The Final Announcement!

I know, I suck.  I’m hoping you’ll forgive me when you hear the explanation.

We are leaving NYC.  Perhaps that’s not a shock?  What if I said we were leaving NYC to spend about a year travelling around the world?  What if I said we have set up a whole new blog (and have been posting on it, hence the lack of anything going on here) and that all you need to do to read all about it is ask me for the link?

There is a lot more/better explanation at the new site, so if you want to read about something not related to teaching, hit me up and I’ll give you the link.  In the meantime, I’m leaving this site up but since I’m not a teacher anymore (happy dance!) I won’t be posting here anymore.

Send me an email at msmsapples@gmail.com if you would like the link

Wait, What? It’s Mid-July Already?!?!?

I have no idea how this happened.  I blinked and it’s July 19!  Yikes!  I’ve been mostly without internet the last few weeks so I haven’t gotten around to posting the next big announcement.  I’m still not going to though because I need a day or two to actually sort out some details.  I swear I’m not trying to be obnoxious.

School’s Out….FOREVER!

That’s all folks!  It is with a huge amount of joy that I can finally announce that as of this morning I am no longer a teacher!

In all honesty, I thought I might be just a little sad, a little nostalgic, something…but really, I’m not at all.  What brought me to this point?  Well, a lot of things, but mostly I just feel completely beaten down by “The System”.  My school has gotten progressively worse, both academically and in terms of support in behavior management for children, and I just can’t tolerate the disrespect I witness (not always aimed at me) on a daily basis, especially when there are NO consequences for the students.  I haven’t posted much about it because I feared it would just make me angrier to rehash, but it’s been so much worse this year than in the past and there doesn’t seem to be a sign that it will get any better.  I also can’t stand being broke.

What’s next?  In the long run, I have no idea.  In the short run, I’m going back to bartending.

A few months ago I said I had two big announcements coming up, so that was one, but you’ll have to stay tuned for the other.  I promise it won’t be more than two weeks!

The Final Countdown

3.5 days.  I don’t know how I’m going to make it!

The end of the year is always such total chaos, and this year seems more so.  Why?  Well, for starters, there has been some rearranging and so we are all packing up like crazy trying to get new rooms, new assignments, new routines sorted out before next year.  Most people stopped teaching this week, some stopped last week, and a few stopped as soon as grades were turned in, which this year was the Tuesday after Memorial Day.  That was a nearly a month ago for those of you who keep track of such things.  The kids have realized that we aren’t doing anything and are taking full advantage.  Top that off with boiling hot rooms and you have cranky teachers, and students-gone-wild.

3.5 more days. *sigh*

The Best Agenda

I have a big poster in my room where I write a list of all the important dates for the month – field trips, big tests, half-days, etc.  This morning one of my students was looking at it and counting up all the half-days, no-school days and field trips.

“Miss, is this real? Do we really have all that many half days this month?”

“Yup.”

“*sigh* I LOVE June!”

“Me too kiddo, me too.”

18 days people! 18 days!

Kids Say

Hopeful Student: “So Miss, if the world ends Saturday, we won’t have to take that test next week!”

Dream Crushing Teacher: “Um, if the rapture happens, I will be up at the pearly gates with #2 pencils and a stack of tests, so you’d better carry your study sheet in your pocket all weekend.”

***

“Miss, so…what would happen if you sneezed, farted, burped and hiccupped all at the same time?  Could you like, die from that?”

****

During a fire drill – “Dang! Why can’t these things ever be scheduled during Math!?!?!?”

***

I had just given a student a stern talk about plagiarism.  I gave him a choice between coming up at lunch for a few days and letting me help show him how to put things in his own words, or failing. When I sent him back to his seat another student leaned over, gave me a thumbs up and said “Excellent speech Miss!”

It Gets Better.

Have you seen this?  Take a minute to check it out, watch the video on the main page.

http://www.itgetsbetter.org/

It is our responsibility as adults (not just teacher adults, ALL adults) to help kids get through the incredibly challenging time that is middle and high school whether they are LGBT or not, but especially if they are.  I think this is a brilliant resource, kudos to Dan and Terry for this inspirational website.

Please share this with your friends, colleagues, and the children in your life.

The Light!

It is finally that time of the year when it is actually light in the morning when I have to get out of bed!  It’s terrible trying to get motivated to face the world in a cold, dark room.  For most of the winter I am forced to dress by the light I can reflect off a mirror into my room because the husband doesn’t have to get up as early as I do, so I can’t use the regular light.  It sucks. It is a glorious day indeed when I can get up into actual daylight.

I can also see the light at the end of this year’s tunnel…only 8 weeks left!

Napping 101

I have discovered the secret to a blissful life.  Go to bed around 11.  Get a solid 8-9 hours of sleep.  Get up and go about your day.  Sometime around 1pm get back in bed and take a two-hour nap in which you sleep so hard you have multiple, vivid dreams.  Get back up and finish the day.  Rinse and repeat.

I am plagued by sleeping problems in my regular life, but this Spring Break has made up for all of that.  Between the many uninterrupted hours of sleeping and the vast quantities of delicious food I’ve consumed over the last 5 days, well, I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven. 

Perhaps I can institute a mandatory snack-and-nap time for my afternoon classes.  I’m going to look into it.

Honestly Unexpected

If you had to give a grade for your behavior and your effort in class yesterday with the sub, what would it be and why?

That was the last question I posed to my students on the pop quiz that followed their day with a substitute.  A day that resulted in 3 pages (yes, she bothered to write three pages)  in red pen detailing the debauchery of my darlings.

I expected a lot of ambitious grades.  I figured I’d get a good mix of “I deserve an A or B all around” with perhaps a few “C’s” thrown in just because some of them may have felt guilty for the apparent ridiculousness that was my day away.

Woah Nelly was I wrong!  These kids were brutally honest.  Many of them gave themselves an F for effort but a B for behavior, with the rational being that even though they did NOTHING, they didn’t bother anyone very much while they were avoiding all things academic.  Some, however, really owned up to their own mess and gave themselves an F for both categories.  I was more than a little surprised at their candor.

Another unexpected bit of fascination was the extensive amount of specificity in terms of their confessions.

“I will give myself a F for my behavior because I was bad because Loudmouth was asking and telling to give him my worksheet but then when I gave it to him the teacher was coming over so I told Loudmouth to give it back and he said no so the teacher told him ‘Give it back to her!’ and when the teacher left Loudmouth said ‘I will give you a dollar if you let me copy your worksheet’ and I said ok but then the teacher came back and Loudmouth gave me back my paper and I left and he screamed at me and I screamed back that I was keeping his money anyways and everyone started laughing and then Sweet Girl was saying that what I did was slime and I think it was a little and I am very sorry for my bad behavior. “

Way to lay it all out there kiddo.

Clearly I need to have another lesson about the glory of punctuation.