Miz S

AnnoyingStudentsDotCom

"These kids will grow up to be annoying co-workers so we may as well know what we are up against now."

Betsy's comment after yesterday's post cracked me up.

Still, I hesitate to provide details about the annoying personalities of Javier and Lucia. They are, after all, only six years old. Let's give them a couple more months. If Lucia is still using that annoying, whiny tone of voice by Christmas (which earns her a crisp, "Lucia. Rewind. Try it again." from me, every time), and if Javier is still bending up my extensive collection of Spiderman paperbacks (purchased ESPECIALLY to entice first-grade boys), and then smiling at me as if he has done something adorable, all bets are off and I will purchase the domain JavierandLuciaSuckdotcom.

We are doing something different in first grade this year. Instead of having just one class and teaching them all the academic subjects, we have departmentalized. There are six first grade teachers. Three of us are the Reading Team and the other three are the Math Team. I spend half the day with my morning class teaching reading/language arts, then I trade with one of the math teachers and spend the rest of the day teaching her kids....wait for it...reading/language arts! My favorite! Twice a day! Imagine how much easier this makes my life. Planning is cut in half. I no longer have to make space for all those pesky math manipulatives. I don't have to maintain a math bulletin board. Hell, I don't even allow the children to COUNT in my classroom! 

Ha. Kidding. They can count. But I won't help them. Nope. Not my job.

I am lucky, because I am paired with a really great teacher. Ellen, my work-husband, is paired with Cruella de Vil! I wrote about her once before. Poor Ellen. Then again, it gives her a lot of opportunity to Collect Evidence. 

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Wait till you see what we have been up to on the Home Decorating front. It's either really awesome, or a huge, somewhat expensive mistake. Hint: it involves a new granite countertop and a paint color picked out in the dark, under duress. We'll know by tomorrow.

Maybe I Should Read That Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Book.

I say this every year, and I'm sure you get tired of hearing it, but the first six weeks of school kick my ass up one side of the street and down the other. And I would feel like a pathetic middle-aged woman for being so exhausted except that I work with women in their 20's and 30's who claim to be equally fatigued and overwhelmed. Thank God those little kids I teach are so adorable, otherwise it would be hard to be happy about going to work every day.

    Well, I think my class is adorable, but honestly I'm not sure. Although this is the fourth week of school, I am sorry to say that I don't know my students very well. We spend the first few weeks of school doing nothing but testing, and when we aren't testing we are teaching routines. When we are teaching routines we have to be insanely anal and hard-ass about everything, because if we don't put the time in now, it will be a long and frustrating year. So we practice things like how to get in line, how to put the crayons away, how to help Mrs.Silverman find her clipboard because she just had it, goddammit, so where the hell is it now, etc.

    I have my eye on a couple of kids to be my special Teacher's Pets. And I can tell you right now that Javier and Lucia are NOT in the running. 

    Let's see, what else. I have neglected this blog so badly I can't remember what you know and what you don't know.

   You know about my grad class. The reason I put off going to grad school for so long is that I just don't understand how people can teach all day and then go to school at night and do homework on weekends and meet with classmates to work on projects. Every Tuesday at 4pm when I am sitting on I-270 in bumper-to-bumper traffic worrying that I will be late for class, I say to myself, "Self, you are too old for this shit! Drop out! You know you want to!"

    But then I get to class and find myself all interested in the material. Stupid love-of-learning! It's subverting me from my natural inclination to sit around and do nothing. The professor is a woman in her early sixties with absolutely no spark or sense of humor. She makes up for it by being absolutely amazing in her knowledge of special education theory, research, practice, and legislation. She is still very actively involved in the field, including actually working with kids. (There is nothing worse than being told how to do things by someone who hasn't set foot in a classroom in years.) So, that's all good.

    My parents are okay. Nothing major to say about that, which is good, right?

    Gotta run. Thanks for still stopping by to read even though I suck so much at updating. xoxoxoxoxo

For Some Reason, I Can't Stop Watching This.

Could be because I am in love with Alison Krauss. Just wanted to let y'all know that I am alive and kicking. Miss you. Love you. Crazy with the busy. Tomorrow maybe? An update? With complete sentences? No promises.

Hellooooooooo there.

Pushkin sorting the mail for me. He's such a big help.

Oh, ah, sorry 'bout the whole "My goal is to post before Friday" thing. What a foolish promise to make. How cruelly I dashed your hopes. I will work hard to rebuild your trust.

Hey, guess what? Monday was our 30th wedding anniversary. Remember last year how I was all, "Oh, we're gonna go on a cool trip for our 30th" and you guys were all, "Yeah! Go you!"? Well, what with one thing and another (a combination of elderly parent worries and inertia), we just never got it together. That's so like us. Instead, we went for a bike ride and then took the kids out to dinner. They surprised us by ordering a bottle of champagne to be waiting at the table, which was really sweet.

A big anniversary like that makes me nervous because there's so much pressure. Everyone asks you what you are going to do, is he going to give you diamonds (ugh! no!), are you going to renew your vows (double ugh! no!), etc. A champagne toast to the next 30 years worked fine for us. I have nothing against vow renewal. It would just make me nervous and self-conscious and plus I would have to get dressed up and make all sorts of arrangements. Like I said, too much pressure. I would crumble.

I mentioned last time that I have started course work towards a master's in special education. A couple of things about that:

• I don't want to teach special ed, but I would love to have the skills to better help my students who struggle in the general education classroom.
• Also, if I don't get a grad degree I can't keep teaching. I am a huge slacker for not having done it already.
• It's a cohort program through my school district in conjunction with a local university, and the school district is paying a generous portion of the tuition.
• Goddamn, I'm good at this school shit. I really LOVE being in school. 
• Big shout-out to long-time reader Maddy, who is a writing coach at a college and offered to edit my first assignment for me. She went over my paper with a fine-tooth comb and found just the teensiest things to change, because I ROCK. Thanks again, Maddy.

Next time, I'll tell you about my first-graders. I'm dying of the cuteness.