again with the behavior problems!

I went to school today with the faint beginnings of a tickle in my throat. By 2nd period I was sporting a runny nose and watery eyes. During 4th period I started sneezing and my throat was worse. At lunch I made a quick jaunt to McDonald's (it was FREEZING outside!!) and got some OJ and then came and fell asleep on my desk for 35 minutes. By the end of 7th period I was in full shiver icky mode and left school at end-contract time of 3:08. Needless to say it wasn't the most spectacular of days. I came home, put on my PJ's and have been laying/sleeping on the couch watching TV.

I'm planning on calling in sick on Friday because tomorrow night Ben and I and some friends are going to be rockin' at the Billy Joel concert and I have a feeling the late night and a 5:30 wake up call won't mix. Call it irresponsible or what you will, but I have 27 sick days (10 carried over from last year) and so I'm going to use it. After my post is complete tonight I'll get in bed, all loaded up on cold medicine, OJ, and Ibuprofen.

Today my 8th graders filled out a Behavior Self-Evaluation form. I came up with 10 questions that they had to rate themselves on from 1-5. I looked at a few after school and was surprised with their honesty and integrity in their answers. I was expecting my most troubling students to put all 5's (usually the best possible choice) but they are all well aware of their behavior. Accompanied with this evaluation, I took the opportunity to review classroom expectations. This really helped out in 3rd and 4th period--they were complete angels today. 6th and 7th on the other hand...I may have to come up with some other system with them...

I also gave new seating charts today...never a fun day in Mrs. Hubert's room. I find that I have to change every 4 to 6 weeks because after a while the kids start getting in their comfort zone and start talking to people who they used to never talk to. 7th period especially had a difficult time with the new arrangement. One really annoying student (who, I can predict, will suffer from short man's syndrome his whole adult life) immediately proclaimed: "This seating chart sucks!" Again, I suppose I'd had enough for the day (that and the fact that I felt icky), so I quipped: "No, you know what sucks? What sucks is when I'm trying to teach and you keep whining and interrupting me." Not a proud moment or one I probably should admit here...

7th period was even more eventful because I kicked a kid out again...1st Worst Behaved 8th Grade Student. He's poison! He's dastardly! I took him to a neighboring teacher's room (a teacher whom the student fears more so than my giant 5'3 self). When he came back at the end of class to pick up his mid-term he hadn't done a lick of work, but I felt good knowing that he hadn't disturbed my class in the process.

Last night I had a chance to go out with my friend Sadie. We attended the lighting ceremony at Festival of Trees. It was great fun to spend time with my friend and get in the Christmas Spirit. Her mother-in-law recently passed away and some of the family decorated a tree in her honor. We also saw trees decorated by some of my relatives, a cousin and an aunt, in honor of the cousin's baby girl who died. Here are a few pictures.

This is the tree decorated for Sadie's mother-in-law. It was accompanied by a big flat screen TV, which came with the purchase of the tree. We were told the tree sold for $5,000.


This pink tree was decorated for my cousin Meagan's baby girl who died before she was born. I think my cousin said it sold for almost $1,700.








The giraffe tree was my favorite; not because I love giraffe's, but I thought it was really creative to have the giraffe literally part of the tree.


I mainly took this picture of the Star Wars tree for Ben. It's kind of hard to tell, but the tree is actually semi-covered in Darth Vader's cape and instead of an angel up top it is Darth Vader's mask. There were little Star Wars figurines all over the tree.