Monday, January 05, 2009

Easing into the New Year

Alas, it is over.

No more sleeping in. No more sitting in my jammies doing sudoko puzzles until noon. Not much college football left to watch (I swear, Daddy Bird and I watched just about every bowl game there was). No more afternoon movies with Hubster.

Yup, it's back to school.

We went back today. The kids, however, did not. I happen to love this. It gives us a day to kind of ease back into the routine (getting up at 5:00 am takes some getting used to again) and we get some good in-service time in.

Tomorrow, the chickadees come back to roost. Hopefully Santa gave them some work ethic and motivation for Christmas, but more likely he just hit them over the head with the hormone hammer. We'll see. It could be a pleasant surprise.

The good news is two of our worst-behaved and lowest achieving students withdrew on the Thursday before break. One, to a pre-adoptive foster home which is something this girl needed. She had the most useless foster parents I've ever encountered (wouldn't return calls, answer emails, basically were non-involved with this kids' academic and behavior problems) and she needed to be somewhere where someone might actually give a rip about her. The other was a young man who was living with his aunt and since he didn't bother to put forth any effort he was failing all his classes and was spending way too much time in ISS for back talk and generally being a pill. His father decided enough was enough and off he went to live with him in...North Dakota. Talk about a culture shock. I hope he has a warm coat because he's going to need it.

As for me, I need a nap.

5 comments:

ms-teacher said...

that is always a good thing when troublesome students leave. However, it can also be a bad thing because it then leaves you open to new students that you don't know. I'll keep my fingers crossed that if you do get new students that they are good students as well :)

I had one of my students leave right before the holiday break. She was very talkative and a major slacker. Otherwise, I didn't really mind having her in my class. However, I realized after I signed off on all her papers that earlier in the week, she had borrowed one of my new books from my classroom library. I doubt that I'll ever see that book again.

ChiTown Girl said...

I hope the girl in foster care has better things coming her way. I've encountered far too many "bad" foster parents, who basically are in it for the monthly check. It's so sad.

I hope you don't get two knew pains to replace the two that left ;-)

Sarah said...

I miss our day back wothout the kids! Hope it goes smoothly tomorrow!

ChiTown Girl said...

Obviously, that should be "two NEW pains." Man, I should NOT type when I'm sleepy!

The Vegas Art Guy said...

Nothing like a bunch of 7th graders to kick you back into the swing of things!