Slothful students

Today I went to the girl's classroom (the one that made the thumbs' down jesture to the boy right after I told them that they got an "f" for their group work) and I asked her if there was a problem between us. Her comment was "no", so I asked her about the hand jesture and she said, "what hand jesture" and I showed her what she had done. I asked her why she did it and she said that she didn't remember doing anything. I then asked her if she had done it towards me and she said "no" (...aha, so now she was stating that she did do it.) I told her that I was shocked that she would even do something like that and that is why I stared at her--(That day I stared at her for probably about 1 minute, she got frustrated at me staring at her). I asked her for what purpose was she making the sign and she said that she didn't know. I said, "certainly you would know why you would make a "sign" like that," Nope, she didn't know why.....mmmm...what do you think???

Slothful Students

Wow, it seems like this is a never ending battle with one of my students. Today he was moved from one class to another--a "higher achiever" class. He is definitely not a higher achiever--just a discouraged young man. His attitude is "I don't care" which has never changed from the day he arrived at our school almost 2 years ago. How do we, as a nation, continue with children with this type of attitude. I thought maybe he might have been "molested", beaten, or badly humiliated as a young man and now we, as teachers, have to deal with his ATTITUDE. My only solution is to have him go to Mrs. Jacobs' 1st grade classroom and have him do work--music. My problem, other students in his "red" group decided to have the "I don't care" attitude; so therefore, I decided to give them all "f". All they had to do is to come up with a different rhythm for calypso; but they didn't. All the other students in their groups came up with a really neat rhythm except this group who has that child in it. This class is usually a fun class to have come into music; but now it has become the class from H----!! (Heck???) I have decided to have the "New/Old" student go to Mrs. Jacobs for 17 more weeks and work on a "packet". He will NEVER work on that packet--I know this from previous experience. How do I become "Christ-Like" and deal with him??? Just a rhetorical question...ok if you have an answer, let me know. The assistant principal has talked to him on several occasions and he has come in and apologized; but then it happens again and again. I know that I need to pick my battles with him--so I have tried to work around some of his obnoxious ways. I always decide that there comes a time that I have to take a stand and say, "I don't have to put-up with this nonsense; therefore, you cannot come back into my class." Problem is, he can get other students "going" and they will become like him. That is the situation in the "high achiever" class. Some decided to take on the same attitude; so I decided to follow through with my promise. I have always said, "if you don't want to do what we are doing in music class, then you can go to Mrs. Jacobs' and do paper and pencil there. Now of course you realize that she teaches 1ST GRADE." Nobody in their right mind would like to do this except certain students who don't want to do fun work in music. As the teacher was leaving with her class, I told her that he was a candidate for prison--she said that she didn't believe me. Is he??? She later on told me that since she and he were on an "ok" basis in the classroom, she wasn't going to chew him out for his behavior. She wanted to be the "nice" teacher. I think this is only the "honeymoon" period with her and she will have a rude awakening when he finally decides to be "himself" a person who refuses to do anything and is a person who defies authority.

We began this project in December 2009 and as you can see, the t.v. cabinet has taken on a different look. The glass shelves aren't in place yet and the tools haven't been removed from the glass cabinet (as you can see) progress is slowly advancing to a finale'. We couldn't figure out what color to make the handles, dad and I went to the store twice and brought home 5 different spray cans. Finally we came up with the ones you see here. Tell us what you think...ok only nice stuff..hahahaha

Wow, we have been trying to transform the carpeted floor to the wood floor for over 2 weeks now and look how far we have come. Kendra and Michael have helped a tremendous amount getting the baseboards back on and painted. It really makes the room look different with the wood floors. We tried to rearrange the furniture; but to no avail...it seems that it is destined to be in that spot, or we just lost our imagination. We tried to put the tree in different areas; but it covered up the pictures, or just was too much in the way. I could possibly just cut it down and make it into a little tree like it was when I got it. I did trim up the other plants...hmmm, guess I should water them so they don't have a heartattack. Tell us what you think, or how we can change it...it is a big room.

Piano is moved and this how the floor will look after tomorrow afternoon. The man who came to put in the same floor in the family room, put this in today. I was hoping he was going to finish it today; but apparently he had a "life" too, so we allowed him to go home... To move the piano, it took Jared, Jordan, Dad, the floorman and his son to move it to this spot. Jordan grunted and groaned...hahahaha, it must have been too heavy. Soon we will have to break down and actually dust and put things back away. We (Sharla, Wade, Dad and I) changed the color of the entertainment center. It should look dark and rich when we finally put it back into its spot...hahahaha maybe on "Spot" he (and his past predicessors) made us change all of this flooring. Ok, to me it looks great and I am excited to have wood floors.