School and chaos

Well, Miss S may have an uphill battle this year. We had our first house meeting this year with the new house members, and oh my goodness!! Okay, you know how some people have a tendency to start speaking while other people are not yet finished? I have THREE of those in my house (small learning community) this year. So there is an average of three people talking at once at any given time. And what these people don't seem to understand is that if you haven't heard all of what the other person was saying before you start to talk, you are often addressing a subject you don't know enough about, or are addressing the wrong issue. I find this irritating to say the least. Perhaps the funniest moment today (funny in an exasperating way) was when, after we had covered all the agenda items, I asked if anyone else had any other items. Mrs. R did. Five items. We volunteer our time for these meetings, and typically end them at around 2:20 (an hour of volunteered time per week). I was done at 2:15 (and would have been done earlier had the union rep not visited and taken 10 minutes), and Mrs. R's five items took about another 15 minutes (now it's 2:30), and the final item was (no kidding) whether our meetings usually ended promptly or whether they dragged on past the scheduled time, because she had to pick up her kids and it was really important that she got out on time. Huff.

The kids are another matter entirely. We already have 17 kids we want to schedule parent meetings for, and the worst by far is my little friend Melvin. Oh yeah -- if you're a friend of mine, you may have heard of Melvin last year, before he got kicked out of school because of his behavior. Well, he's back. It's kind of odd, because he can be very polite, often calls me "ma'am," and promises me nearly every day at lunch that he's really going to try to be better today. So I don't think he's malicious, nevertheless, he's by far one of the most disruptive children I have ever taught. If a thought comes into his head, it also comes out of his mouth. He stands up. All the time. He giggles. He does pratfalls. He embarasses himself to amuse the other kids. He dances. He slaps his head loudly. And the worst is, if I gently say "Melvin, please don't talk while I'm talking," instead of just saying "okay, sorry," he says "I wasn't, I was just, no, Khiry was, what? Miss S., I wasn't, I didn't mean to . . . " This can last several minutes and often does.

I also have three different "preps," meaning three different things I'm teaching, including two I've never really taught before (although one is a program I've taught before, just extended by an hour and using additional materials). I'm packed to the gills with students -- one class has two more students than chairs. I'm a little stressed right now, but I'm hoping that evens out a little as time goes on. Probably the most troubling thing right now is that the lowest kids (the ones who scored Below Basic or Far Below Basic on the California Standards tests) are in a program called High Point, which is really geared towards elementary school students. Tomorrow's lesson? Fill in a subject in a sentence like this "_______ drew a picture." There are four of these. Whew! Hard work! Okay, I'm actually feeling a little too stressed to keep talking about this. I think I'll have a snack and play some Tetris.
Bye all.