6:4

Thursday.... the day of returning to school after being sick for two days.  I guess I didn't realize, or even believe that it really was a TON of work coming back after being gone.  I have been told that sometimes you have subs (just like having aides) that are willing to help grade papers, and get things finished, as long as you leave them plans to work on, or sometimes if they find papers ungraded, they grade them.  How nice would that be.  My mentor teacher strongly believes in one rule (two actually) when it comes to grading.  Aides don't grade papers (they are there to help students.  Good point, but sometimes helping you can be a plus... I know this because my boyfriends mom is a paraprofessional), and if you teach the lesson you grade.  Well technically when I was gone, she should have graded the papers, right?  ummm wrong.  She didn't, and wouldn't.  She I had to go through and do about 2 days worth of daily math and daily language, plus do work from that day.  I had a really hard time catching up, and I actually didn't get it all done before I needed to get home.  So I did as much as I could, today after school, and planned on saving the rest for tomorrow morning, even if it meant doing it right after the students started to come into the room in the morning.

Besides still not feeling 100%, I had to sit and have a discussion with the third graders about how it is super important for them to pay attention, and listen.  When someone gives a direction they need to follow it.  They were simply asked to find their seats, quickly and quietly.  I had to tell them 4 times, and they finally listened on the fifth attempt with a raised voice.  It was really hard, I didn't yell at them, I just had a discussion about how important it was for them to listen and follow the directions when they are given the first time.

In the morning it was time for a spelling test (right away).  I had told them to take out the spelling books because we were going to have our spelling test.  They whined and moaned and complained because they hadn't studied, so I told them that I warned them last week, as well as on monday when I was in school.  They didn't care, they still whined.  They had to take the test anyways, and you could tell who studied and who hadn't, and 99% of them hadn't studied.  Miss M then gave me a piece of advice of rather than saying warned you, say I told you.  It does sound better even as she said it to me. 

Other than that, not much.  Tomorrow is Integration day, doesn't that sound joyous.  Everyone I have talked to complains about how horrible it is, so I'm not even remotely excited about it.  Not to mention one of the schools that does ID with us, has H1N1 in their high school, and it is so bad that people are wearing facemasks so they don't catch it.  Yippy Skippy!

Miss A