Day of news

It is that time of year. The time of year when the schedules get mangled a bit. It's rough, but doable again. I did it last year, I can do it this year.

Kaydie moved to the other side of town and is now attending another school. I'm down to 19. She moved during break so she has been gone for a while. I hope things are going well for her family.

Since the Thursday before my spring break I have had one student only show up for two days. Two days attendance in ten possible days. I got my certified mail back saying that the address was vacant, so I'm not sure where exactly he is. The school's speech pathologist said that her assistant has seen the boy every day at the ballpark here in Helena. The boy is here in town, just not coming to school. She said that it was because his dad cut all his hair off. It's something completely new to me. I've heard about kids getting upset about haircuts, but enough so that their parents let them miss nearly two weeks of school? Crazy. That combined with the fact that he told me a couple of months ago that his dad is in "Mississippi Jail" because the police found something in his car that wasn't his. Not quite sure what exactly to believe.

Speaking of jail, it turns out that Sunday night/Monday morning 4 or 5 inmates escaped from the county jail, which is at the courthouse on Cherry Street, right downtown. So my school was on lockdown. Interesting way to start the week. Hearing conflicting stories from people, like possible shootings (which were dismissed by the police chief and my housemate that works at a bank), but nothing actually on the news. By today all had been recaptured, but not without incident.
One of my boys had been really out of it this week. I really got on him today and I called his mom during lunch to try to figure out what was going on, but I left a message. She called me up after school and gave me an idea as to why he might be a little distracted.
It turns out his mom's brother (boy's uncle) was shot. By one of the inmates. In the back. After a robbery. You know what...that would kind of knock me off for about a week. He is currently at the Med in Memphis and I hope he pulls through.

Everytime I think I've seen/heard it all, something new comes along.

The art teacher also sent me a student from another class because the boy's pants had ripped. Three safety pins to fix his pants. They had torn right down the back side, about as far as they could. Fascinating the thigns that happen during a normal day.

Even with all of that stuff I'm not down at all. You just kind of shrug it off and keep on rolling.

1. Nearly every student I've listented to in the past week and half has met my reading goal of 1.5 years of growth. I just need to get through the whole class to find all my numbers.
2. Most of my kids are doing better with coins. They are getting better at counting mixed coins, as well as coming up with ways to show different amounts.
3. Walking around during writing showed me that my kids are really trying out the things that I talk about during the mini-lessons.
4. Dil has been phenomenal since spring break. Only a couple of issues, but he's been energetic, laughing, smiling (you know, like a first grader should be). We just need to eliminate the chair vault from his repertoire and we'll be alright. Better attitudes make me feel better. And really seem to improve my standing in the eyes of my principal.

I'm starting to see things that we've talked about since the beginning of the year start to gel. It's a good feeling to notice that I've made an impact.