I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. First, I woke up only 15 minutes before I was supposed to be at work. Then, I dropped things on my toes while I was getting ready. It was just one of those days, which is odd, because I actually got a great night's sleep for once.
Irritated, I stomped over to the school, feeling the beginnings of raging anger for my job and current place of employment. I kept thinking rapid-fire thoughts, such as "Why am I here? The kids aren't learning anything. Why am I teacher? All I'm doing is wasting my breath. I could be in a sunnier place. I just want to punch the clock and go home and not think about my job. What the hell was I thinking, becoming a teacher? I'm too lazy to do this. UGH." Once inside, I just listened to music, already prepared for the day, and tried to figure out how not to let my attitude affect my students.
Didn't work. Quite frankly, I am totally inept at hiding my emotions, and teachers do not have the luxury of being inept at this skill.
As first period began, certain students started testing my patience; several kids wandered in late, chatting, demanding bathroom passes, having misplaced theirs and their assignments, refusing to cooperate, etc. I only asked a few times for students to follow directions. You may be wondering "how many times does she usually ask?" Answer: I can usually request calmly about five times before I get stern; attention disorders demand that I ask several times. This morning, however, I'd just had it. I even warned them that my patience was thin and told them not to push it.
At this point, one student said, "whoa, sounds like SOMEBODY got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," as he glared at me.
Very unprofessionally, I said, "Yes, I did. So watch your behavior."
To which the lovely kid responded, "Well why didn't you stay home then, take a sick day?!"
I swallowed the urge to say that I would have loved to have stayed home, and just said, "well, adults don't get to stay home if they're grouchy." Even as I said it, I thought, "wow, Susan, how very 'adult' of you." Despicable, really.
He then says, "just go beat up your pillow. That's what I wanna do when I'm grouchy." Ugh. The kid was right.
Luckily, we were able to move on with things. We are talking about genetics and that always generates fun discussions, so the class actually progressed quite smoothly from there. Kids who generally don't like to participate were all ears and had many questions. At the end of class, kids were using their manners! If I could do a back flip, I would have. At this point, I made a note to reflect on the day.
The next period, however, I had a student demand that she work elsewhere - the quiet room, the library, the hallway, anywhere but the classroom. Today, she told me that Christmas break and Slavic (Russian Orthodox Christmas) had messed with her sleeping schedule and now she was just tired and cranky. She deals with some anger issues after losing her mom last year, so I try to help her out on her bad days a bit. I had to acknowledge that she had a point regarding the sleeping schedule because I'm often a victim of the lack of sunlight and a disrupted schedule. Once she left the classroom, a few other students started making remarks about how this particular student is always grouchy and "just shouldn't come to school...she leaves every day and won't even do work! Maaan, she needs to figure out how to not be grouchy."
That last comment stuck with me. I can do better, and the kids deserve that. I was disappointed that I let my attitude affect the students, but at the same time, how many times should I have to ask kids to follow directions? Directions like "open to page 598" or "turn around and save the chat for later" or "please keep your feet off the desks and on the ground" or "don't pick your nose please"? For some reason January is just rough in the classroom. After a month of fun and games and celebrations, getting back into the routine of a functional classroom can be quite the challenge. If there are any secrets out there on accomplishing such a feat, I would love to be privy to them. Aside from being strict and, ahem, even a bit grouchy, I'm not so sure how to ease back into a routine, or even if easing into it is the right way to go about it.
The rest of today was a pretty good one, even though attendance is spotty this time of year. I have one student who is super pumped about fossils and wants to be an archeo- or paleontologist; in her words, she "wants to go places and dig things up and find out where people and animals were." God bless her, because I just don't get giddy about fossils. However, when that 7th grade girl walks in all bubbly and wanting to go hunt for fossils, I can't help but get excited right along with her.
All grouchy things aside, what I've found is that the days that I most dread going to work are usually some of the best teaching days with the best teaching moments, sometimes for myself. The trick is to remember this fact when all I want to do is stay under the covers in the morning and hide. Hopefully the events of today will snowball into the rest of this week and the rest of January. We have parent-teacher conferences this week, so it means more disrupted school day schedules as well as teacher schedules, so the trying times aren't over just yet. However, we did get a lot of snow, so the kids aren't as restless, and it means I can start skiing again soon. Woo-hoo!
In these dark days of winter, I hope you all can look on the bright side and remember that warmer days are indeed on their way, literally and figuratively. And if you can't, just eat some chocolate and beat up your pillow :)
I wish you all a happy January!
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