The last few hurdles

Our school was broken into earlier this week. We got to school in the morning and were told to check our classrooms, make note of what was missing and let the custodial staff know if we had any permanent damage. The school believes the culprits to be students, as they knew to cut the alarm cord during the school day, hence nobody knew about it until that morning. While cutting the alarm cable, they also managed to cut the phone lines, the network wires, and a few other important cables because the computers and fax machines no longer work at the school. When my group and I walked into our classroom we noticed the desks were out of line, school supplies were dumped around the room, there were gang tags spray painted on the wall and a red line was spray painted across both white boards and our chalkboard. I was going to be teaching number lines that day so I thought they just made my job a little bit easier - but the custodians were able to get the spray paint off the boards fairly quickly. Darn. We actually weren't even allowed to stay in our classroom that day. The spray painted gang tags on the wall were deemed a big enough concern that we were moved into a different classroom for the day so they could repaint our room and have it ready for the rest of the week. However, we didn't have the worst damage. All of the classrooms have LCD projectors at our school, about half of which were taken, we were thankful to see that our's was still in place. Coffee creamer was taken from the teacher's lounge and dumped all over several classrooms and in the worm terrarium. Poor worms. The vending machine glass was broken and the majority of the chips, candies and cookies were taken, except for about 4 bags of M & Ms, some butterfingers and a bag of cookies. I laughed when I looked at the machine at the end of the day and noticed those last few items were now gone too. I guess that is the least of the school's worries.

Even though the breakin was disheartening, I was so impressed with the way the Parks administration handled it. Everything was organized so that the most pressing needs were taken care of immediately (like our classroom) and others issues were taken care of within the school day. It was amazing to see how quickly the mess could be cleaned up.

One of my favorite students was expelled yesterday. He is a student that has a lot of energy and can definately be a lot to handle sometimes. It often takes him longer to understand a topic than the rest of the class, but when he finally understands it, you can see how excited he is through his actions and it is incredibley rewarding. So even though he was not an easy student, nor the smartest, he was one of my favorites specifically because of his energy and large personality. I finally figured out how to manage him and help him become a positive asset to the classroom: he became my computer clicker. I started making powerpoint presentations with our example problems and he would just click the arrow on my laptop to get to the next slide. That movement of being able to stand up and click the arrow and feeling like he was needed in the classroom made such a positive impact on his behavior in class, I could hardly believe it! However, he has some anger issues, and I couldn't do a lot for him when he cussed out and was defiant with another teacher, and he won't be back for the last few days of summer school. It breaks my heart because he was a student who needed to be in class and learning the material. He can still take the test next wednesday, but without those last few days of structured review, I can only hope that he will get the score he needs.

We have a three day weekend because of the Fourth of July, and it has been nice to simply relax today. Throughout the last four weeks I always try to have one day of free time when I don't do anything class related - and I think it has helped to keep me sane. Monday-Thursday I work about 16 hours a day and Friday and Sunday are about 10 hours a day. I need a totally free Saturday to remember that I am a real person still. Today I went to the World of Coca-Cola, where you learn about the history of Coke and you get to try Coke products from around the world. I tried some that I wish they sold in the U.S. and some that certainly made me aware of cultural differences in flavor preference. Afterwards, we went to the Georgia Aquarium, which is the largest aquarium in the world. It was so relaxing to just be able to stare at fish for a few hours.

After this weekend I only have 2 more days with my students before the test and I am not sure who is more nervous: me or them. I sent them home with a practice test to take this weekend, hopefully they will come back with it complete on Monday and with a better idea of how to take the test. Wish them luck!