An exhausting week!

This past week has been so tiring and rough. I ended up having the snow day on Monday. Luckily, I stayed up a bit longer the night before and was able to hear that Philly districts would be closed. Apparently the district either has a closing or it doesn't. They don't have delays because all the grades share the same buses so it's too difficult for them to get everyone to school when they have delays. The snow day was definitely a pain in the butt though, because it put us a day behind with all the work we needed to do. It was so insane trying to play catch up! The only good thing about the snow day was that I was able to stay home and bake Vday stuff for my kids and the staff.

When we returned back to school on Tuesday, the day was cut short because the kids would be having their Valentine's Day party. I got a few valentines, actually Hannah typed me this poem which was incredible for someone her age. I left it at school because her mother wanted me to make a copy for her. At first glance, I thought she just copied it or it was printed from a template. But the computer teacher came downstairs and told me that she wrote the poem all by herself. Oh this was cute, Megan gave me a box of CareBear gummies and she goes, "They're fat free!" Haha, it was funny how she stressed that part but I guess her mother told her that women usually only want fat free food? Oh yeah, I got my first apple too! I still do not know why teachers are correlated with apples. Oh man, the amount of candy they brought in for each other was ridiculous. I was setting up and I swear, each plate was like a tower of sugar. I was just glad it was the end of the day and we were sending them home to their parents!

On Wednesday, I had my first observation. That's an entirely long story which I won't get into. Oh so gross, there was a cockroach in the class! The kids were flipping out. It was huge and running towards me! You all know how I feel about bugs, I had to fight so hard to keep my cool even though I wanted to cry and scream on the inside. I told them to leave it alone and finally the tiniest girl in my class, Simone, runs towards it and stomps on it saying, "It's just a little bug! Geez!" I was so relieved that she got rid of it.

What can I say about Thursday? It was a very upsetting day, full of rudeness and disrespect. I had to write my first parent note about their child's behavior and I also had to have my first conference with one of the parents as well. It's very frustrating to see parents who do not want help their child with their work and those who downplay everything that their child does.

Friday was their 100th day of school. They have a huge celebration about it. In my opinion, I would have pushed the party back until the following Monday. The way they all behaved on Thursday was not deserving of a party. I felt that by giving them the party, it was just sending the message that they can still get rewarded for disrespectful behaviors. I gave them my first math test but I had reviewed with them before for a good 40 minutes. They are soon going to have a mid-year assessment and I want them all to do great so I'm giving them as much practice as I can in the mean time. I felt bad, I had a few students crying and asking for help. I normally give extra help and use my free time to tutor them but I tried explaining to them that on tests, I'm not allowed to help them. It's not even that they don't understand it, they just get all worked up and their brains just freeze. It sucks because I know they know more than what their test scores show. But the reality is, what counts is what they can show, not what they know when it comes to assessments. I wish it wasn't like that but that's not something I have any say over for the time being.