(Originally posted 3/10/12)

It’s that time of year where the end is almost in sight, but the road ahead can seem impossibly long.

It gets tough.

Since the “entities” aren’t in our classroom, our frustration sometimes ends up falling on our students. I wish that it didn’t. I know that we try not to let it. Truth is, it often ends up there anyway.

I know that it is happening to me when I look out at my kids and these strange thoughts start sneaking up on me….

Why can’t they pay attention?

Why can’t they see how much I care?

Why do they fight me all the time?

Why do they think that everyone else’s class more important than mine?

Why are they so angry?

and then I realize that I’m talking about me and my feelings not about my students.

Sigh.

I know I’ve said it before, but I need to hear it again: We don’t get the students we want, nor the
students we think that we deserve. We only get the students that we have.

On Ben Slavic’s blog, folks are revisiting the beginning of the year rules. There is a feeling that we need to re-establish the rules….and a wish that we could start over again. I think that I know why.

We are not teaching the students that we had in September. Those kids are gone. We have a new group now, it’s March. Oh maybe they inhabit the same bodies, but the person inside is different.

I know that I have days when I wish that some of them were the same as they were in September: more refreshed, more open, a little less jaded. There are other days when I wish that they would be a few months older: more responsible, more mature, less restless.

But they aren’t. And I have moments when I just want to scream.

I think it is time for me to go back and get to know the kids again. Time for me to stop demanding, stop wishing, stop what-iffing.

I have 100+ really cool human beings in my room. At this time of year I find myself with only my flaw-glasses on. Time for new lenses.

For me, new lenses sometimes means a new routine…or at least a bit of a change. It’s as good a time as any!!

with love,
Laurie

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