6th Graders

Ugh,
I love em, but they're killing me right now. Every day it's the same routine. We grade assignments in class and they never pay attention to the answers. You'd think after 4 days in a row they'd have some sort of clue but I end up repeating the answers again and again and again and again and and and and.....

What is so hard about it anyways? 7th graders can handle it, and most times they can't sit still for more than .0000002 seconds at a time and 8th graders can (and do) grade in their sleep. I find myself repeating the same instructions over and over again, more often that I do for the 7th graders, mind you these are supposed to be the smart 6th graders. What up with that yo? The course I teach is for normal (if they exist) 7th graders, so I should be dealing with the cream of the crop.

In other news, the troublemakers in 4th period all left. (that sound you heard was a champagne bottle popping) Some of the 7th graders in pre-algebra couldn't handle it and had to get moved to my class. This put me way over the maximum level allowed by the school, so the principal who normally only taught them for one period now teaches them for the whole block. Mr. P said that they did really well for him. I think it's because they're used to him and now their block is not disrupted my moving to my room with kids who do better in math than they did. His kids are the ones who struggle with math, like my 8th graders. But unlike my 8th graders, his kids did not comport themselves well in my classroom. I will miss some of them, and I'll miss others like I miss the intestinal flu.

Oh, and our open house for the super cool prep school is a week from Friday. My wife is excited because now I have to clean and organize my room for the open house. She spent 20 minutes telling me how cool the school is and 10 minutes ragging on me because my room is still not organized. I guess all her teachers in school were neat freaks or something.

Finally I had to write the professor who teaches the online course that I am trying to get into, because it's full and I need his permission to enroll. Hopefully he'll take pity on me knowing that some of his students will drop the class soon and then it won't be so crowded. If not then I don't student teach next spring. At least the people in the English department at UNLV were VERY helpful and were willing to point me in the right direction. Kudos to them for their help.