One of my cutest, sweetest, fourth grade students took ten, very long, emotional minutes to tell me that another student called him an elephant. I was so angry at that other student. He's my new BD kid, though, so I let all my anger go and turned the incident completely over to the office. I warmly welcomed him back to class when Mrs. Price was finished with him.
Well. I am not a patient person. Which makes it hard for me to be a team player. And the three person upper grade team next year is going to require my utmost patience. But, I'm not bad at talking a good talk.
The truth: I think things with Jen and Mark next year will be okay. If pushed by nothing more than the fact that Mark loves me, we'll work stuff out. He's even decided on Macbeth---which is exactly what I wanted! I'm optimistic, right now, about the plan, which I might start refering to as THE BIG IDEA. Going into that meeting this afternoon, I wanted my boss to just pull rank and make some assignments already. And I was ready to just deal with how much I'd probably hate how those chips might fall. But she's a much better leader than that---she helped us come up with something that will be really good for everybody and might be really good for every kid. A true win-win-win plan.
Exciting things to consider: a "high" reading class, teaching 5th grade math, all the 5th grade science and social studies core, bringing Mark into our upper grade team, Shakespere, graduation, 5th grade dance!
Fun Times Ahead.
Looks like I may very well end up teaching either a 3/4 split or a 5/6 split again next year.
It seems that since the written agreement makes provisions for teachers to not be required to teach splits every year, that the district ought to kick for two teachers per grade every year. IMHO.
None of the configurations for next year look very exciting. I'll make myself get more excited, if I must, but for now I'm just in a foot stamping mood.
