March

Well it certainly became March quickly. I'm not really sure that I could fully begin to explain what life has become, except for saying something like "grown up".

It is the strangest feeling to be responsible for so many other people...to be responsible for when someone drinks water, eats, goes to the bathroom...really, very strange.

I believe the official count is 47 instructional days until summer. Another teacher was wearing a sticker on her shirt with the number...

I never, EVER thought that teaching would be simple or easy or some other synonym, but it is by the far the most difficult thing I've ever done in my entire life. It's also the greatest exercise in self-control that I have ever experienced. Hopefully next year, I will be a normal classroom teacher, not elective, and will only have 20-24 students (rather than 120+). I suppose it has been good in the respect that a lot of kids know who I am now, but for having it be my first teaching position, it is incredibly overwhelming. I never really feel like I am doing anything effective or that anyone is actually learning. Most of the time I feel like I'm babysitting 24 kids who curse and eat and yell and dance and beat the shit out of each other. That I don't understand as much. Why is everyone constantly hitting one other??

Some good things do happen. The PreK students are pretty hilarious. (See: Banana phones at breakfast, "Kendrick, hang up your banana and start eating!") I find the First Graders to be an enjoyable crowd as well. The other day they were drinking off the water fountain and this one little girl comes to me to tattle about another student saying, "Ms. Brook, he got two scoops of water!!" I could only laugh.

Anyway, that's life now...summer's not that far away.