Driving Along in My Automobile...

...when some a-hole decides to rear-end me and then tear off. Bastard got away. But I did get to meet some of the kind staff of the Maryland State Troopers.

Aside from that my days have been pretty good. I'm horrendously overworked and stressed, but other than that? Good. I think I may be breaking out in some serious acne for the first time in ever, and my stomach does drop at the thought of actually doing my Johns Hopkins work. But, working with the kids is fun -- in a often painful sort of way.

It has its highs: the discussion my class had this afternoon about segregation and racial apathy (one of our newest vocab words!)when one of my students likened Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Jesus and started said comparison with, "I would like to make a connection..."
When James (my most challenging student) gave me a drawing of himself so that he could come home with me.

Unfortunately, at this point I think the bad outnumbers the good: so much yelling. I watched another teacher (the computer teacher) actually punch two of my kids for talking out of turn. She prefaced it with: "Ms. U, turn around so you don't have to see this". The fact that my kids get into fistfights every. two. minutes. Or maybe the fact that I have three students (in THIRD GRADE) who cannot read or write above 1st grade level. One of my kids got suspended for 3 days because he brought a cigarette to school and lit it. Or the fact that I still waste so much time having my kids sit in the dark trying to be quiet and still for one minute (it is inevitable that the first five minutes are spent trying to get them to sit still for five seconds).

Bah. Teaching. I want a break.