Friday, February 10, 2006

Don't Come Looking for Sympathy Here!

A normal Friday at work looks like this:

7:00-7:30 Arrive, sign in, check mailbox, run off copies of weekly language quiz
7:30-8:00 Kids arrive in the classroom
8:00 Morning announcements
8:05-10:00 Language Arts
10:00-10:45 Music
10:45-11:20 Science or Social Studies
11:20-11:50 Lunch
11:50-12:15 Remediation time
12:15-1:00 DARE
1:00-2:20 Mathematics
2:25-2:30 Dismissal

Here, however, is what today looked like:

7:00-7:30 Arrive at school to realized that the temp in my classroom is 56 (and blasting cold air from the ceiling vents) for the third day in a row, then head to the copy room to find only one copier is working and it's not liking my paper
7:30-8:00 Kids arrive
8:00-8:05 Morning Announcements
8:05-8:30 Give language quiz and then spelling test and then realize it is just too cold and arrange to pack everybody up and move to another room.
8:30-8:55 Finally get kids resettled and working on adapted lesson...of course, several kids have "forgotten" to bring this or that...even though the list of things I asked them to bring was only about 3 items long. Briefly consider changing my name to Mrs. Gehererheoareygotk so that I don't have to respond to my current name when they call it out.
8:55 DARE officer tracks me down and informs me she has a commitment this afternoon and would I consider moving my time from 1:00 pm to...9:00am.
9:00 Pack all kids up and take them to cafeteria for DARE....go back to my room to find the heater is finally working and track down the maintence crew to thank them a thousand times.
9:40 DARE officer drops kids back off at my room....5 min early while I'm not yet there
9:40-10:00 Students take a language arts comprehension quiz and then take kids to OTHER room to retrieve materials left there, bring students back to drop off materials, then take to Music
10:00-10:45 Music-Normally well-behaved student in trouble for giving attitude to music teacher. Bad attitude continues.
10:45-11:20 Science
11:20-11:50 Lunch-One student in trouble for yelling...repeatedly. Whole class reprimanded.
12:00-1:00 Mathematics- Adding and subtracting fractions. Students desks now have individual holes from heads being pounded in frustration, though they were relatively well-behaved.
1:oo-2:20 Reading Centers...We do this EVERY day, and you would have thought we'd NEVER done this before. Students are poorly-behaved, as this horribly off-kilter day comes to an end.
2:20 Dismissal- Female student decides she wants to demonstrate how she belly flops and does so...in the middle of my floor. My response is to have her sit there in the middle of the floor for the last 5 minutes of the day.
2:25 Everybody out the door and on the bus
2:30 Answer email from data technician who, in response to my email stating that the District Language Arts test I have to administer next week...and the corresponding bubble sheets...never made it into my box, INSISTS that she put them there yesterday. The missing documents are a pile about 4 inches high and they've disappeared.
3:30 Finally make it home and stop at the housing office to put in a maintenance request to fix our dishwasher, which suddenly began making horrible noises last night.
4:00 Husband comes in the door and, eager to find a compassionate ear, I launch into my story as I'm filling a bowl with ice cream.
4:01 Turn around and husband has left the room to find cell phone charger. Apparently, I didn't give him enough time to switch into "home" mode first...even though I had already asked "How was your day?" and "Are you still going out with ________ for a beer tonight?"

4:02 Give up on the compassionate ear thing (at least with somebody I know) and eat my ice cream and and blog out my frustration to the unknown, possibly compassionate soul instead.

Things can always be worse. But I still feel like screaming into a pillow for...oh....an hour or two. Will emerge later.

2 comments:

herewegoagain said...

I'm a homeschool mom and I have TWO students, and let's just say, you deserved your ice-cream. I absolutely cannot imagine a ROOM full of 9 and 10 year-olds, so I salute you and all teachers who do such a good job.

And,doing fractions causes holes in our "desk" (dining room table) on a regular basis as well!

Hang in there!

Ruth Anne Adams said...

Please re-read your immediately previous post.