It's amazing to me that school now starts for us at the beginning of August!  Why would ANYONE want to go back that early?  Especially since it is the absolutely hottest month for us down south.  You know it's bad when the kids are begging to go back inside from recess after only a couple of minutes outside! We all are pretty rank after 15 minutes in the hellish heat on our mostly shadeless playground.  I can still see us all vying for a piece of shade under the lone tree!
Anyway, ready or not, it's just around the old corner.  I feel pretty ready, but I'm sure going to miss late night tv!  During those 8 weeks of summer when we're not in school, I feel like a regular person. Staying up late and sleeping later in the morning definitely agree with me.  I have needed the late-night laughs too! It's refreshing to laugh about something not school-related for a change of pace. Thinking about Conan's "interview" with Arnold "Girly-Man" still gives me the giggles when I think about the silliness of the whole thing!  Whoever does those impersonations is hilarious! I still have a few more nights, then I'll catch back up during Christmas break!

It's been a LONG time since I wrote in this blog!  I guess I kind of let the time slip away with everything that's been going on.  Well,another school year came and went and now it's coming again in a couple of weeks.  I guess I'm ready to meet a new group of kids, but it's a little hard getting used to a whole new bunch.  It's never the same, that's one thing  for sure. Each group brings its own unique challenges, and that's the fun part--trying to figure out what makes them tick.  I hope this is a silly group--the ones that laugh extra hard at my lame jokes! Those are usually the ones that I relate best to since I'm pretty silly at times myself.  I love to laugh, and a happy class  is the best kind!  I'll be finding out very shortly what I'll be going up against this time around.

This week is going to be a long one, I think. The repercussions of too much candy from Halloween are evident--the kids are freakin' wild! They are really into yacking it up, and I find myself having to remind them every couple of minutes to settle down. They aren't doing anything deplorable--just being way too lively. However, just when I think I've about to reach my limit, the unexpected happens. There's this one llittle girl who is a daydreamer and would spend the entire school day drawing hearts and princesses and flowers. As I walked by her desk, she slipped into my hand a two inch torn piece of paper that had been wrinkled and folded at least a dozen times. I put it in my pocket and read it later when I remembered it was there. It said: "I love you verry verry verry mush. You are mi verry nis teasher." Now, all it takes is one little note like this to make me at least temporarily forget that sometimes they are making me a little nutty.

Well, another day down since I got back in town. Man, Halloween sucks! The kids are so wired they can hardly remember they're in school. My student teacher did a lesson today that I had to evaluate, and it went pretty stinky. The behavior was downright rotten, and I felt sorry for the her because she was so wrapped up in what she was trying to do that she was totally oblivious to the fact that the kids were playing her. I tried to make "evil-eye" contact with the bratty ones, but I think they deliberately avoided looking my way because they knew what would be looking back at the old stink-eye! I kind of admire new inexperienced teachers--they're so idealistic and innocent. When I asked her how she thought things went, she said she thought it was great. When I told her how I had talked to the kids about behavior prior to her coming in today, she just looked puzzled, then said that she really likes an active class. You know, I do too, except they need to be engaged in learning, not engaged in talking about Yughio cards and the playground! She genuinely thought they acted okay! There was more running around in there than at the Kentucky Derby! It must be pleasant to be clueless sometimes!

Last Thursday I was enjoying a few quiet minutes while my kids were at specials. I was sitting at my computer typing up a quiz, when two arms latched onto my neck from behind. I could tell they weren't the arms of one of my second graders, because they felt much stronger. I turned around, and there was James, now a much bigger fourth grader. I asked him what he was up to, and he just smiled and said, "I don't get to see you hardly ever anymore, so I snuck down here to give you a hug!" Now, it should be noted that this boy was in one of the most unruly classes I've ever taught in these past 17 years, and he was one of the daily offenders of immature and disruptive behaviors! However, no matter how bad the day went, I still tried to let them know that I believed that the next day would be better. Of course, that hardly ever happened. For some reason, even though I had to ride them pretty hard, lots of them still come by to see me. Maybe that year wasn't as awful as I thought it was at the time. I'd like to think that maybe I made some kind of difference to these kids during the time I had them. I wonder why they gave me such a hard time then, but now they come back offering hugs? Maybe I did something right?