German Chocolate and Mr. Dunger

I neglected to tell you last Tuesday that when I came home, I helped myself to a rather large slice of Marie Callender's German Chocolate pie. Although it gave me a terrible tummy ache, I must say it did much for my mood : ) To summarize how today went: I'm sorry we don't have more German Chocolate pie...

My mornings always begin well because I am eager and refreshed and I read a fabulous teachers' devotional along with scripture passages I look up from biblegateway.com. Every Christian teacher (well, really, every teacher...) should start their day in the Word. If I didn't, heaven knows what would happen in the first ten minutes...

I was determined this morning to get my core reading teaching done in 45 minutes- because next week I will have to have it done in that time. I'm sorry that I tried it today. I felt like I was blowing the material past half the kids. I think an hour would be just about right.

Then, I dug into the Reading Pre-Test. This is a miracle- the kids and I finished it! 50 bubble-in questions read-aloud to 22 first graders completed in chunks equalling 1.5 hours of instruction. And most of the kids were on-task the entire time. That's a long time to bubble in! I'm not quite sure how God got us through that one : )

So, by lunch, we're pretty tired, all 23 of us, as you can understand. We were the last ones to lunch, too. Which sucks! (Excuse my language, that word is not allowed in my classroom, but sometimes it's the only word that accurately describes the situation...) As the kids are still getting used to the cafeteria routine and punching in their 6 digit cafeteria code (even 1st graders are having to go cashless...) I have to stay until ALL of them go through the line. Finally, I get my own lunch, go to my classroom, look at my food and just wish that I could have an hour off to eat it and take a nap...

I pick my kids up from recess and they all want to know when they can go home... I want to tell them right now. Then for some reason, I must have been secretly very brave, we migrated out of our 87 degree classroom to the band room for 1 1/2 hours. I knew that if I stayed in that hot classroom anymore I'd die, so we went ahead and carried our little pretests, pencil boxes and journals to Mr. Dunger's room.

Overall the kids did well. They wouldn't have been any more rambunctious in my room- and the change of scenery was probably good for them. Mr. Dunger, however, was an angel. He is also a first year teacher. When I asked the kids to use their journals to write on, he appears with clipboards. When I tell the children I will give them an example for their journals, he's erasing the whiteboard and bringing out the "best" markers. When we are getting ready to leave and I haven't had a moment to myself for the past two hours, he asks if I need to use the restroom. All I can say is "God bless Mr. Dunger!" We may travel to his room tomorrow afternoon. It doesn't look like the a/c will be fixed anytime soon. Today God provided Mr. Dunger. Tomorrow He will provide, too : )

I'm still having issues with my two boys. I need to be careful for confidentiality reasons not to reveal too much. Just pray for self-control and feelings of value for both of them.

You know how your mom (or you, if you're the mom...) would get upset sometimes and start crying because she didn't want to tell you no anymore. She didn't want to be on you all the time. That's kind of how I feel with some of my kids. I feel like I have to be on them all the time- like I'm the only person in world who expects them to sit still or listen when others are talking. And I don't want to nag them anymore. Please pray that I would have perseverance in my discipline and that the kids would learn to be disciplined...

Some of you have asked how I can manage to blog after all of this adventure. I don't know if I could go on if I didn't have an outlet like this... I'm tired now, but think I'll try exercising a bit (wait, wasn't the last 8 hours of your day exercise?). It's a better choice that pie : )