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2002-09-12 - 7:50 p.m. I am sooooooooooooooo exhausted. I really don't know how I'm going to keep this up. Every night I stay until I'm semi-done, and then I come home, eat, and then lay around all evening. All I can muster up the energy to do is watch TV and read. My house is a disaster area, and I keep meaning to clean it, but... I planned not to watch any Sept. 11th stuff, but then I somehow started watching the documentary about the firefighters and got caught up in it. So I spent the evening crying, of course. I'm so glad it's over. I was thinking about the whole question, "Where were you?" but the thing I remember most clearly is the day after, driving through town on the way to work, seeing flags (or flags at half mast) everywhere. I just got shivers. For September 11th, we had a moment of silence on the intercom at 8:46, so it was first period. It was horrible. I kept looking at the kids trying to gage their reaction, trying to hold back tears. They just stared into space, somberly. I think I might have mentioned it, but sometimes it is hard to feel like you are the adult and you have to be strong for the students, and have to know what to say. I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk about it anymore. Remember the kid I mentioned that's a freshman that I was just praying the other teacher would get? Well. He's been no problem so far, he just sits quietly, and seems to try to do his work. When I saw his reading and writing survey, I began to suspect that he might be an "angry young man" because of his low ability level. He even mentioned he's not very good at reading. So, yesterday was personal choice reading day. The freshmen were quietly reading, some were even reading picture books from the shelf (left over from our picture book project last year). And that was fine. I noticed angry-young-man #1 and his friend angry-young-man #2 both weren't reading. I approached them and asked nicely if they might choose a book to read. angry #2 immediately got out a book and started reading. "What about you, angry #1, can you find a book?" I asked. "No," he answered. He didn't say it in a mean way, just simply, "No." "Well, are you sure you can't even try to see if there's a book that might interest you over there?" "No." almost with a defeated tone. Well. I just didn't know what to do with this. I haven't had it happen before on the first day. I've had kids say that they don't feel like reading today, and not read, but not on the very first day. It just really surprised me. So, I started asking around about him. Science teacher guy said he is extremely quiet, and does do his work. Special ed. teacher woman said she wasn't sure offhand if he is on an IEP. So finally I decided to email this teacher I know at the middle school who probably had him. So apparently, angry-young-man #1 was so angry that he was only allowed to attend school half days during seventh grade, and he spent that half day entirely in the special ed. room. For eighth, he was allowed to attend regular classes and managed okay, though she said he got angry and exploded easily. Surprise, surprise, she suspected it had to do with his low ability. She said the most he did last year was arrange sentences into a paragraph, and he is the lowest middle school kid she has ever worked with. Poor kid. So now, of course, all I feel for this kid is overwhelming love. So anyway, the freshmen finally finished a sort of boring story and so I decided spontaneously we needed to do some group work to get some fun going. That was not really my lesson plan, but whatever. Anyway, angry #1 and angry #2 got into a group, and then this kid who is eager-to-please got together with them. They got right to work, so I was really happy about that. They were working on writing what happened after the end of the story. So some kids were finished and wanted me to read their story, so I read it out loud right next to them. So this somehow started EVERY group sharing their story with me. The group of angries had me read their story and they actually seemed quite pleased with it. It was far from great, but I read it out loud and praised a few parts, and they just seemed so happy with themselves. So, long story short, I'm just going to try to encourage and be positive with this kid and angry #2 as much as possible and see how it goes. As it turns out, all three of those kids are on IEPs. I know angry #1 likes skateboarding so maybe I can find some skateboarding books. He's not the only one who likes it. Maybe they have some lower level skateboarding books? I don't know. It would help if I didn't have 35 kids in his class! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! My advanced kids had a discussion like I have never seen before today. We read "The Bet" by Chekov for homework. These kids are crazy discussers. I am used to having to probe people to answer questions, but I had a list of ten questions and they discussed them so fully that it took the entire period. It was fun seeing this, but they were sort of crazy about it, and were so passionate that they would talk out of turn way too much. I wanted it to be without raising hands, but we had to change to raising hands, but still there were problems. So we'll have to work on that. But really, it was refreshing. I guess this story is a good discussion one, because it has all these different ideas about the death penalty, etc. I have to pick a class to focus on this year for my continuing license, so I'm thinking I am going to pick my fourth period sophomores. So far they are just such a nice group. I hate having to make that decision so early, because you never know, they could turn into complete nightmares. But I figure it is safer to choose them than seventh, because seventh period usually is crazy. This seventh period seems pretty well-behaved so far, though. I think I finally have just about all of the names down, but once they change seats I'm not sure if I will be able to get it. There are just so many of them, and all of the freshmen look so much alike. Time for me to go back to laying around and doing nothing.
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