Brrrr

I don't understand how the heat works in this blasted house, but it's not on at least half the time. It's really freaking cold in here right now; I can hardly feel my hands.

I beheld a minor miracle today. My crazy Class B was actually completely silent for about two minutes, while copying revision strategies from the board. There were little noises or chatting the rest of the time pretty much, but I was so shocked at even a tiny bit of utter noiselessness. Perhaps I am making progress, one inch a week or something.

Big Class A is still really rowdy. There are too many disruptive boys. There is simply no way to deal with them. Two that sit on the opposite sides of the room, could not be farther apart, THROW THINGS AT EACH OTHER. Others are very sweet on their own, but near a classmate or in a whole-class environment, still talk and cause trouble. Thankfully, I'm not the only teacher who notices this problem with this class. But what are we to do?

Wish me luck in calling parents this weekend. I've been making lots of calls this week, no big changes as of yet. However, once I have tried to get in touch with parents, and there's still no improvement in behavior, the administrators will get involved. Hurrah!

Let's see. So it's Friday! Wow. It's been a long week, but I can't believe it's already over, if that makes sense. I have a lot of work to do to prepare for next week. Too many lessons to do in too short a time. Fridays are supposed to be dedicated to test prep, too. Yeah, right. I'm still getting the hang of regular lessons. Test prep just throws me for a loop.

The weekend will be busy indeed. I'll spend some time at school tomorrow morning, hopefully checking through reading/writing notebooks and also attempting to organize my library. In the afternoon, our science class is doing a field trip/extra credit thing.

I'd love to go into the city, go to a posh bar, and have some drinks with good friends. However, that will not happen. Possibly ever, for lack of cash to pay for said drinks at said posh bar, not to mention the plural of friends, even good ones. What a convoluted sentence. It just means I'm lonely and broke and pathetic.

Oh! Speaking of pathetic, I was really excited yesterday to get my copy code for the school copier. You pay ten dollars and get five thousand copies! I'd heard it was five hundred, which is quite piddly for a school where all teachers have at least ninety students. But geez, five thousand is awesome. And the machine is in the teacher's "lounge," so no need to worry about getting things into an office three days ahead of time. I'm still trying to plan for a week at a time, but I often don't cement my actual plan of attack until the morning of school. Which is really bad. You're not supposed to wing it. You're supposed to have lots of interactive activities. That's really my weakest point so far, besides classroom management of course. If they have something to do, almost all of them will do it. Especially when I walk around looking to see what they're doing.

Yesterday we did similes, and I was really impressed with what they came up. One girl wrote, When I'm tired, my mind is as blank as a white piece of paper. A boy wrote, A mother's kiss is as sweet as a beautiful rose. Someone else wrote, When I'm happy, I'm like a monkey with a lifetime supply of bananas. Awesome, no?

The homework was to write a paragraph using figurative language. A few forgot that part, but the rest did really nicely. I'm skinny like a rake, when I'm mad I'm as red as a chili pepper, I get angry like a lion, I'm quiet as a mouse, etc. I was pleased.

Next week, we'll do some peer editing and then the final drafts of the reports will be due on Wednesday. From there I'll move them into doing narrative accounts, autobiographical. But you know what hit me this week? I've got to get them to do something for the November bulletin board. It's coming up in two weeks, I think. Hm, could do something about the writing process, like revision for clarity. Or a four-square. Shit, I have no idea. But if I get it done or at least started next week, I should be okay. I hate that planning ahead thing! Yikes.

I guess that's enough for now. Have a nice Friday night.