Sunday Stomach

Usually when Sunday night finally comes around, I get what I call "Sunday Stomach." It's the feeling in my stomach of a little bit of anxiety for Monday to come and school to start yet again. It's not so much nervousness as it is anticipation of what the week will be like. I've had a good, restful weekend, especially since I had a break from students on Friday.

The first quarter just ended and Friday I had to go in to post grade and attend professional development. I posted grades in the morning...and unfortunately, I did have a few F's and D-'s. Our P.D. this time around was a curriculum mapping session in which we mapped out (tentatively) what the whole school will be doing/teaching the month of November and talked about ideas on how to integrate what the Social Studies department is doing with what the English department is doing etc. For example, sometime this month, 8th grade S.S. students will be talking about the causes of the Revolutionary war. Also sometime this month, 8th grade English students will be talking about the concept of cause and effect. The idea of curriculum mapping is to get the S.S. classes and English classes talking about cause/effect at the same time. It was about 3 hours long and I can't complain because I got some wonderful ideas.

After I had straightened my room and cleaned off my desk, I went to Clark Screen Printing to order sweatshirt for the Yearbook staff. I'm quite pleased with the company (another teacher in the building uses them and recommended them highly) and I'm even more pleased with what we came up with for the sweatshirt. I hope to surprise the staff in about a week with the sweatshirt. I had them put the Yearbook Theme ("Life's Too Short to be Ordinary") on the back and found a fun logo that I had actually used for some yearbook posters that I made. They will be black hooded sweatshirt and (Yay!) I ordered one for me, too!! I was going to have them embroider each students name on their sweatshirt but at $3.50 a name, it was getting kind of pricey. Tomorrow I'll have to let the students know that they each need to pay $10 for the sweatshirt; the school will pay the other half.

I had one sad day at school last week, I think it was Wednesday. I've basically said (maybe just to myself) all year that my 6th period is my favorite class. They're bright, they're interested, they participate. I have a few that struggle to keep their mouths shut and a few who like to wander randomly around the room, but for the most part, the class is every teacher's dream. One student in particular, who I'll call Bre, has been one of my favorites since the first week of school. She is very helpful and likes to participate. She has confided in me and asked for advice a few times. I talked at length to her mom at parent teacher conferences. Bre volunteered every day to stay after and clean the white boards. (Not in a freaky, brown-noser way, of course). This last Tuesday Bre walked in my room in a panic and asked to go to the counselor center. I wrote her a note, sent her on her way, and didn't see her back in class. Wednesday morning she came to my room during 2nd period with the form that teachers have to sign to let the student check out and transfer to a new school. I thought it was a joke. She, for reasons I don't know, decided to transfer to another junior high and will no longer be in my 6th period. I can tell you already that 6th period just hasn't been the same. I was seriously bummed out the whole day and pretty much the rest of the week. She left me her e-mail and promised to keep in touch. I hope that she continues to succeed, I know she will. I don't know if I had any affect or impact on her as a teacher, but I know that she had an affect and impact on me as a student.

Something new I'm starting tomorrow is weekly vocabulary. I know I'll hear lots of complaining and whining but it's almost painful to read any more of their majorly misspelled words! Also, based on Utah State core for English (what I'm supposed to teach in the 8th grade) there are several words that they need to know and several prefixes and suffixes they need to know. I've kind of figured I'll incorporate a few words they all misspell, a few of the words the state says they need to know, and a few words that include prefixes and suffixes. Joy!

I need to be reading in the literature book, finding some new short stories that I can use in the 2nd quarter Unit: Discovering our Place in the World. (It's going to be a multi-cultural unit with lots of reading, and not as much writing as they did last quarter.)

Have the greatest Monday of your life.