it was another reasonably good week. it was off to a shaky start despite having a delay monday morning. when i say shaky, i mean i was on the verge of nervous breakdowns monday and tuesday morning for no apparent reason. some mornings i just wake up really nervous and apprehensive and i cry as i walk out the door. but it got better, and while this first-full-week-for-me-since-mid-december-and-even-then-not-quite-full-because-of-the-2-hour-delay seemed longer than long (i kept thinking tuesday was wednesday, wednesday was thursday, and so on) all in all i felt i got some teaching accomplished and the kids were mostly tolerable.

that's not to say there weren't some bumps. in fact, yesterday i wrote 6 office referrals and 2 guidance referrals. the 6 office referrals put me at the 100-mark for the year. and we're one week past the semester mark, so i may be able to reach 200 referrals in one year, which by the sound of people's reactions, may very well be a record.

i never wrote last week's story on here. one girl entered the room singing some hip-hop song, "i'm gonna spray 'em when i see 'em, blat! blat! blat!" she was using her fingers as guns and was pointing them at me as well as at some of the more nerdy kids in the classroom. later, when she refused to turn off her music video websites she declared, "you ruin the whole party, son! get out of my grill!" i wrote all this up, and she was suspended for 3 days. during her suspension, the rest of the class told me what she said she was going to do to me when she got back. and they told me they couldn't even say half the stuff she was gonna do to me because it was so bad and they were in school. (they had never been that concerned about what they said in school before....?) she returned from her suspension and marched into the room yelling something or other, and her classmates started cheering her on. i asked her to go back into the hallway and reenter the room in a more appropriate manner. surprisingly, she complied, and things died down from there. there's more i could tell about it all, but it's not necessary.

but word about this referral got out to the other teachers real fast. that week i would walk into the faculty room and everyone would start shooting me yelling, "blat! blat! blat!"

a lot of these kids choose to use pen in class. then, when they mess up on their worksheets, they get all upset and expect me to supply them with a brand new worksheet for them to start over. "no, just cross it out and rewrite it!" i say, but they insist on getting a new one. just use a pencil for goodness sake! it's really quite ridiculous and annoying. well yesterday, this happened to a girl and she asked me for a new paper. i said what i usually say, and then followed it up with an additional thought, "you're wasting trees!" i was mostly joking. she responded by saying, "i don't care about trees! i care about me!" (up to this point, no one had so eloquently stated the underlying problem of their attitude and behavior.) this kind of fired me up. i repeated her words: "i don't care about trees, i care about me. this is what's wrong with america today." she rolled her eyes and mumbled to her friends and i didnt give her a new worksheet and we went on with class.

but this was the same girl who, at the start of the afternoon class, as there were 2 boys standing up about to fight, 3 kids asking to go to the bathroom, 2 kids wanting to go to their locker, and 1 boy who i was sending to another classroom to get some calculators, insisted on having me write her a pass to go to the nurse because her pinky was "turning completely purple." (her finger looked normal, she was just holding it out and keeping it stiff.) i told her to wait. i was focused on trying to break up this escalating argument that was about to turn into a fight. she kept interrupting in a loud and whiney voice, "MISTER! just let me goooooo!" she was holding her finger up like it was falling off or something. "Hold on, please..." "MIIIIISTER!!!!" she kept going and i finally blew. i gave up on the guys who were about to fight (thats a whole different story) and gave her a piece of my mind. "look. the world doesn't revolve around you! i know you only care about yourself, but your finger will be fine! there are 20 other kids in this room! look around for a second! i kind of have a few other things to think about and deal with right now! when i get all of this worked out, i'll send you to the nurse! but you're going to have to wait!" i don't remember everything i said. it was probably even more harsh than that.

i finally got the chance to write her a stupid pass. the poor baby came back with a stupid ice pack for her "purple pinky" which made everything oh-so-better. kids need to go to the nurse for the stupidest reasons. ("mister, my back hurts, can i go to the nurse?" "no, the nurse is not a chiropractor, there's nothing she can do." "she could give me an ice pack." "an ice pack won't help your back. if you need a back rub, i'll give you one." "ew, no, nevermind.") they go and get ice packs and then they don't even use them. they just suck on the ice, throw it across the room, or let it melt on their desk so that then they have to go to the bathroom to get paper towels to clean it up.

it's all really enough to drive you insane.