2 Month Check Up

Baby H. had his two month check-up today.  Pretty sure momma's should not be allowed to take their babies to this appointment.  It's way too sad.

Pretty sure those shots hurt me a bit more than they hurt him.

Baby weighs 12 pounds 10 ounces (49%), is 23 inches (42%) and his head circumference is 15.9 inches (48%)

Temple & Hormonal Crying

I had my first pregnant sobbing crying for no real reason today.  Here's everything that I'm saying lead up to it.  Had any circumstance been different I probably wouldn't have cried like someone punched a puppy.

First, I woke up at about 12:30 this morning (after going to bed at 10pm) and could.not.sleep.  I laid in bed being pissed that my husband would have the audacity to sleep (how dare he!) while I was not sleeping.  Finally, after 2 hours of staring at the ceiling, I got up.  I made myself a delicious and healthy lunch, wrote some sub plans, checked out Pinterest.  Finally went back to bed around 4am and woke up at 6am.  I was already feeling weepy and the day had just begun.

After work, Jenny went through the temple for the first time.  I am so stoked for her.  For obvious reasons this also made me a little emotional but the tears remained inside my face...for the moment.

We went outside for some pictures of Jenny's special day.  As we were leaving, someone stepped on my toe.  It killed.  But I held all those built up tears in and then I was fine.

I get to my car and notice a small piece of paper tucked into my door.  I grab it and hop in the car.  After I finally get situated (which takes a really long time as a pregnant lady) I read the note.  Here it is:

I looked at all my windows (which were filthy when I went into the temple) and realized they were all spotless...and I completely lost it.  Sobbing.  Crocodile tears. I couldn't see.  I cried for a good 2 minutes then spent the rest of the drive home trying to compose myself.

Holy cow, hormones.  Dial it back a notch.  I'm officially crazy lady pregnant.

Cue the Water Works

I have a lot on my plate right now...even more than I've mentioned on the blog but those awesome tidbits are coming soon.

Because I'm supposed to be doing so much, everything gets done halfheartedly.  The thing that got done halfheartedly today?  MEd. homework.  Actually it didn't get done at all.  (I know I said I already did it but turns out there was much more than I thought there was.)  Due to the fact that I didn't read what I was supposed to read, I tried to just sit back and not participate without looking like a total idiot (by the way, it's a very hard thing to do when you're me and there are only 6 other people in your class).  I thought I did it pretty well.  Turns out I didn't.

As class gets out my professor asks me if she can talk to me for a bit.  Sure.  No problem. 

All she asked was how I was.  That's it.  A simple, "How are you?"  Is this a question that usually makes you cry?  Me either, but today it did.

I sat and cried with her for 30 minutes.  By "with her" I mean I cried and she told me it was okay to fall apart sometimes.

Golly.  I hate crying in front of people when nothing is really wrong.  I hate making people worry about me.  I hate feeling like this. 

Really, truly, I am okay.  Don't worry about me.

Less of a Blubbering Idiot

It's the end of the year.  The 6th graders have gone crazy.  I get frustrated and annoyed and I just want them to listen to the 30 seconds of instruction I have.

But I just realized something today...I haven't cried because of my students in 5 months. 

At the beginning of the year my students stole from me, hated each other, wrote inappropriate things about each other, injured each other physically, and never listened to a thing I said.

This is an amazing transformation and I think I'll take all the credit for it (because of my narcissistic  tendencies).  Go me.

And go my students for not being turds to me or each other. There is hope.

I Can't Believe I'm Admitting This

If you've even read a few of my posts, you've probably figured out that lots of things make me cry. Well, today I took my crying over ridiculous things to a new level.

It started innocently enough. I was watching videos on YouTube and in the related videos section, I saw this one. I had seen it many times before (I even blogged about it here) and because it makes me immensely happy, I clicked and watched and smiled...for about the millionth time.



Then, I remembered that when Jim and Pam got married on the Office, they did the same thing and it was so funny. So I looked to see if it was available on YouTube. It is. I was happy.



About half way through, the tears began. Seriously? Yes, seriously. I was crying like my best friends who had loved each other forever were getting married. It was ridiculous.

And there you have it...another example of how I am a huge baby.

There's a Lump in My Throat

Have you ever had one of those days were you realize that everything you're doing is wrong?

I had one today. I try my hardest to do everything to help everyone and I put every ounce of my being into what I do but was informed today that it's not good enough. I need to do more.

I'm at a loss. I don't know how I can put more into what I'm already doing. There is nothing left to give.

I just need a break. I need to rethink everything. I really just need to cry for about a day...and a half.

Up in the Air Future = Rambling Blog Post

I'm trying to go to sleep but I can't because I'm trying to mull over all the crap of the week. It's been a rough one at school. Yep, my students are being naughty but that's not what has made it so tough. What's made it tough is knowing that there are inevitably going to be many cuts at the end of this school year. If I'm lucky enough to still have a job next year, I know that I will loose many good friends and students will loose many great teachers.

No one feels safe. Our future as educators is up in the air. Maybe we (by we, I mean teachers with little seniority like me) will have jobs next year, maybe we won't. And let's say we are laid off by our district, it's not like other school districts have loads of jobs available. We're all scared, we're all angry and none of us know what to do.

You hear it in the hushed conversations in classrooms after school, you hear it in the lack of enthusiasm, you hear it in the lack of patience with students. What is it? Apathy. We are discouraged.

We love our jobs, we love our students, and all we want is what is best for the students. With class sizes creeping into the high 30s, how are we going to give each student the care and individualized instruction that he or she needs? We want our opinions to be heard. We want to be treated as the professional people we are. We want our expertise to be used to make decisions, not some politician who's last experience in a classroom was 30 years ago when he attended high school.

Teachers teach because they love it. But when year after year we are told that we aren't doing a good job, that we need to do more with less, that we need to make all the ills of society go away, and then we aren't given the professional respect we deserve by the public; we become angry. We become the teacher you complain about. The teacher who comes at 8am and leaves at 4pm...on the dot. The teacher who complains about any extra thing he or she has to do outside of contract hours. The teacher who pulls a lesson out of the file each week and teaches it in exactly the same way he or she has for the past 10 years, no matter how outdated it is or how much the students have changed or how much the curriculum has changed. The teacher who doesn't get to know your child on a personal level. The teacher who can't wait to retire. The teacher who does the bare minimum. And who would blame them with how teachers are treated?

How can one expect teachers to feel good about teaching your children if they are crapped on day after day by various groups of people?

"If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job."
~Donald D. Quinn

Bruised and Broken Hearts

**My organization sucks in this post. I'm sorry. But I have a lot of things I need to get out. Maybe I'll come back and edit this later.**

If you know a teacher, you probably hear a lot about heart and how he or she teaches with his or her heart and does all the extra stuff because of that pesky heart. I know that's why I do it, because I love it. My heart is in it. But after the past few days, weeks, months (I can't keep track any more), my heart is bruised and broken. It makes me so sad to know that people don't care for ALL students as much as I do. Wow. That sounded like I think I'm Mother Teresa. I don't. I'm saying, all students deserve the same education regardless of how much money their parents make.

It's no secret. Teachers don't make much money. Don't believe me? Check the pay scale here. (then click licensed staff then salary schedule) Too lazy? I'll tell you. As a first year teacher with a Bachelor's Degree, I make $32, 899 a year. Not much, especially when you consider that there are not enough hours in our contract hours to go to all the meetings, contact parents, plan for the next day, help struggling students after school, and grade papers. I'm sorry but I can't get all that done in 1 hour. 1 hour is all the time I'm paid for to get all these things done. So, I, along with 99% of first year teachers and most other teachers, spend hours before and after "contract time" to get all these things done.

I am not telling you these things so you can say, "Oh, poor picked on teachers." I love my job. I wouldn't and couldn't do what I do every day if I didn't. I'm telling you these things because I'm annoyed. Annoyed with the fact that people voted to have 500 jobs cut and class sizes raised (even before this, we have the highest class sizes in the nation) instead of increasing taxes less than $10 a month. Are your children worth $10 a month?

We need to think about who is going to run this state and country in the next 20 years. An educated workforce is invaluable to the state. If we continue to "pack 'em deep and teach 'em cheap" we're going to get in trouble sooner rather than later.

I'm realizing this post is getting lengthy and is probably rambling. Go check out these news stories.

Here and here


Just as a note, I want to punch the lady in the red shirt from Canyons in the second video. I hope you don't know her. If so, I'm sorry but what she says makes me want to punch things (by things I mean her).




This is a letter to parents from Jordan District:

To Jordan District Parents:

Please tell the School Board to rescind their decision to increase class size and lay off 500 District employees.

The School Board can make a better choice to meet their budget: Furlough school days to protect the quality of our programs. Raise taxes to maintain the quality of our schools.

1. Recent Dan Jones and Jordan District survey results state that the public is willing to increase taxes for education. This tax increase would be under $10 a month ($9.40) for a $200,000 home.

2. The Jordan PTA has also called for a tax increase.

3. This large class size increase will force 250 teacher layoffs. Laying off a total of 500 District employees will slow down the economic recovery of our communities.

4. The Board decided to increase class size by an average of 4 students per class. Utah already has the highest class size in the U.S. Class size increases:

• Keep students from receiving the individual attention they need.
• Force the cancellation of special programs that have benefited students at all grade levels.
• Limit teachers' ability to include higher level learning activities and assessments due to the additional preparation and grading time required.
• Risk all schools' ability to make AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress).
• Risk high schools' ability to maintain accreditation (as determined by Northwest Association of Accredited Schools) due to increased teacher class loads and significant loss of preparation time.
• Make teams and programs less competitive in statewide competitions due to inadequate preparation time.
• Lower property values as the school district loses its reputation of having great public schools.
• This School Board decision will lower the quality of education in our schools.
  

The Jordan Education Association encourages you to contact your Board member and tell them to make a better choice. You can also attend Tuesday night School Board Meetings (schedule at www.jordandistrict.org).

We Will Be OK

I thought by now I would have a plan for tomorrow but I still have no idea how to proceed with my students.

I'm at a loss.

This post was going to be so much more but I just can't think of the words I need to express the sadness I feel for my students. I can't figure out how to say how hurt I am because my students chose to hurt each other. Am I a bad teacher? Did I neglect to show them that our classroom is our home for 8 hours every day? Did I do something to make them think this type of behavior is acceptable?

I can't help blaming myself, it's what I do. The more I think about it, the more I question. Was I always kind? Do I show respect to my students at all times? Do I accept my students for who they are and what they bring to the classroom? Am I rude or do I lose my temper at times?

I think I'll just go in with this attitude,

and see where we get.

I Cry A Lot

**Waring: This post is super long. I warned you, don't complain later.**

Here's the short story: I cried at school today.

Here's the whole story.

On Tuesday a student told me there was something "really bad" written on a stall in the bathroom about another student in the class. It's something that doesn't need to be repeated and involves things that I had no idea even happened between men and women until I was well into junior high...well into junior high.

So the other teachers and I called a "girl meeting" during recess and told the girls that the writing on the wall is completely inappropriate and it will not be tolerated. We told the girls that we would be more lenient if the girl who did it came forward than if we found out and the girl never came forward. We added "we always find out" at the end of the meeting.

Fast forward to just after lunch on Wednesday:

Two girls come in to me to tell me they know who wrote on the bathroom wall. So as soon as the class comes in I call a mini meeting with my class and tell them that I know who wrote on the wall and I will give the person until the end of the day to admit it to me.

Fessing up didn't happen...

...until right before school today.

This student came to me and told me that she did it. I asked why and she said it was because this other student made her mad. Ok, that's not good enough. Turns out this other student made fun of her hair. Ok, I can see being upset about that (hello, I'm a girl. Girls are all about hair. I get it.) but...what you did? Not acceptable.

Principal gets involved.

Student is suspended.

Other student is leaving our school because she doesn't feel safe (this is not the first incident with this student being the picked on one).

These three things happened during lunch.

After lunch we have writing. My students always have some little writing assignment they do when they come in from lunch so they can settle down and get back to work after 30 minutes of being insane with their friends at recess.

Today's little writing assignment was "What does it mean to be respectful to ALL students in this school?" As they were finishing their writing, I gave them the definition of respectful from our dictionary. I don't really know why I chose to do that, but I did...and as I did, I began crying.

I'm the BIGGEST baby ever. Especially when it comes to people being unkind, disrespectful, vicious to each other and even more so when those people are my students who I care about as much as if they were my children. It breaks my heart. I can't control it. I can't shut off my heart. I've tried to not care and not get involved but it's impossible for me.

Maybe you think that makes me weak and a bad teacher in some way but I think it makes me a better teacher. The kids I work with have such difficult lives and they need to know there is someone there that cares. I am that person in their lives. If these kids leave 6th grade and the only thing they know is that I care about them, I will feel like I am a successful teacher. Ok, and I want them to know how to work with fractions and read at grade level.

Anyway, after they wrote I talked to them about how much it hurts me to hear that they are being rude to each other. I told them what bullying includes and that it is something you do that makes people feel bad. I think before today, they thought that bullying was being physically aggressive.

I cried and I was a wreck and I was embarrassed and I was angry and I was sad and I was done.

Our principal is sick of the crap that is going on in 6th grade so she had us talk to the kids and had them write lists of the kids that they've seen or heard bullying others and also kids they've heard swearing.

After I got these lists (if you were wondering, EVERY student in my class was on someone's list), I passed out the lyrics to Imagine by John Lennon and read the lyrics to them,

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today...



Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace...



You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one



Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world...



You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

Again, I cried. My kids cried. We cried together. I feel like I need to help the kids work on being kind and respectful every day.

If you have any songs, poems, stories, ANYTHING that would be good for these kids to hear, please leave a comment and let me know. I'm at a bit of a loss right now. I don't know what else to do with them.

I did learn that crying is a good weapon. These kiddos were so great the rest of the day. I loved it...aside from the feeling like crap part.

Wrath of Miss J

I told my students on Tuesday that if I got a bad report from the sub that they would feel my wrath. I was hoping that would scare them enough but apparently it didn't.

I also realized last night that I'm not really an angry, wrathful person. After talking to the other 6th grade teachers, I decided that I would just be normal during the day until we talked about it.

So here's a play-by-play of the day:

I got everything ready for the day and made sure I was out of the room when they came in. I came in to utter silence and a lot of scared faces. All I said was, "I heard we have a lot of thieves in this class but don't worry about it right now. We have a lot of work to do and we'll talk about it during lunch." That made many "who didn't do anything wrong" very angry. I told them to sit down and get to work.

So all day I was normal. We went through P.E., reading groups, and the rest of the morning like nothing happened. By we, I actually mean I. My students were so scared I'm sure some of them pooped their pants. And 2 mysteriously got sick right before lunch...hmmm?

So right before we lined up for lunch, I told them they were all going to sit together at the same table and were not allowed to leave before I came back to get them. "What? At the same table? We can't sit by our friends?" No. You're a bunch of "buttheads" (they actually called themselves this later in the story), sit down and be quiet.

So I go back and get them from lunch and we go to the classroom. I didn't know where to start so I just sat back and looked mean and said, "Who wants to start?" They all looked at me like a deer in the headlights. Finally someone raised their hand and we had a big discussion first on what actually happened and then I told them they broke my heart and cried like a baby again.

I told them how I can't trust them right now but I still like them and I would never hate them. I told them they would have to work really hard to earn my trust back. I cried and carried on for about 10 minutes. We had 10 minutes until recess would have been over so I said, "I'm going to leave you here to think about what you did while I go finish my lunch." And I walked out to the sound of nothing but sniffles.

When I came back in, they were all silently writing letters of apology to me. They all handed them to me and I got ready to go on to writing. We were going to read a book and then write a similar story but I couldn't do it hearing such loud sniffling. So we stopped, pushed the desks back and made a pact to work harder from today on. Then I just let them pass a small ball around and get whatever off their chest. I thought it would be 20-30 minutes tops. We did this for an hour and 15 minutes.

The kids were opening up about all kinds of stuff. And everyone was crying. It was amazing to me that they would all feel that comfortable to cry like they did. It was fantastic but very emotionally exhausting.

I also had recess duty today so all the girls were coming up to me and hugging me and bonding like girls do after they've all cried together.

Oh, what a odd few days. Now we go off track tomorrow and I hope that they remember their pact to try harder tomorrow and the rest of the year.

It felt like I really got through to them today. So many of them talked about how they come from families who are drug addicts or gang members and how they don't want to go down that same road. Woot for hopefully beginning to change lives.

Worst Day, EVER!

Today didn't start off bad. But it quickly got there.

I had a sub today because my school offered a math endorsement class. I got to school at about 6:45 because I was a slacker and didn't prepare anything last night. My sub arrived at 7:15. What? School starts at 8:25. Weirdo! So I just explained everything to him but also gave him explicit, written instructions on how my class runs. After speaking with him for that 10 minutes, I knew my class was going to eat him alive or leave him looking like this guy:


But I went to my class anyway.

We got through about an hour and a half of the class when my principal was called down to the office to take care of a problem. Little did I know the problem was my class.

I need to give some background knowledge for my class. For birthdays I give students a candy bar, a pencil, and a card from the class. I spent my own money on all of these things and each student will get their present when it's their birthday. All they need to do is wait. Fair enough.

So back to today. I gave the sub a movie to put in that I thought was pretty cool. It was about Mars and space travel. My students didn't think it was and my sub had no control over them at all so they were crazy. At some point during the movie a large group of them decided they were going to find the candy bars and take them. They proceeded to look through each filing cabinet drawer until they found them (where the heck was the sub? Kids in filing cabinets behind teacher desks screams, "NOT ALLOWED!" to me but what do I know?). They then passed them out to the kids who wanted one. Many kids put them back but a group of 9 decided to just eat them.

I don't care about the candy. It's not like it was that expensive. What I care about is that they would have the audacity to go through my things and steal from me. They didn't even really steal from me, technically they stole from themselves and their classmates.

What I really care about is that I can't trust them. I can't leave my things alone in the room without thinking, "Is someone going through my things? Are they going to steal bigger things?" It's a trust issue and now they've broken it. And they broke my heart. I thought we had a good rapport going. We've only known each other for 6 weeks but I care about these kids so much already and to have a large group of them disrespect me, the classroom, their classmates, and the sub really upset me.

My principal told me about it during our first break (about 10:45) and I got really emotional. I cried and was just so upset. I couldn't concentrate in the class (seriously, ask me what we did. I don't know.) and I was on the verge of tears.

I came back to my room after school and read the letters my principal made them write to me. Most were really apologetic and most students fessed up but I know that at least 2 said they were perfect even though I have notes from the sub and other students saying they weren't. I think that upsets me even more. Admit your misbehavior, we'll work through it and get over it. But knowing these 2 stole then lied about it makes me so angry. UGH.

So I sat at school for 3 hours crying and trying to figure out what I'm going to do tomorrow. I still don't know. Hopefully I'll get some divine inspiration tonight but I think I'll look something like this:

Blubbering Idiot

I had my doctor visit Friday with the family doctor, LeeAnn Johnson (who is super. If you need a doctor, she's on Redwood and 8600-ish. Call me I'll give you the number). I give her the low down on what has happened. This is about the 96th time I've done this in the past week. As we're talking she tells me all the things that could go wrong and how I could die if I'm not careful.

This had been a really stressful week for me and it finally all caught up with me as she was talking to me and pressing on my throbbing calf and I lost it. I was crying like a 5-year-old. It was that heavy sobbing where you try to stop and your body won't let you. My shoulders were shaking, I couldn't breath, it was horrible. I was a mess and so embarrassed. I don't like to cry in front of people and here I am sobbing like a baby.

Doctor leaves, I regain my composure...for the moment. The nurse comes in to check my blood. The test is a lot like the test to check insulin levels for people with diabetes, just a little finger prick and you're done, no big deal. She pricks my finger and tries to squeeze enough blood out for the test. She can't get enough blood so she tells me she's going to try again with a poker (I'm pretty sure that is the medical term for the thing that cuts your finger) that cuts a bit deeper. I take a deep breath and tell myself I'll be fine (really, I'm not a huge wimp but it was one of those days and I had just barely stopped crying, the tears were still right there ready to come back at a moments notice) she pricks me again and no big deal. She again tries to get enough blood and can't.

So here I am. Red, watery eyes, 2 bloody middle fingers, one cankle, swollen calf, starving (I fasted just in case) and the nurse is coming back to prick my finger one more time. Tears stream down my face. I couldn't hold them back anymore. She doesn't look at my face which I'm happy about. She sees that one finger is still bleeding and tries the test one more time and finally gets enough blood. Oh, happy day. The nurse looks up, sees my tears and asks if she made me cry. I try to tell her no but I'm so choked up I can't.

After this day, I am so exhausted from teaching all day and adventures at the doctor that I fall asleep at 8pm and sleep until 8am. I'm just ready for this all to be over.