GOOD/EVIL

AYE BLOG!

Wednesday night here and I just got home from the grocery store, EMart, across the street. List: Eggs (6), OJ (2pack), chicken, frozen dumplings (I accidentally got JUMBO ones last time and that's been rough so I went to the other extreme and got mini ones and am on the brink of ecstaticicity (BOOM new word) to give them a go),  one big slice of pizza for an after-work snack, and....oh yeah milk for cereal. The only thing that is left out of the usual suspects is pasta and sauce because I have those. If anything says early, strike that, MID twenties BOY it's my grocery list. And my laundry situation. And no sheets.

Anyway it's almost been a full week with the new crop o' youngins in the morning. There are six home rooms with anywhere from 3 to 9 students in them. The classes I have the most are really fun and mostly manageable. Art&Craft has been messy, Science has been cool and Math was boring. Pretty usual stuff.  Also as usual there are kids that are angels and even when they mess up or act up it's hard to punish them in any way. And there are the other kids.

He looks cute huh! He usually is but he also tried to tried to run out of a 40 min class 5 times today, kicked two chairs over and also hid a cubbyhole. He's pretty smart though so as long as he does the work it's not so bad. Check out that school lunch too! Also, don't be impressed those aren't his chopsticks.

Cute little girls eating lunch yeah! The one on the right took a sharpened pencil to my leg twice (in rapid succession) on Tuesday. I mean look at that laugh! SATANIC!

Over the next 10 months I think the kids will be fine, the good kids outweigh the tough ones. It'll be cool also to see how much they progress in the coming months in both age and ability.

Discipline of the disruptive students has also been a topic of late. On the teacher's side, the discipline situation at school is sort of awful. That of course, in the big picture, is because of the Mom's. In the small picture it's because of management.

Let me see if I can explain (do a good ramble about) this: so a kid starts to act up, I usually give him about 3 verbal warnings or asks-to-stops, after the third I usually move them to a different chair them or as them to stand in the corner for 2 or 3 min. That works a great deal of the time. Now if they refuse to stand quietly in the corner, make silly faces to the peers, run back or if they come back from the corner and continue to act up after another warning then (in my eyes) they have to be removed from the situation. So I stand them outside for 4 or 5 min. Then they comeback and 9 times outta 10 everything is fixed.

(These are the 3 or 4 year olds class I have twice a week in the afternoons. Do you spy a little foot? I do. Facing the wrong direction. I didn't make him do that, but he spends usually half class in that position. Also - that's not his seat.)


But apparently if a Mother comes in and looks at the CCTV monitors and sees a kid standing in the corner or outside the classroom it's bad news, or the dreaded bad appearance. I've had the boss walk in to the classroom after I put a kid in the corner and just sit them back down in their seat w/o asking why or what they did and just walk out. It sort of (completely) undermines my command but it happens.

Now however they are not allowing us to remove them from class or even stand them in the corner at all. Their solution is to use the carrot of earning stars so as to get STICKERS as a means of keeping the kids in check. Could work with most of the kids, we'll see. But when if it comes to removal they want to avoid it at all costs, or they want us to send the kid to a manager or desk-teacher (some receptionists/aids) for the kid to get a talking to. An issue I have with that is I can't take the time to leave a class unattended and walk a kid looking for one of 4 people not busy (everyone is always busy) and then explain to that person what the kid did wrong an walk back to class. If I just send the kid outside to someone I know is waiting to talk to them the teacher will ask what they did wrong and the kid will say "Nothing, I'm a great, hard working wholesome child. Can't you tell by this smile?" That might or might not have been what I did as a kid.

The bright side of all this? Well first of all no matter what 90% of the kids are awesome it's still a ridiculously great job, but also the new crop of Moms keep bringing in doughnuts, pizza, muffins etc etc for us teachers. Makes it all worth it. And if it weren't for stuff like this what would I blog about? Introducing Matt's "SUNSHINE, RAINBOWS, UNICORNS DANCING WITH CARE BEARS AND BABIES LAUGHING Blog"?? No thanks. 

Thursdays are cool because I have hefty mid-day break. Then it's Friday. Now though I have to decide between chicken or dumplings (WAIT. Let's do both?!) for my mighty nightly dinner + Daily Show routine. 

Later blog. Now please go stand outside, think about what you've done and I'll tell you when to come back.