This week has certainly been a week, if you know what I mean. I have been told by a night school student that I can't talk to her, but according to her I'm still supposed to still help her earn her English credit (we'll probably work on avoiding contradictory statements next week), the cafeteria flooded and students had to eat in the hallways (most didn't even get food.), the server went down twice, and students lost their work they spent much time on. Thus ends the fussiness.
Yesterday, having students re-punctuate a love letter into a hate letter turned into an unexpected emotional outlet to release some feelings. I have a student, we'll call her "Miss A", who is oppositionally defiant, AND she's wonderful. Not many of her teachers/peers say those two things about her in the same sentence. Everyday before she steps over the threshold of my classroom, she loudly proclaims, "I hate this class!" but then walks right in and greets me with a smile. She did the same yesterday as she does everyday and continued with the activity of changing a "Dear John" love letter into a hate letter. We were going around the room sharing our letters, and she raised her hand with a purposeful look on her face. I was curious and cautious, but more curious. She reads her rather long letter with about a hundred "You are disgusting"s and took a deep sigh afterward. She said she felt better. What was remarkable was that she was better behaved and more calm in the class after that, and her peers picked up on her predicament (She just had broken up with someone.) and they shared her commiseration. It was a nice little warm fuzzy to end a horrific week of flooding and crashing. Monday is sure to bring on more fussiness and fuzzies. :)
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