Too much fighting!!!

The weeks are flying by. Weekends are always something to look forward to. Last weekend Dad came to visit! We had a very good time. We enjoyed the hot tub, TV (a novelty these days since we don’t have one), Georgetown, and other DC attractions. We got to go to the spy museum which was my favorite part of the weekend. One part of the museum was interactive and we were able to find out valuable information for the government. We even got new identities. J

This past weekend was nice and relaxing. We were suppose to go to Philadelphia with our supervisor, but it was raining all day Friday and Saturday so we decided another weekend was a better idea.

School is getting better. The good days are starting to seem more frequent these days. I am not sure if my attitude has changed, if I am just use to it, or I am actually making some kind of a difference; I am hoping it is the latter. I can see my students improving a little bit so that is encouraging. There are so many things I want to do with my students, but my time is running out. I only have 4 weeks of school left! That blows my mind a little bit considering I felt like it would never end in the beginning. A lot of days feel very unproductive, but I do what I can. In fact on Friday I felt like it was a very unproductive day, full of simply managing the class. However at the end of the day I was so sick and tired of all the fights that had gone on in my class I was ready to explode. There had been the usual arguments about “busing in the line” or getting in front of someone in line, fighting over pencils, paper, markers, anything you could imagine, etc… But then on I also had the extra pleasure of dealing with one girl who had written a note to someone that said “Edugwu is ugly.” I intercepted the note and immediately dismissed the girl from my classroom in order for her to think about what she had written and to keep me from screaming. She consequently stayed with me during recess and wrote one nice thing about everyone in the class. Then after lunch I caught two girls making fun of another’s student’s ears. SECOND grade people, I mean come on! In second grade you should be sweet and innocent. So at that point I had had enough. I got everyone quiet real quick and proceeded to give a talk about how making fun of each other is rude and I would not have it in my classroom. After I finished my speech I went around the room and let everyone give one complement about each student in the class. It was actually really cute and went really well. Everyone was eager to give out compliments and some were really adorable. So that is the kind of teaching that takes place a lot around here. It was the only productive thing that went on all day Friday, but it was an accomplishment. I just wish that one time would stop the constant fighting. One step at a time.

I found out I will be going to Utah for spring break and I am really looking forward to that! I can’t wait to see everyone! Keep in touch!