The rare and irregular rantings of Jenn...

Well, this our blog afterall. I realize I don't write very often. It's rare that I have time. But I have decided to take some time today.

First year teaching sucks. The first month of this first year was bloody awful. I am not really enjoying my job right now and what's more is I wonder if I ever will. Everyone says it gets better. I hope they are right, but right now I don't believe them. The kids are horrible people, every last one of them. They are all so obnoxious and I am starting to get really tired of dealing with them. I just don't remember it every being ok to waltz into a class late in junior high. I also don't remember it ever being ok to come to class unprepared, yet for some reason my students don't seem to understand why I get mad at them for these behaviours, or why they get punished for them. Usually when you rub a puppy's nose in his mistake he understands, it just doesn't seem to work the same with my students- they really don't get it. Sometimes I think maybe I should just be meaner, and that may be the approach I need to take with these kids. It seems to be what is needed. They all already hate me, and to tell you the truth I don't like them any either, so there is nothing to loose. I just don't ever remember these behaviours as being ok. Now to be completely honest, most of these behaviours are comming from my grade 9 social studies kids and not my band students, my band students are great and I like most of them.

What's really getting me right now is all the work I am doing just to "stay afloat" as the say. I have been putting in 14 hour days and working through the weekends right now. I calculated it out, and if this is what it takes, I am making about $12.00 and hour. I am getting to the point where I am considering not teaching next year if things don't improve soon. I am taking things one week at time in order to be a bit more positive and to look for the improvements. It's hard though, I am tired. I wake up at night and can't get back to sleep because I am thinking about work too much. On Tuesday I have 3 boys in for detentions at lunch for comming late to my class and waltzing right in during an in-progress exam. It gets better though... They thought it was ok to walk up to students who were writing their exams and start talking to them. The Gall! I couldn't believe it. So they have a lunch hour detention (because we can't keep them after school) and now I have to think of some creative punishment for them to fulfill. I am thinking of retorting to lines or making them write an essay, but I don't know.... Some peoples kids...sigh.

On a more exciting note, we got to go to two hockey games this weekend. We saw the Oilers beat Philly 5-3 on Saturday and yesterday we saw the Pats beat the Oil Kings 6-2... The Oil Kings have only been playing together for a few weeks though, I think there is still hope for them as a team... We took my little sister and the Spanish exchange student that has been living with my family to the Oil Kings game. She is an adorable girl and she loved the hockey. She escpecially loved the fighting and smashing. She also was quite intriuged by the fact that most of the boys on the team were 16-19, or at least she was until she saw their teeth....