Pooped.

2004-12-09 at 10:47 p.m.

So I had just written a long entry about a referral I had to write today that is kind of breaking me up a little. It's for a girl in my last class of the day so I haven't gotten a chance to process it like I should have. And it wasn't for the any of problems in my last class of the day that are visible--the three boys who are smart but won't shut up or pay attention, or the one boy who shuts up but won't try, or the boy who clearly doesn't belong in Algebra and is on an IEP but I can't get any information about him or why he's in there and he insists he got an A in Algebra last term but he really can't do anything, or the two girls who are so full of energy that when they are involved in class it's great but when they aren't, they distract everyone else too. It wasn't any of them, it was the pretty girl who doesn't raise her hand but does her homework and knows the answer when you call on her. And it wasn't for acting out, but almost worse, I think, and I'm worried.

This whole last class is a microcosm, a really condensed version of the whirlwind that is my school day. When this class goes well, I leave the school on a high. I feel so powerful and like I was really meant to teach. I feel like a conductor after a standing ovation.

When it's like today, where I lose my cool, where they beat me down a little bit, where I find the silent problems that I was missing because of the noisy ones that I'm still not handling, those days, I feel a little bit overwhelmed and lost and like, god, there's so many kids getting lost.

And this is just one class. God, I feel so bipolar. Huh. So this is what teaching's like.

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