Maybe If I Vent...

...I'll feel better. My four boys were just rotten today. We ran the gamut from "Your momma" comments to kneeing someone in the crotch, to shoving in the classroom, to shouting matches over who tripped who. It was totally miserable. I have 21 other angels in my class. According to several different teachers, they have heard it from administration that I have the "toughest class in the school." Maybe someday that will feel like a compliment, but today it was awful. I just wanted to yank those boys off their seats and haul them to the office. 30 minutes after a talking to, two of the boys were at it again. I have to watch a few of them like hawks at recess to make sure they don't kill each other. They have little to no parent support. I have been told that Kagan will solve it, that Love and Logic will solve it, that community service will solve it, that phone calls home will fix it. Well, it's January, and none of those things have worked so far. I have one student that throws a fit every time he doesn't get what he wants, which is about 10 times a day...and I don't think that's an exaggeration. Sometimes I literally think he is going to drive me insane if he asks me one more time if he can go visit the SPED teacher or the school counselor...knowing that he won't have to do his work. It's a cycle, 5 minutes of class, 1 minute standing around to wait and ask me if he can leave, me saying no, 5 minutes of a tantrum, 10 minutes of scheduled time out of the classroom, he comes back, wants something, I say no, more tantrums and stomping, rinse and repeat.

Sorry to be so "woe is me." Tomorrow is a new day, but I almost had to take a timeout today. Things were going so well before Christmas, and then a few of them came back little monsters. I don't want people to feel sorry for me, I guess I just want this mess to be over, and to have my little angels back.

Pinterest in Action!

So since I had some time over break to think about fun classroom things to do, I implemented two things I saw on Pinterest this week that I want to do weekly.

The first was Homeworkopoly, and Ladybug Teacher Files has a great download for it here. I told the kids about it on Wednesday, and they got to roll for the first time on Friday. They were SO excited :) The great thing is that three kids landed on Chance cards, and two had to answer math review questions...the rest just landed on regular spaces. I had more kids turn in homework this week (although we are STILL battling NAMES on papers!) and so that was great.

We also did "Chicken Fat Friday." If you link here, you'll end up on a teaching blog. I kinda found this idea by accident. I was following through another idea on the same pinterest post, but found this because her video of the kids was just so cute. I found the Robert Preston song on Youtube, and played it yesterday afternoon. The kids were hilarious, and since I did it with them, I was sweating by the time it was over! I think it will be especially great for those Friday afternoons when we don't have PE that day and the younguns are restless!