A Classroom Catastrophe

I spent the better part of today cutting, cutting, and then cutting some more so that I can have my students do an activity tomorrow. It’s going to be displayed in the hallway for the next 2+ months, so I want it to be good. Especially if I’m putting this much work into it, I’m planning on leaving it up for as long as I can get away with (through the end of February most likely).

I even recruited my husband to cut out all these tiny marshmallows.

Tomorrow, after the board is complete I’ll take a picture & post it on here!

Here’s my current ranking of reality TV:

1. The Challenge 😍

2. Survivor (still predicting that Ryan will be the winner this season - and I’ve said it since Day 1)

3. Big Brother (can’t wait for the celebrity version this winter)

4. Are You The One? (Loving this season in New Orleans since I just visited there in April - I’ve been to MOST of the bars/places they go to on their dates)

5. RuPaul’s Drag Race ❤️ (I actually paid $20 just to be able to watch the most recent season since I couldn’t find it through any other venue)

I’ve just felt like the past couple seasons of Big Brother have been so “meh”. I had a hard time finding a contestant to root for to win. But with The Challenge, out of the final 6 I would honestly be happy if any 5 of the 6 won (just not Camila because she made some racist comments this season). I love how it encourages people to be strong competitors and make dirty moves! I feel like Big Brother usually ends up with tons of “floaters”, which I find extremely boring.

I also LOVE how the Challenge keeps bringing back most of the same people season after season. It’s like EVERY SEASON is an all star season, with a few rookies thrown in there. Everyone knows the best seasons of reality shows are the all star ones (Survivor - especially Game Changers, Big Brother, even Project Runway).

ANYWAY I was literally screaming at the TV tonight when I watched The Challenge reunion show. What can I say, I love the drama :) I’m still waiting to find out the winner! I’m hoping for Cara Maria & Derrick, but we’ll see.

PLUS they just keep pumping out more seasons of this show! There’s a new season starting this Tuesday called Champs vs. Stars. It is just so trashy & I’m obsessed.

Today was the Thanksgiving lunch at school, where families are allowed to come eat with their students. Each grade was assigned a 40-minute window for this so that parents can know when to come and so teachers will still have their normal 40 minute lunch time. Usually, the kids get 20 minutes for lunch and 20 minutes for recess. That equals the 40-minute break for teachers.

3rd grades time was 11:50-12:30, so I brought my class to the cafeteria promptly at 11:50 and put them in the lunch line. That’s when I normally walk away and let the lunch monitors do their job. But today, a lunch monitor came up to time and said “What grade is this?! There’s supposed to be another 2nd grade class before your class!” So I said “Wait what? It’s 11:50 and this is 3rd grade’s assigned time to eat.” Then this lunch monitor keeps bitching at me about how “Well we are running behind schedule and second grade has just now sat down to eat” (which is 20 minutes late BTW) and “your class can’t be in line yet they need to wait outside in the hall”.

Well at that point I was PISSED. I was thinking “Okay FIRST OF ALL, YOU guys are the ones running late and that’s not my fault. I followed the schedule I was given. SECONDLY, if you are running over 20 minutes behind schedule, maybe make an announcement over the PA system instead of yelling at teachers when their class is already in the lunch line?” This is exactly what I said to the lunch monitors, “I am confused because I had NO IDEA y’all were running so far behind schedule. I was told to come at 11:50, and it is 11:50. You really should make an announcement over the PA system so that teachers can know to expect to have their lunchtime changed.” Then I walked off and grabbed my class out of the lunch line.

THEN we had to wait IN THE HALLWAY because we didn’t know when the cafeteria would be ready for us. Obviously, with all of third grade in the hall it was rather noisy. I know parents were pissed too, because most of them were trying to come during their lunch break and with the changed times that didn’t work out anymore. When my class finally got called into the lunch room at 12:15 (TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES after we originally arrived), I got to leave and start my lunch break. At 12:35, the students were told by the lunch monitors to return to the classroom. WHAT THE HELL. I got 20 minutes to eat my lunch and have a break. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. Also, the students only had 20 minutes with their families. ALSO WHAT THE HELL. Another teacher was eating lunch with her daughter, and wasn’t in her room. So her whole class was just lined up outside, with nobody watching them, because nobody even told us that the kids were coming back!!!! The lunch monitors just sent them to walk back on their own. THEY ARE THIRD GRADERS. THEY CANNOT HANDLE BEING UNSUPERVISED. 

The whole situation was just so dang frustrating.

The principal told me as she left that she LOVED the lesson. I got great feedback online, too.

I’ve got a full week this week, and 1 day next week (whoever decided it was a good idea to have school for just one day the week of thanksgiving is a loony toon).

I’ve been super sick this past day or so. I was visiting my college roommate, but I had to leave early yesterday morning because I literally couldn’t breathe and couldn’t sleep. I’m pretty sure I’ve got something called allergenic asthma, where your allergies are so bad that you can’t breathe. My whole chest hurts from trying to get air and my whole back hurts from the effort of breathing. I only looked it up on google so I’m not 100% sure about it. I thought it might be due to her cat, but it hasn’t stopped after returning home.

I’ve probably complained about this a lot this year, but I’m gonna keep complaining anyway.

A few weeks ago, I decided to skip the weekly lesson planning meetings because the other teacher would waste time during them and the lesson plans sucked. I did the plans on my own, and everything was working great. I wasn’t the only one skipping the meetings, so our team leader emailed a week ago and said they are mandatory and everyone needs to attend. So I said “fine, I’ll go and just sit there. I’ll still do my own thing for the lesson plans.”

And today just proved that I need to continue doing my own thing for the lessons. THIS CHICK’S PLANS SUCK. Here’s why:

In one weeks worth of lessons, she has said to cover Main Idea, Author’s Purpose, and Text Features. But our district’s outline that we are supposed to follow has those taught over THREE weeks. I mentioned this to her, bringing up that next week we are only supposed to cover main idea. She said “yeah we’re covering that and some other stuff”. Then I said “it just seems like a lot for only one week”. And she said “well I did it this way last year so I’m gonna keep it like this.” Okay fine you do what you want lady.

Well THEN in one day of plans, the modeling & guided practice were all about text features and explaining those and practicing identifying them. BUT THEN THE STUDENTS’ INDEPENDENT PRACTICE IS ABOUT MAIN IDEA. What the hell lady. This isn’t rocket science. I could lesson plan in my sleep (and sometimes I do). It doesn’t take a genius to know that if you are teaching the students about a skill, their independent practice should also be about that skill. At that point I totally checked out and just wrote in my composition book some lesson plan ideas for what I’M going to do next week. Which is teaching ONLY main idea (following the guidelines our district provided us with) and actually teaching it in lessons that freaking make sense.