Riding the Vomit Train

That's right, my class rode the vomit train today.. 3 kids were absent because of the Muslim holiday and two more left before specials after puking. Two more kept telling me their throat's hurt but I didn't really know what to tell them except drink some water. I am pretty sick too and felt like crap when I woke up so I slept in until 5:45 this morning - needed that. However, my Dayquil kicked in right in time to make it a fantastic fun Friday!

Every Friday afternoon, I am responsible for giving the children "Fun Friday". This is to celebrate blue star behavior. I suck at coming up with fun ideas so I always make it sound like it's going to be epic and then I run out of time at the end of the day and we do a funny dance to the building from the portable or sing silly songs or laugh a lot. Today, after they finished their math quizzes, I left them DEAR (Drop everything and read) and after a while, they asked if they could draw on my white board. I said, sure.. Fun Friday! And off they went.

And.. they imitated me (slash potentially mimicked me. It went like this. Mary said, "Look boys and girls, there is a subject and a predicate!" (She begins to do my subject dance) and then goes.. okay kids, "Punch the predicate!" And I am thinking to myself, is a 7 year old really making fun of me to my face? I thought it was cute/funny and prayed to God that they weren't actually making fun of me. I think they actually like me. I heard one of them say to Mary, "Ms. W, you're such a nice teacher! My favorite!" Then one goes, "Work Hard, Get Smart! We need to reach our big goal." So, even though they act like they are not always paying attention, they might be listening to some things that come out of my mouth. All in all, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were not making fun of me because they were mean-spirited but rather they might like me and.. want to be a teacher one day. I keep talking about going to college and some of them asked "Is college hard?" I said, they were so smart, college would be a challenge, but they could handle it. They also kept asking if they could put more treasure in their treasure chest. I said we need 80% to reach our big goal and next week, we would do another round of applause for those working toward their goal. I think they might actually be getting it. They thought it was funny when I refused to let them in at 7:45am until they told me why they were excited to come to school today. My favorite responses included: SO I CAN LEARN and.. BECAUSE I MISSED MY TEACHER. Kristie and I have established it's a serious issue that I have not taught any phonics yet, but I can start that up on Monday. I am thinking that because they are invested in learning and school, they are going to be more excited to pay attention and learn.

I am being required to attend professional development all day Thursday. I.E. I need to create sub plans for that day. I am SO nervous about leaving them with someone else - what if they are bad.. what if they ride the vomit train again.. what if Katie plays with the Sub's shoes when she's trying to read to the class.. or Yule farts so loudly while you're reading that the whole class cracks up.. these are my babies. I am leaving them with a rando! (Moral of the story: I think I need to get a hobby.)