Day before Valentine's Day

This has certainly been a week for news. Yesterday I got the most profound statement from one of my students. Xander said, "when your parents say you're dumb, that means you can't get smart ever." Totally going against malleable intelligence. It took him five minutes to get that thought out, but I was proud of him for actually constructing that thought. My children are capable of profound statements, even the untrue ones. We quickly cleared that one up.

Long story of the week, only two days in.

One first grade teacher evidently received calls from 12 parents concerned about their students, so as a result, myself and the two other teachers have gotten those twelve students. We each got four, and now my number is up to 23 and hers is down to 6. They are with us for all of the day, except lunch and activity, because they are still on her roll. We just have three weeks to get them ready for the ITBS. All of the students that we got seem to be at varying levels, all below our class. Some of them are completely unfamiliar with routines. I even got one student that that could not read his own writing. Right now I don't have any of her students materials/books. That equipment has not been sent to me. When I asked her yesterday morning about one of her students, about two hours after they had been moved to my room, she said that she had a lot going on that morning and that I'd need to write it down and get back to her. I told my TA and we were both confused as to what she had going on that morning with a class a quarter of the normal size. I figured it was somewhere between nerve and gall.

Second bit of news. The student that had been defiant, and I thought I had removed from my class room will actually be returning to my room on Tuesday. He was never actually taken off my rolls. The return of him would put my numbers up to 24 students. I started this Monday with 19 and in a week I'll be up to 24. I'm still trying to get his behavior out of my other students. With that addition that would make me have 4 times as many students as she has in her classroom. I woudl seriously love to know what is going on with her. I even formed an opinion when I first met her during the summer. Did not like her then, and that was just based one the first day at the ARF camp with her.

Now on to some good things.

1. There was a dance at my school last night and I watched quite a few of my students dance their little feet off. It did a lot to put a smile on my face after a rough day.
2. I've actually gotten some slightly encouraging words from the other teachers in the grade. It's a shared problem that we all have so we are getting through it with a bit of humor.
3. We tried to do some group thinking and working today. It went alright for a first day.
4. I tried to focus on centers today and doing the work that is required, and most of them got it. It's something that I seriously need to work with. I do not feel like I am good at teaching them what they need to do, but most of them knew how to do the work today.

Fighting the good fight everyday.