Now, all things being equal, I would not mind this too much. I enjoy working with the struggling students and have had a lot of success with bringing about improvement in their performance level and test scores. There are some big differences this year, however.
- normally, I have a classroom with mostly average performing students with maybe 3-4 struggling students and I am able to devote a lot of time to those 3-4 during differentiated instruction. This year, 3/4 of my class are considered "struggling". There is not enough ME to go around.
- 5 of my 14 students have IEP's (with another one going through testing). That is a lot of IEP's to service. It takes a ton of effort to ensure that the IEP's are being accommodated for every test and assessment that is given. It's even worse when the ESE teacher cannot meet the accommodations on her end. Due to "family issues", she has not been in my classroom to service their IEP's in the past two weeks.
- behavior - UGH! Along with low performance, I have three students who have the maturity level of a 2 year old. Trust me when I say many temper tantrums would be thrown on a daily basis if I allowed such behavior in my classroom. Even without the tantrums though, the behavior can be bizarre and distracting to say the least.
- Immaturity of those 3 aside, 3/4 of my students are subject at any time to a phenomenon I call the "absent consciousness syndrome." They will impulsively demonstrate some outlandish and ridiculous actions as if someone or something done invaded and taken over their minds!
Examples: Both of these happened on Friday and both involved students who are usually "normal".
- Kona Ice came to our school Friday (side note: I LOVE when they do that because teachers get a freebie!). Anyway, if in the past, you purchased a $6 Kona Ice, you are given a reusable cup that you can bring back and get refilled for $3.
The particular student in question had the cup sitting on her table during Math class. Now, for some students, I would NEVER had allowed this and made them put it back in their backpack. But, as I said, she is normally a good student that I don't have to worry about. However, on this day, afflicted by the "absent consciousness syndrome" she grabbed her cup, walked over to a girl at the next table, put the cup to the girl's ear, and then started making noises in the cup as if it were a telephone ---right in the middle of Math class!!!!!
In the afternoon, two more of my "normal" students fell victim to the syndrome as I caught them arguing over THIS!
Yep! I am serious. One claiming it belonged to him, the other insisting she was going to throw it away. UGH!
On a normal week, I work Saturday morning from 9:00 for anywhere between 1.5 to 3 hours. Then I rush home, fall into bed and take a 3-4 hour nap. Yesterday, my nap was cut short by a text and I wasn't happy. Last night was equally stressful as we had plans to meet in City Walk for pizza and then see a movie. The traffic was ridiculous and we were 10 minutes late, and then I was not able to get my 50% employee discount so we had to abandon the pizza and just head to the movie (Jumanji). I was drained by this point and wasn't handling anything very well. At least the movie was funny and entertaining and we were all able to enjoy it and leave much happier than we arrived.
So...back to exhaustion. Last night I fell asleep at midnight and when I woke up, I was shocked to see it was 12:38 PM!!!! I have never slept that late! I got up, took the dog out, grabbed a peanut butter sandwich, and by 1:30 I was sleeping again. I woke up at 6:30PM!!!!! HOLY CRAP!!!! That's insane and way more exhausted than I thought I was.
