Exhausted But Exhilarated

That's how my days have been.

I'm still behind the curve when it comes to administrative tasks (they still haven't shown me how to enter attendance yet), but so far it's okay when it comes to the actual teaching part. I come in tired and leave with a smile on my face, which is the opposite of how my work days have been, like, ever.

Tougher day today, in some ways, even though we spent our entire class period in the computer lab taking a standardized test. My 5th period...man. It's right before lunch, so they're antsy, and they really could care less. I had one kid in my class who decided that he'd take off between the classroom and the computer lab, so we didn't see him after we left our classroom and I'd taken attendance. I think he figured he wouldn't get in trouble because I didn't know his name yet. And I don't, but the same kid asked me for a hall pass yesterday, so I had his name written down. It was easy enough to transfer the name to an office referral form.

Most of these kids aren't even reading at a 7th-grade level, much less a 9th-grade level. One of them is about to be removed from my class because they've recently figured out his reading level is FIRST grade. How the hell do they get this far? And how the hell do I teach them Shakespeare? Shouldn't I be teaching them something that would be merely a challenge for them, rather than something that's hard even for the average 9th grader?

On the plus side, the English department head's son is in one of my honors classes. She told me that he mentioned me at dinner last night, saying that I was pretty cool.

"What makes her cool?"
"Well, she said this really funny thing to Ronnie [note: this is the punkass redhead I mentioned earlier]. She asked us to talk about what characteristics we were looking for in a wife or husband..."
"mmm hmmm"
"...and we were all saying stuff like smart, funny, good cook, stuff like that. And then Ronnie says, really loud, 'Big boobs.'"
"Oh dear. What did Ms. Ilse say?"
"She told him that she had asked what he was looking for in a woman, not what he already had. Everyone laughed."

Which is pretty much exactly what happened, and we were able to move on without further attempts at student humor. She told me that although her husband was taken aback at first, she assured him that my reply did two things: it told Ronnie that I was not going to lose my temper or become flustered at his immature comment, and it also told him that although he thought he was a pretty quick wit, I showed that mine was quicker. She said that she couldn't have asked me to handle that better. So that's cool.

The kids are going to be rioting tomorrow because it's supposed to start snowing around noon. THAT's going to be fun.