Man, my class is just having trouble pulling it together as far as behavior and following directions. We had more names on the board than ever today. One problem with my discipline system is that the consequences of one check next to your name is 10 minutes out of recess. Two checks is miss the full recess. However, my kids go to math before recess and the math teacher gives them a LOT of work. Then when they end up not finishing it she keeps them in her room during recess and thus I cannot follow through on the ten minutes out of recess because you broke a rule because she's holding them out of recess anyway. I think I'm going to talk to her about it soon...I don't feel like keeping my homeroom in her class during recess is good for me and my system nor my kids. It's kind of a hard thing to bring up..especially since she's my mentor (which I'm required to have as a first year teacher).

Today one of my kids comes walking back down the hall after recess just sobbing. I thought he'd been out in recess and forgot that he'd actually been in math still. I thought surely something terrible happened in recess. I asked him what happened and he wouldn't tell me. I had him go stand in a less crowded area and pull himself together while I went in the room for a minute. I came back out and he had those post-sobbing hiccups...you know? That kind of sucking hiccupy thing people get after they've been crying really hard? Anyway, I said "Now tell me what happened" and between his gasping cry-ups he managed to get out something like "I didn't*gasp* do*gasp* the right homework*gasp* and Ms. Mathteacher *gasp* made me do the right sheet." WHAT?! Are you kidding me?! This kid was sobbing like his family just died and it's over the fact that he had to do his math work?! I was speechless. What is wrong with these kids? It seems like at least one kid bursts into tears during math class at least once a week. When I was a kid I pretty much couldn't care less if I didn't get my math work done...I guess these kids are already shooting for scholarships or something.

What do you think about men wearing pink shirts? One of my coworkers wore a pink shirt and a pink tie today. I'm not so into it myself. I think I'd rather wear denim.

Today we started science (we are on a revolving thing of 4 weeks social studies/4 weeks science/4 wk soc. studies/ and on...). All of my kids seem to have it in their heads that science consists of mixing dangerous and possibly explosive chemicals together. They seemed really fixated on chemicals and explosions. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing. I need to explain to them that they're confusing "science" with "mad science."

Later.

Oh yeah, one more kinda funny thing happened. Today during our silent reading time, after I'd asked them to quit talking multiple times I saw a kid talking and said "Ok, Bernie, that's a check by your name." Then the kid next to him pipes up and says "I was talking too!" I guess he didn't want to be left out since I was passing out checks.