Germs...

I have some extra time on my hands since I got strep throat from one of my kids and am quarantined to my apartment.  This week has been crazy- I've had tons of trainings and meetings and commitments... probably why I got sick in the first place.

Tuesday was the 100th Day of School (woo!), so we got to have a little more fun than usual.  It was really cool to talk to my kids about how much smarter they had gotten in a hundred days and see how amped up they got about it (note: see picture below).

   

As much as missing school is a pain (I still had to drag my butt to school at 5:30 this morning to make sure my sub plans were taken care of), I really needed today to get stuff done.  We had a staff meeting yesterday which consisted of approximately an hour and a half of getting our hands slapped by the administration.  Because there are people not doing what they're supposed to, everyone has to turn in lesson plans at the end of the week for review, be ready for walk-throughs and unannounced observations, and generally just do more work to prove that we are meeting our principal's expectations.  After that, I knew what my kids feel like when I make them listen to me about how important it is to clean up the sight word station.  Not that the things didn't need to be said, necessarily, but I realized how much more effective it is to try to get people (or kids) to self-regulate.  If my classroom was self-regulated, I wouldn't have to be acting like the dictator of phonics letter tiles.  If our school was more self-regulated, we wouldn't have to have people checking up on us all the time.  I don't know how you get yourself into a place like that, but I wish I did.  Things would run a lot more smoothly, and maybe my kids would actually want to listen to me more.

So anyway, this week was pretty terrible timing, with all my obligations and my sickness and my new work expectations, all coming before I leave for New England to go see my boyfriend.  My flight doesn't even get back until waaay late Sunday night, because we were SUPPOSED to have a teacher workday on Monday.  Mother Nature, of course, ruined that for me with her snow day.  Actually, I guess it would be whoever is in charge of plowing in Charlotte that dropped the ball.  Oh well.  This day is good catch-up since I will not be doing any work this weekend.  Just relaxing and trying not to give strep throat to college kids.