Shaddup Already!
2004-09-20
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First of all, thanks to ladyro and teachersrock for your notes of encouragement. I really appreciate it. I would leave a comment in answer to your comments, but I'm not sure you would be notified if I left one. It's a puzzle for sure.Right now I feel as if I am living two lives. I'm fine when I'm at work. I enjoy my job, I love interacting with the kids and my coworkers and I have a lot of fun. Then there's home. When I leave work the depression sets in again. I know I need to see my doctor, but I really don't want to. I'm taking the max amount of anti-depressant that I can, so the only option is to switch meds. This would probably be a good thing, but a very painful process involving weeks, if not months, of horrid depression. I'm just not sure I can do that and work at the same time.
I guess I should just get my butt into the doctor.
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This morning I got up at 5:00am to do my training walk. Unfortunately I only walked a half a mile. It's not that I can't walk more, I just talked myself out of it. Tomorrow I'll walk a mile, at least.
I need to to get myself in gear for the Team in Training stuff. I have raised a total of $25. Only $1875 more to go. If you're interested in donating, it is tax deductible. 75% of all donations go directly to the mission of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's a pretty good deal, really. Anyway, you can donate here.
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One of the first things I did at school this morning was break up a fight. I hate fighting. I also hate being the only adult near a fight.
One of my students from last year was chasing another student up the ramp of someone's portable. I was yelling at him to stop and he reached the other kid and popped him in the face.
Fortunately I didn't have to get involved physically, but there were a few moments when I wondered about it. I was walking them over to the security guy, who conveniently missed the entire thing, and the kid that did the hitting starts calling the other kid a "fucking ass bitch." Whatever that is. At first I thought he was saying it to me, which is out of character for this kid, then I realized it was directed at the other kid.
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I'm just about nouned out. See the past two years I focused on reading comprehension because that is what the kids are tested on in the state test. I was given a whole load of crap when I was hired. I was told I was going to primarily teach grammar and the reading teacher would teach FCAT skills. Then I find out that much of my job performance is based on how my kids do on the FCAT. Did I mention this is a READING test, not a GRAMMAR test?
So I figure, fine, you want to bow under to the bureaucratic pressure of politicians who probably can't even pass the third grade FCAT, fine, I'll teach to the test.
This year the reading course was expanded from a semester to a year long course. That means that *ahem* all of my students will have half a year of a reading course before FCAT. I say *ahem* because I'm sure some of them aren't in a reading course at all. Anyway, with the reading course becoming a real class in the eyes of the administration, I decided to focus more on grammar this year.
Shoot me now.
We have spent a week, give or take a couple of hurricane days, on nouns. Proper nouns, common nouns, collective nouns, plural nouns and possessive nouns. *ack!*
Today we focused on possessive nouns:
Studentkid: Shouldn't "class's be classes?"
Teacherlady: No, if it's a singular noun that ends in a s, you add an apostrophe and an s to make it possessive.
Studentkid: How do you pronounce it?
Teacherlady: classes
Studentkid: so why didn't you put the 'e' in it?
Teacherlady: (passes out from thumping her head against the wall)
Studentkid: Men's isn't a real word!
Teacherlady: It is too a real word! (stamping foot and throwing temper tantrum now)
Studentkid: Men is plural, shouldn't you just add an apostrophe?
Teacherlady: If a plural nouns ends in something other than an s, then you add the apostrophe and an s. Trust me.
Studentkid: but doesn't the s make men plural?
Teacherlady: (cracks the old fashioned chalk board by driving her head repeatedly into it.)
You know what? Verbs are next! Yay!
Excuse me while I go ram my head repeatedly into my computer screen.
Have a wonderful, noun-free evening everyone!
