maineiac in kc

So today, a little hectic, yet inspiring in a crazy sort of way.  Sometimes, just walking into the school in the morning, you can feel the energy of the students.  When I get here in the morning, sometimes there are only one or two students here for extended day, but usually I just get a feeling of the way students will behave.

Coming in today, I was very excited for the events of the day, but still, it was pretty crazy in the school.  Teachers, administrators, we were all hoping to watch it.  We got a message right before students got in that we could turn on tvs in our rooms to the speech if we so desired.  Most every classroom in the school have televisions hung from the wall.  This school, back in the day, was called “Troost Communication Academy.”  Because of that, we have special telecommunication gear, but a lot of it isn’t used, or the teachers who understand it have long since moved on.  In any event, the tvs we have don’t have cable, so we had to rig them up to get tv over the airwaves.

 Therefore, come inauguration time, the students in my room skipped music (well, we had not music teacher anyway today), and watched the inauguration.  Students were excited to see someone who looked similar take the oath, but at the same time were many who were not at all interested.  I had three students who decided that this was, “gay.”  They found a nap a better use of their time.  I did manage to get them all to watch the oath, but for the actual speech, I had about 50% watching intently, 25% doodling and also listening, and the rest comatose in the land of slumber.

That being said, I personally was very excited to see the speech, and am excited to see what is to come, and judging by the number of people who crowded into the Washington Mall, I’m not the only one…

Ok, not going to be a long post, but today was a very frustrating day.  I had one of my students bring in his Sony PSP, which he knows he isn’t allowed to bring.  This has occured several times, and I have heard him stating that he might sell it to a seventh grader.  In any event, someone managed to steal it from his backpack, and it was not recovered.  He flipped out when it went missing, and went back and forth from tears to yelling to angry pacing.  We ended up in the office, and I spent the majority of my planning period searching desks, meeting with the principal and security officer, and searching the school.  We eventually found another PSP, but not the missing one, although finding that involved searching backpacks, having students turn out pockets, and other fun things. 

 If that wasn’t enough, right after lunch, there was an epic fight.  Alligations where tossed about that one student narced on another about the thefts, and before I knew it, there were 30+ kids surrounding three fighters.  This was a crazy scene, since I was alone in terms of staff.  Three other soon joined me, but lets just say we literally had to pull these kids apart, and I may have taken a few blows to the arms getting between them.  I know we’re supposed to just say “please stop,” but one student’s head was being slammed against the tiles, and I was afraid for his safety.  We got them apart, and there were some brief suspensions, but they all ended up back in my room for the last hour of the day.

Finally, I had two other girls on inschool suspension (cursing and screaming in the room at 8:10 am), as well as a student tell me he wanted to hit me in “the testicles” and that he’d “crack” me “in the face.”  It was a looong day…

So, I’m back in KC, ready to roll.  I am in my classroom (where the temp is at least 95 degrees, gotta love those radiators…) and wondering where the break went…

 I know today is going to be pretty busy, but I wanted to reflect about the break.  It took forever to get home, and when I drove back, my brother and I decided to go like a band-aid.  We left at about 7:30 am, and drove all day and into the night.  We stopped in Illinois, over 1000 miles later.  That certainly made life easier the next day, as we were able to get up at 8:30, take an easy drive into KC, and arrive around noon. 

My brother stayed a few days, helped me greatly by becoming master room cleaner/bookshelf assembler.  Got a lot done, and now here we go for the last week of the third quarter…