Riding My Broom

 I used to be a nice teacher.  Now I just feel like a witch riding a broom to school every day.  Or a bitch.  Yeah, honestly, that's the one I feel most.  I really didn't wake up with the intention of going to school and being an old cranky teacher (that's actually fear I have honestly), and I don't actually think I am, but it gets so stinkin' old having to correct behaviors and pause teaching to wait for children to get back on track or provide the logical consequence or write children up and notify their parents......  I just want to teach.  That's all I really woke up wanting to do.  :(  Why can't it just be that easy?

I had a meeting today.  This new school I moved to this year calls it the CAT team (I don't actually know what CAT stands for, but it's the MTSS team meeting where we discuss students of concern and I share the data I have collected for progress monitoring and interventions I am providing, etc.).  Towards the end of the meeting, after we've discussed a bazillion things and SEVERAL of my children, my administrator says (without even looking up at me), "You have quite a number of characters in your classroom.  Your hands are full."  Hmmmmm.....  You think?!?!?  And you're the one who gave them to me, is what I was thinking but didn't say. 

And "characters"- that's putting it politely.  You mean I have one extremely violent child, two students already identified with autism (one profoundly so) and one we all suspect is also autistic (as even the principal said today), three students already identified with ADHD and six or seven that are not yet officially identified or whose parents haven't told me- they "take medicine," four children who have or still do self-harm (three learned it this year from the violent child), one child with extreme emotional problems who is literally "scared" of everything - the sun, flies, bees (or anything she thinks might be a bee including an ant crawling on the ground), the fire alarm, my whistle, or even the jingle of my keys- to a debilitating point that prevents me from being able to teach many days....  I have the class that looks like it's got ants in the pants to put it mildly.  They honest to God can't help it.  I know it;  I am trying SO HARD to be patient and understanding and kind and all the things they need me to be.  They can't get through a single lesson, no matter how short, without screaming out, interrupting, blurting and talking over each other or me.  Yeah, "characters."  That's what they are.

But there was something positive in the day that I should note.  One child who has been SOOOOOO resistant to all my efforts to get her to do more, even though she's more than capable, gave me a true level 4 piece of writing today!  She and I have been having some good talks about the "smart kids" as she calls them, and working through her fear of not looking smart to one particular classmate, and I think maybe she's listening to me more than I knew.  She's been coming to me for help, letting me work with her, taking my suggestions for how to improve assignments, and then today on her own she just slammed a science writing task- making a rock riddle about sedimentary rocks- out of the park!  I was so tickled with her work; she really made me proud!  I made a BIG HUGE deal to the class, messaged her mom, the works!  Thanks kiddo- I needed something to hold on to so I can make it one more day.