Is it my job?

This is something I have always struggled with as a teacher.  Whose job is it to get students to finish work they didn't complete before the deadline?  In the old days I hunted them down like a sniper.  Nowadays though, all of that assignment information is available online, easily available for parents to look up any time night or day.  


So my thinking is that if the parents care what grade their students get, they'll get after their students to get it done.  If they want my help, they'll ask me for it.  I shouldn't have to harp on them constantly at school.  I'm not saying I never talk about it.  I give them lists of missing work at least once a week and there's a reward activity each Wednesday for students who have everything turned in.  It's the chronic non-workers that are killing me.  I have about 8 of them.  Do I keep them in from every recess and hold them back from every special?  Or do I figure their parents can deal with it and move on to other stuff?  I want to let the parents deal with it, but I also know that they won't ever stand a chance of passing a test if they never do an assignment.  

Everyone Else's Mother Said Yes

Started off the day with six students absent.  


I wish I could have been absent.  


My husband just came in and said it felt like a Friday.  How nice for him, it feels like a Monday all over again for me.


Ok, I stand corrected.  He told me today that what he meant by it felt like Friday was that the two days felt like a whole week.  We were in the same boat, so tonight we did some restaurant therapy and went out to dinner together.

What they understand

Yesterday at church I helped out in the nursery for a bit.  We sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" which was lots of fun.  Of course this led to some discussion of noses and one little boy said to me; "My Grandpa says my nose is ugly."  What a thing for a grandfather to say?!?!!  I told him I thought his nose was just adorable.
Later on, I got to thinking, this child is 2 or maybe 3 years old, does he even know what adorable means?  I wonder if he thinks I told him his nose was ugly too?

Kids Say the Darndest Things

I was reading through some journal entries the other day.  Yes, I read the journal entries of my students.  They know it too so it's not like I'm invading privacy.  They shouldn't have an expectation of privacy in an assignment they do for school.  
One of the boys wrote something very interesting.  The topic was "Things I Don't Like."  What he said he didn't like was when people took his glasses from him, put them on and said "Wow! You really can't see."  He compared it to someone taking away someone's wheelchair and saying "Wow! You really can't walk."  
Good point.  Not bad coming from the 12 year old.  

Even when I'm organized, I'm not

It's hard to remember, but there was a time when I made lists of everything that needed to be done and crossed them off as I did them.  I actually belonged to an online group with 8 other ladies and we posted our lists, talked about what we were able to accomplish during the day and our kids, etc...  The online group started as a yahoo group, went over to a message board, but pretty much died when facebook was born.  We're all friends on facebook, but we don't interact as much there.  You don't say the same things on such a public place that you might say on a private message board.  I miss that.  I have things I'd like to say that I don't want to post to the whole world.  
Must be time to have breakfast with the girlfriends, but the date we were talking last wasn't until October.  <sigh>

Sixth Grade

So far so good.  Actually, (shh, don't tell anyone) I think I'm kinda starting to like it.  There's a lot more prep involved and not just because I've changed grades.  However, I can get a bit done during the day because once I launch them on a project or assignment they can work on their own for short periods of time.  I can see how some people think that this age ought to be in a middle school instead of the elementary, but from my viewpoint, I can see so many little things that say they're not quite ready.  Certainly by the end of the year most of them will be more than prepared for the shift into jr. high.  For those who argue we're holding back the ones who "are ready" I'd say that we'd be doing far more harm to advance the non-ready kids than we do by keeping back the ones that are ready.