Hallelujah! WE MADE IT!!
Not going to lie, this has been the LONGEST week of my entire life. I think part of it was knowing break was coming but the other part was my lack of patience for my class (which was definitely my fault!)
I knew going into today it was going to be rough. Yesterday, as normal as I tried to keep the day, my kids were still insane! I knew because of that, I had to be ready for whatever happened.
Oh. My. Goodness. Seriously people, they were off their rockers! They are usually such amazing kiddos but today….I don’t know.
We spent the first half of the day watching Santa Clause 3 (which they voted for), so I assumed this would be a great way to start the day. I made them hot chocolate and gave them a candy cane to go with it. The perfect recipe for a great morning. Right!?
Most of my class was enthralled with the movie the whole time, but I had a handful of boys who could not sit still. The irony of it, is these are the boys who wanted to watch the movie more than anyone else. I had 2 boys, in particular, who were standing on tables and trying to push each other off. WHAT!?
My timing was off, so by the time the movie was over we still had 45 minutes until lunch. By the time we cleaned up from the movie (which took FOREVER) we had about 30 minutes to kill. Yes it took us almost 15 minutes to clean the room and calm down.
I decided I would read them the Polar Express thinking this would calm them down more. A 5 minute read aloud took me 20 MINUTES!!! I kid you not!! They could not stop talking to save their life. It didn’t help that I was disrupted by 3 different adults during the story. It was the most painful read aloud I’ve done all year.
Then they went to recess and lunch. THANK GOD!!!
To help my spirits, we had an all school potluck for lunch in the lounge, so I was treated to a fantastic lunch of appetizers and deserts that were motivation enough to go back to class.
I then gave my kiddos their gift. This was my favorite part of the day because they were very grateful and kind about what I gave them.
I decided to use my Scholastic points to order a Christmas picture book for each of them. I bought 2 sets of 12 Christmas books to wrap for them, which meant I had a copy of each book. I randomly handed them out and had them unwrap their book and find their “partner” who had the same book. They LOVED this! It made the day so much better!
To end the day we had an all school teacher talent show for the kids. My team was probably the most unprepared of the rest of the teachers, so that was a little stressful. We didn’t have our “act” planned until 5 minutes before the show started. We were scheduled to go last, so we decided to do a Christmas sing along with the whole school. We thought it was going to BOMB because the other grade levels did AMAZING and hilarious acts, but the kids all loved what we did. It was a relief!
Sadly though, when the show was over, we still had 30 MINUTES LEFT OF THE DAY!!! Trying to calm them down from something like that on a normal day is difficult, but trying to calm them down from something like that right before Christmas break starts is IMPOSSIBLE!!! I was going to read a short Christmas read aloud to them but they were so rude and disrespectful. I had a student ask me to “hurry up and get the story over with” so they could leave. I almost lost my sh** on that kid. Like, are you freaking kidding me!?
After that, I was literally counting the minutes until the bell rang.
It eventually did and parted ways for the break and I don’t think I’ve been as happy as that in a long time.
I promise you I LOVE my class but this break couldn’t have come soon enough. I plan on spending the next week and a half sleeping, eating, watching Netflix, and doing as little as possible. I could say I won’t think about school, but I know that this time next week I’m going to be ready to go back because I miss my kids so much!
UGH!! Where’s my wine!?
Life of the Rookie Teacher 