It Won't Mean a Thing in a Hundred Years

I just wrote this in the comments on Karen's blog. It's a line from a Blues Traveler song that we used to listen to in college. We would say this line to each other when we were having a bad day/week/test/relationship. She's having a tough go of it this week, and I have to say, I'm feeling the same way today. Today was my solo day, and it didn't go so well. People have been trying to tell me that it's the weather, a full moon (coming or going) and that the kids just felt the change of having me in charge. They were feeling something, that's for sure.

The day started out great. I got there early, had everything ready. I greeted each cherub at the door as Linda does every morning. I even remembered to hand out a pencil to each kid, the "treat" they got for all bringing in their math homework yesterday. Then I let the kids who had breakfast eat their breakfast, and we had our morning meeting. It went well, and I was feeling positive about the morning.

As we got up from our morning meeting and started the math lesson, all h*ll broke loose. I must have told a handful of kids to be quiet about 5 times each. One boy, who has some challenges, crumpled up his worksheet in a tight ball and threw it across the room in frustration. Each time I would make any kind of pause, the kids felt the need to fill that time with chatter. The sub who was with me tried to help out with damage control, but the kids were on a roll. I lost all thoughts about what we were supposed to do, eliminated some important parts, and finally gave in to giving them a math game to play. I was calling out the reserves.

After math I did our snack and story, which seemed to settle everyone down. (Except for the crumpled-paper boy who felt the need to rip up the paper towel that held his pretzels because "he only got six." Somehow it was my fault that he only had one pop-tart for breakfast, and that his normal supply of waffles at home were gone.)

I then went right into the writing lesson which also went pretty well. Crumpled-paper/ripped towel boy refused to write and spent most of the rest of the day in his own world. I figured, let him be.

The afternoon went a little better. We had Reading, Science (I showed a movie), Recess and Computers. My kind of afternoon. I was so relieved that the day was over at 3:42 p.m. I could just go back to observing most of the day tomorrow and get my bearings back and see what I did wrong. Linda could give them a talk and it would all be a new day.

Not.

Linda came into the room this afternoon (she had to be back for a staff meeting) and told me that her son had a 103 degree fever and her husband had already took 2 days off this week. If she decided to not come in, she would call me. Sure enough, while I was out to dinner with a friend, she called. "Hey Kelly. I'm not going to be in tomorrow." That's all I needed to hear. Visions of today came rushing back, and I just wanted to crawl into a hole.

Tomorrow? Well, I'll be there. The good news is they'll have art at the beginning of the day, and computers toward the end of the day. I'll let you know how it goes. Can a math game take up the rest of the day?!