Bad Day

Bad Day, bad mood. It's something about having only a week more until a 2 week vacation, and that week will be on Chanukah, and every single teacher giving a test to finish a unit before the break, and even I did that, but it means they are so loopy all day because of having three tests and not being able to focus in class.

I also am finishing a unit with each class next week, because who wants to come back and not be learning something new, but I wish there was another way and that we could be just able to just have class and not have consequences and all that annoying stuff and that we could just have a good class for a change, would that be so terrible?

DD says we shouldn't punish negative behavior of a whole class, instead we should do something fun and interesting. But how about the fact that I plan something really awesome and then they chat so much that I can't get a word in to give instructions, so I don't, and then they don't know what to do or we have no time to do it, and everyone leaves upset. How do I fix that one? I don't know, and barely getting quiet for 5 minutes means that I often don't really have any choices. Maybe it's going to have to be back to the worksheets and only having written instructions and no oral ones. But it's just more work for me to get something near the same result, and less well done since no one has ever taught them how to make or fill in a chart or graph or how to read one. I hate that I am now becoming the teacher who asks them to have it but then doesn't give them a chance to learn it on their own. And in this case, I don't even feel like it's my fault.

But I don't know how to make it better.