Last week was the hardest week of middle school I’ve ever had. I think all the middle school interns at some point have reached the point of tears, but that has never happened for me. This last week I was just ready to cry.
We have timeout chairs in the back of my room and I’ve never had to utilize them once. On Tuesday, my 1st and 2nd period were terrible. I normally have to beg them to talk and I couldn’t get them to stop talking. Throughout these periods I put one student in the timeout chair. Timeout chair total: 1.
My 3rd period is a more difficult period and they were just that on Tuesday. Multiple rude comments to other students, to me, and there’s so many of them! Once again I put someone in the timeout chair; timeout chair total: 2.
I thought my morning was rough, but it turns out it was the better part of my day. In 5th period things were going ok, when I started putting the students into groups to “jigsaw” their review. Apparently I put two girls together that had been in an argument for the past 2 weeks in the same group. They started yelling at each other and I heard the typical “Get closer and say it to my face!” As I’m making my way over there, I get a desk shoved into my leg as one girl tries to shove the other. I immediately send both of them to the timeout desks and tell them I’ll deal with them later. I was just so dismayed that they would even begin that in my classroom, while I’m busy teaching!! I later went over to them and told them I would not stand for that behavior in my classroom and how dare them act that way. Timeout chair total: 4.
By this point of my day, I was just wondering what was in the water and why the kids were so crazy. I am now a full believer in weather changes the kids! The barometric pressure does wonders on students. My 7th period is a small, great class minus one student that I struggle with daily to cooperate with me; she is angry, rude, and distracting. I had a very rough day with her and ended up giving her a STEP (a big discipline consequence). After multiple disrespectful comments to several students, she told me “Why do your eyes look like that? You look like you got punched in the face.” I try to just love on the students that are like this and build them up, but I am struggling with her. Timeout chair total: 5. I haven’t used the timeout chair once and in one day I used it 5 times!!!
Later on Tuesday I was at my 3 hour class and it was going better. We were not doing anything but working on our exercises independently and I was busy joking with my aggie teacher about the aggies losing to Arkansas. Our class gets out at 9 and at 8:30, I checked my email to check a grade – I lost allllll the work I’d been doing for the past 2 hours. I ended up just asking my professor if I could leave. I guess she could tell I was ready to cry and she let me go. Ahhhh! I almost go sideswiped on my way home and I had a 9 o’clock flag football game I was trying to make it to. Tuesday was CRAZY!!!!
My week went on and things got better than they were on Tuesday (I did score a touchdown in our football game), but this is the first week that I felt the weekend could not have come sooner. This week I’m just trying to get to Friday for Fall Break!