it's been rough

This week school has been rough for me.

I don't feel like I'm doing what I need to do. We are behind on things we need to get to. I can't tell whether the students are listening to me or not because they certainly won't participate in a class discussion.

They are not following directions on assignments even when they are written right there AND I tell them plenty of times. On the math test when it says to draw a picture of the problem ~ draw a dang picture!

They acted like hooligans in library yesterday for the third week in a row and earned a whole-class lunch recess detention from me. I'm so sweet like that.

And the thing is these are not naughty children generally. They are a pretty well-behaved class. I'm just not feeling effective. I feeling like such a failure that I almost marched myself down to Mary's office yesterday and told her that I needed to go home and may not be back. Luckily reason won over in my crazy brain and I did not. I gave myself a *teacher time out* instead.

I told Greg that maybe I need to be more organized, more prepared. Maybe I need to clean my desk at school. He said I am plenty organized and prepared for teaching. He said I need to be inspired.

And then to top this all off, Stephanie and Heather got themselves into a good deal of trouble yesterday. I had to give them a very yucky punishment. One that may actually punish me more than them. Although I did add that if they annoy me during the punishment period I'd make it longer. (What was I thinking?)

I'm hoping today is better.

I'm hoping next week is better.

Off I go to practice my mean face for detention today...although we all know I don't need much practice with that!