School Days

This marks the 3rd week of school. The sprinting marathon is now over for the most part and we've settled in to a nice routine. I have a pretty nice class, and I can honestly look at all of them and think, "what a good group of kids." I have become the alpha female, thank goodness and overall I really enjoy this group of kids. Here are a few things I have noticed though.

1. Girl drama starts early. I had none of this last year because well, they were perfect. Today I had a sobbing, hysterical girl because someone said she was "dating" someone....ahhh jeez.

2. I would gladly take a class of 15 boys and 5 girls instead of the other way around. Not so lucky on that this year.

3. Parents love spelling tests. Every year I get a call as to why I don't do this particular part of school. I'm not going to go into depth as to my philosophy on this subject, I just don't do it. You can spell or you can't. If you can, good for you, if you can't, well, there's always spell check.

4. Ending a story by saying, "...and then I went to bed" is NOT an effective ending.

5. I have had many siblings in the past 7 years. Last year I had almost 7 kids who also had a sibling in my class. But this year I cannot call J anything but L; luckily he doesn't seem to mind. (This is also the family that I saw at the bar once when I was absolutely too drunk to be around kids, the boy in my class was only 2 at the time. In my defense, they had a baby in a bar.)

6. Kids are surprisingly obedient when you phrase directions in a Simon Says game.

7. Pencil sharpening is always a battle.

8. The kids you loved the most always come visit.

9. Some kids just need more hugs than others. And if you stand in my dance space and expect a hug constantly, you are probably going to get on my nerves really fast.

10. I'm gonna give Jenny Y. a little amen here when I say, Silly Bands are best left at home.

So, there are good things about this year. There is definitely a lot of training to be done still. Will they be an epic class like last year? No, probably not. Will they turn out to be a little better from where they started? I'd like to think so. And let's hope they blow the MAP test out like we did last year, that would be even better!