so over this week.

Last week I had my first observation by my field advisor from the Fellows. He told me in our debriefing that had he entered my classroom not knowing who I was, he wouldn't have known I was a first year teacher. In response, I joked with him that he caught me and my kids on a good day - there are other days when he'd definitely know I'm new at this.

Today was one of those days. I had two almost-fights in different classes. One was a a shouting match I had to step in between before it got totally out of control. Luckily, one of the guys involved is normally very level-headed, and he's someone I've gotten to know pretty well. Ultimately, it was he who backed down after he finally saw me trying to intervene. The other incident involved an emotionally disturbed student repeatedly calling a girl a "bird." I was thankful then that my fellows advisor over the summer gave us a lesson on city slang, because otherwise I wouldn't have understood why the girl got so up-in-arms over the comment, which means "slut." That fight got a little more out of hand than that other one, and ended when the girl stormed out of the room right as an administrator was walking down the hallway. I stepped into my doorway and explained what was happening, and thankfully he escorted the male student out of my class as well. A benefit of being at a tiny school is that all I had to do was tell the administrator who the offending student was, and he already understood the situation based on this kid's history of similar behavior.

I'm drained, as you can probably tell from the quality of my writing, and it's only Tuesday. My first parent-teacher conferences are on Thursday and Friday. Friday our kids are getting released at lunch, and since it's Halloween most teachers are planning fun activities and parties in lieu of lessons. I'm looking for ideas for my classes, but may end up settling on feeding them and letting them watch a horror movie on my projection system.

Back to planning. Is it winter break yet?