.  I want to nap, but I have to stay awake and aware of what the baby is up to.

Maybe if I just set the alarm on my phone, turn off the lights and lock the door, and stretch out on the carpet in my room for just 20 minutes after the day is over I’ll be able to make it through the second half of my day without feeling like passing out right after I get home.

 On the “yay me” front: I did get out of my house and go jogging this morning!  Now the “whoops!” : I didn’t go walking after dinner.  I just want to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeee….. <drool>

The math teacher that I am sharing the lab with brought me a beautiful, tall, steaming cup of coffee this morning.  It was especially for me because she was coming in early to work out lesson plans for week one with me.  I need to reciprocate in some fashion - she’s a third-year teacher and has been helping me TREMENDOUSLY the last few days.  I don’t want to bring HER a coffee - I think she stops and grabs one every day - and I don’t want to bring any food. 

My open house went GREAT - except I am trashed.  My day started at 5:o’something am, and was essentially over at 8 pm.  It was long.  The A/C was off during the part of the day where 20 of us were crammed into a computer lab with all those computers running and generating more heat…  needless to say, I took a break between inservice and open house to put on a clean shirt and an extra spackling of deoderant.  TMI?

Diet: good.  Exercise: needs improvement.  I didn’t jog this morning - AGAIN - but I have a valid excuse this time: it was pouring.  I did, however, do a few sets of pushups, crunches, lunges, etc. before jumping in the shower.  It’s good to change it up every once in a while.  I think tomorrow I’ll jump on the mini-trampoline for 20 minutes.

I am having real issues with weekends and Mondays.  Too busy all over the dang place to do anything even remotely resembling exercising.  I got up at 5:15 - and could not face the idea of jogging this morning.  I just wanted to have my cup of coffee, get dressed, and start my week off slowly and gently.  I’ll jog tomorrow.

I got posters hung up in my classroom - hooray! and the other lab teacher and I went and presented our first week’s “lesson plan” to our director of instruction.  I say “lesson plan” in those quotation marks because our first week, we aren’t doing any actual math in the math lab.  We’re going to be working on team-building exercises and relationship building.  We’re going to expect the kids to work, and work hard, it’s just that in the first week we’re going to be working on something other than Algebra.  NEXT week, after we have made that initial contact with what parents we can, after we have identified who has which Algebra teacher, and after our students have gotten to know us and each other, we will start the Algebra enrichment activities. 

Tomorrow night is my first open house from the teacher side of the desk. 

I’m terrified.

I only had time this morning to grab a yogurt on the way out the door.  Then I used my lunch break to organize my room and trade out keys in the office because they traded rooms on me.  So the two evenings I spent last week in “my” room unstacking desks and chairs was actually a gift to a new hire.

I had a tuna sandwich when  I got home.  Rachel had made tuna, and it was there, so that’s what I had for dinner.  Riley, too.  The big kids were told, “Whatever you can find or feel like cooking, knock yourself out.”

Tomorrow is going to be just as long, but I’ll actually have time to eat lunch.  Friday, I might not.  Next week will also be long days, but once school starts, I should be able to leave campus at a normal time so I can get Riley and get home before we are both wiped out. 

I did go jogging this morning (sort of - I jogged a bit, walked a bit, jogged some more, walked some more, etc.).  I’ve been “good” about not jumping on the scale.  I FEEL like I’ve lost some, but I’m not obsessing over it.  I won’t be weighing in until Friday morning.

See you Friday! 

Yes, my friends, tomorrow IS another day.  Yesterday wasn’t a TOTAL loss (after all, Riley likes the Guinea Pig at daycare and she didn’t cry at all while she was there) but I was still feeling pretty bummed by the end of the day.  I wound up eating a huge bowl of Frito Pie for dinner and (gasp!) I had a beer with it. 

But this morning, I got up and did my 5 am jog around the neighborhood, got the baby off to daycare just fine, got Rachel dropped off at band, and spent an hour putting away more paperwork - and creating a great big pile of papers that can go into the recycling bin. 

Then we got to the highschool to try AGAIN to enroll Rebecca, but, no joy.  The fax wasn’t there.  So I called the high school from where we moved and NOBODY was answering the phone.  I tried extension after extension until I finally got the principal’s secretary, and by then I was pretty upset, so she got the worst of it.  But I got a different fax number to send the request to, it went through, and after just an hour of a half sitting there with my thumb up my… I mean sitting there twiddling my thumbs, the fax came through and we were able to get Rebecca enrolled.  Can I get a big ol’ halleluja?

And now we are at home, Rachel is home for a lunch break, and I’m about to go for a walk all by myself to shake out some of the residual stress.  I’ll also be walking this evening, jogging tomorrow morning, and hoping to jump back up on the healthy eating bandwagon.  I’m off to eat a salad.

See you tomorrow

I put the baby back in daycare after three months of having my munchkin all to myself.  I cried.  She didn’t.  They have a Guinea Pig in her classroom and she was all kinds of happy over it.

I enrolled Sean in the 7th grade.

I enrolled Rachel in the 11th grade.

I spent 2 fruitless hours waiting for our old school to fax records for Rebecca, then I came home and sorted through 15 years worth of paperwork that still hasn’t been catalogued and filed since we moved, searching unsuccessfully for Rebecca’s immunization record.  I will look again, tomorrow, but then I just have to trust God that either I will find it or the school will finally fax in and I can get Rebecca enrolled in the 9th grade.  Tomorrow is the last day I have available to do this because on Wednesday, I start inservice, then school starts as soon as that’s over.

I’m mentally exhausted and emotionally wrung-out.  I’m going to bed.  I didn’t log my food, I didn’t exercise, and I don’t really give a crap today.  I’m going to be Scarlett O’Hara and just be glad that “Tomorrow is another day.”