It's Been a Long Time!

There is so much to say, and I don't really know where to start. Since I moved into my house a week ago, I havn't had internet at home, and I'm too busy at school to even eat, so there has definitely been no time to blog.

My mom had a surgery to take out her two old kidney's a coupel of weeks ago. They took out her appendix too. The surgeon saw it, and even though it looked normal, he squeezed it just for the heck of it. He felt a lump, didn't think much of it, but decided to remove the appendix anyway. He figured it was a kidney stone or something and just figured that since he was in there, he'd take the whole thing out rather than having my mom pass it later. When he sent it in for testing, he found cancer. My mom will be undergoing surgery in the next two or three weeks to remove about a third of her large intestine. Hopfully she'll be fine after that, and won't have to undergo chemo.

School has been crazy. I'd like to make a plea to all of you parents who have school aged children. PLEASE understand that their teachers are not out to get them!!! If a teacher says your child has a zero, don't ask why! Why do you think your child has a zero?!? BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T TURN IN THE WORK!!! If a teacher calls to tell you that your child is talking too much in school, do not assume that the teacher is singling your child out! I promise that we have WAY better things to do with our lives than call you to tell you that your child is causing problems. We usually wait until it has become a persistant problem just to avoid the trouble of having to call. We do not sit at home all night long and think of ways to torture your family. We simply show up to school and do everything in our power to help your child succeed. At some point, you have to take over... In adition, if your child is in Jr. High, please remember that unlike the elementary teachers, we have 120 students a day, not 20! We cannot take the time out everyday to single out your child and make sure that they are emotionally with it for the day. They're in Jr. High. NOBODY is emotionally ok in Jr. High. We can't fix 120 crisis everyday. We can't teach reading, writing, adn organizational skills in a 45 minute class period. That's barely enough time to cover my subject, and it's certainly not enough time to cover it as much as we would like to, much less, to teach your child how to keep their binder organized so that they can find their papers each day that need to be turned in. You have 2.4 children to deal with each day...we have 120! Don't come up to the school and yell at us for not doing our jobs. DOn't get upset when we have to take a day off from work so that we can...ok...get ready for this...WORK! Don't harrase your teacher friends for getting the summers off. I can almost garuntee that our hours added together over the course of a year at least number the same amount of hours that you spend at work. We put in 10-12 hour days Monday-Friday. If we teach English, it's even longer because the homework is harder to grade. On top of that, we have to go to hours of classes each year from our continuing education, and most of those are done immediately after school. We spend the weekends trying to grade papers, figure out our lesson plans, or think about all of the parents that need to be called when we get back to school on Monday morning.

DOn't get me wrong...I'm not unhappy teaching...I'm just unhappy with the parents that constantly make my job more difficult. Rather than having 1-5 people above me telling me how to do my job, I have 100s of people who think they know the best way for me to teach.

Ok...thanks to those of you who sat through all of that...I'm back now...In 3 weeks school will calm down, home will calm down, and my mom will be out of surgery...until then, I am hanging on by the very tips of my finger nails!