Fire drills and vampire bites

October 11, 2011

Gah!! So I got tired of waiting for the Etisalat guys to come back to finish my internet and called them up today, and the guy told me that it would be another 2-3 weeks!! When he left Saturday after his first, unsuccessful attempt, he told me that he would be back the next day. What a joke…

In other news, I got a call on Sunday from a student’s father to let me know that they would be taking a leave of absence from today until November 22^nd and he wanted to collect all of her schoolwork for her. TWO DAYS NOTICE!!! What?!?!?! The next day she told me that they’re going to Pakistan… I’m SO sure that that trip was only planned on Saturday, right? Oy…

And the student that’s been on my roster who’s never once shown up to class?... Oh yeah… she came today. Three weeks into school, and finally shows up. No explanation, no apologies, nothing. One of the office assistants came with them so I could sign the form saying that she was allowed into class, and they dropped her at my door. She’s a sweet girl, but now we’re 5 letters into the curriculum and she’s 4 letters behind. Awesome.

On a brighter note: Marwan did all of his work today during class, my first classroom observation by Caroline went pretty well yesterday, and the behavior reward chart is working wonders. It’s like suddenly, all of my kids can say please and thank you… All you have to do is put stickers next to their names for it. Haha! And throughout the course of the day yesterday I received a flower, a package of cookies, 3 kisses on the cheek, 2 “I love you” s, and a juice box delivered to my desk without even asking.

My kids are adorable. I just have to forget about how annoying the administrative side is and remember for whom I’m actually there: my students.

October 13, 2011

It’s the weekend!! Yay!! This week felt soooo long, but at the same time I felt really rushed with this week’s lesson plan. At any rate, next week is review week of what they’ve done in the past two, so it should be a piece of cake. We had our first fire drill today. I talked to the kids about what we’re supposed to do if there’s a fire, and how we line up and behave, etc. so that when it came time for it, they already knew. They did pretty well! It was hectic because the admin had the entire building going out one set of doors instead of using both entrances, but none of my kids got lost so I consider it a personal success. A few kids screamed when the bell started ringing, but I squashed that pretty quickly. Ha! One of my girls started crying hysterically when the bell went off though, and I still can’t figure out why she was so scared. So I put her at the front of the line with me and she was ok. Once we were settled outside I reminded her that it was just practice and that she doesn’t need to be scared if I’m there, because I will always take care of her when she’s at school. I’m not gonna lie, it choked me up a little bit. When she looked at me with those scared, big brown eyes and nodded her head and then hugged me, I melted.

I have this necklace, and the chain irritates my skin sometimes. Well I was wearing it today, and apparently had some red skin on my neck. One of my girls says to me, “Like this do to you?” Then she flaps her arms like a bat and pretends to bite her arm… She was asking me if a vampire bit me!!! I. ALMOST. DIED. LAUGHING.