Week 15: Two More Weeks?

Monday:

    Today was definitely a little weird. It's nice having Andrea back in the room, but I'm not really sure what to do now while she is teaching! I have all of the little things as my responsibility still along with reading and science. No longer do I teach math or writing. It's two big slots during the day that I feel like I should be doing something, but instead I feel like I'm just sitting there doing nothing! However, it is nice not having to plan for math and writing because those took up the most time.

    Other than that, the students still see me as their teacher. We had another issue today with a young girl in the class who writes letters to other students. During the day we have a time where they can work on their writing and write letters to one another. There weren't any problems, that we knew of, when I first got here; but lately we have been having a lot of problems with notes and letters.

    This young girl wrote a mean letter to another student saying that they weren't friends anymore. It's disappointing how nasty they can be to one another. I pulled them out in the hallway and talked for a little bit, but it didn't seem like it had any affect on the student who wrote the letter. Whereas the one who received it was crying. It's frustrating dealing with situations like that.

Tuesday:

    Not many exciting or disturbing things happened today, it was finally a pretty normal day! =) We had science where we started working with small ramps and marbles. It's amazing how into science they get when they are given the opportunity to experiment and work with their hands. They ask me every single day, "Miss Geer, do we have science today? What time? What are we doing?" They seriously can't wait for it, and it definitely shows me that they need more hands-on learning like this.

    Speaking of hands-on learning, we actually had a long discussion about that today. Andrea really wishes that she had time for more stuff like this, but they really don't. I hope in my future classroom I figure out a way to implement this at least once a week. Students need to be up moving around and problem-solving on their own. It's amazing to see what they can come up with when they are given the opportunity to learn on their own. It has really shown me how important it is that I have this, but also how smart these kids are!

Wednesday:

    Today was a day full of issues, but most of them were at least solved! I had a student who apparently squirted his water bottle at the wall while we were in line at the bathroom. I didn't see it myself because I was dealing with some of the girl drama happening in the room. Afterwards I heard a few boys in the back of the line giggling so I asked what was going on and another student told me that two boys were squirting the sign.

    I honestly had no idea to believe, so I learned something new today; guilt works VERY well on most young students. I just waited until one of them was honest with me because they both denied doing anything. Then I reminded them I could ask everyone behind them in line who they saw do it. After they realized they would be caught, one of them finally confessed. I still had to have him move his clip down for lying.

    Then I heard some more of the girl drama going on within the class. Apparently what it came down to was a girl had hurt feelings. However, this girl with hurt feelings was having her mom constantly talking to the principal and Andrea because she told her mother she was being bullied. FINALLY we got it straightened out and this student was making up lies because her old best friend doesn't hang out with her anymore. Who knew there was so much girl drama in second grade! Definitely learned a lot about dealing with those kind of situations this week. =)

Thursday:

            Today was pretty easy since we only had about half of our class here! It was take your child to work day today, so seven of our students were out for the day. On these days you are almost scared to work too far ahead because so many students would miss it. Andrea was going to work further with adverbs, but figured she would save it for Friday since so many students were out.

            It was kind of crazy how quickly and easily we were able to get everything done! Since there weren’t as many students to work with and worry about, it made the day go very quickly and very easily. At the end of the day, we had a reading lesson that didn’t take long at all; so we ended up getting some extra time for recess! It was a beautiful day, so we weren’t complaining! =)

            An update with the new second grade girl drama show; the young girl that started all of the unnecessary drama seemed so happy today! The two girls that “took” her best friend away were both gone and she was able to spend time with her. Everyone was getting along great, which made for a relaxing kind of day! =)

Friday:

            I wasn’t in school today since I was going to a rehearsal dinner in Indiana. However, I missed a lot and Andrea called me during the rehearsal dinner! I figured since she was calling it must be somewhat important, because she usually just texts if it’s not a big deal.

            So, this week we talked about all the girl drama in second grade that was STRICTLY going on between the girls. The young girl’s mother came in to talk to the principal because she said her daughter was still being “bullied”. (Basically it was when she would ask someone to be quiet and they wouldn’t listen. I said that it was good she wanted everyone to follow the rules, but just because they weren’t listening doesn’t mean they are trying to hurt her feelings.)

            After the mother talked to our principal, our principal decided to move a random student out of our class and into another second grade classroom! This poor boy had nothing to do with the problem, unfortunately our principal doesn’t really know that; and didn’t ask Andrea about it. So now we will have only 19 students, a girl who will still be upset for random things even though the “problem was solved”, and a student who is with an unfamiliar class for the last month of school. This was absolutely UNBELIEVABLE! I cannot understand the mindset or the thought process of this decision, and I’m really disappointed to see that as a solution. I guess this placement really will prepare me for a lot of random things in my future teaching career.