Sorry this is late today. This site was down for maintenance when I came to post earlier.

Anyway, today went pretty well. I got some papers graded, had a three good interactions with parents and actually made a little progress on my junkyard desk.

I had one scheduled parent conference and two unscheduled short ones today. The scheduled one went pretty well but I was a little worried about the guy...after just walking from the front of the school and then up one flight of stairs and to my room he was wheezing like an asthmatic in a Bingo hall (anyone who's ever been in a Bingo hall filled with chain-smoking old women know what I mean). I guess he smokes...at least I hope so...if not then he's got some other problems.

Tomorrow the kids get to go to the big high school pep rally (rah.). Today I told them if they weren't to the point in their writing journals that I've been telling them they need to be at for 3 weeks then they aren't going to the pep rally. I have this one kid who just doesn't write...getting him to write is like pulling teeth...as soon as I said that about the pep rally though, I'm not kidding, this kid starting whipping out sentences like Bob Saget whips out cheesy jokes. Within 20 minutes he had two pages written. Sheesh...all it took was the right motivation...what'll I use next week?

Another incident that happened this afternoon was that my new kid writes me a letter asking how I'm doing and then telling me she's not doing so good. I asked her why and she wanted to talk in private so I took her out into the hall and she told me that while she was in the bathroom another girl was staring over the stall at her. I don't know what is up with these kids and peeping. I'm constantly walking into the boys bathroom and finding students trying to look through the cracks to see who's on the can. Anyway, it's not that big of a deal but these days it's the kind of thing that can turn into lawsuits and ugliness so we referred it to the office.

I kinda felt like I was starting to come down with another cold today. I don't know...I feel better now. It's hard to avoid though. Any time I call up a kid to my desk and put something down to look at in front of me the kid is immediately at my side practically on me and breathing in my face..I'm constantly telling them to back up. Also if you're standing somewhere in the class and one kid comes up to ask you a question suddenly 5 are there crowding around. I have a rule about not getting out of your desk without permission but when they see that one who did it they all suddenly need to be there. "Where two or three are gathered together..."

Out