Afternoon to everyone out there,

        Wow today was crazy and my kids and i learned a lot.  I would like to share it will you if I can get my thoughts together.

      Today started out with teacher devotions. (devotions only for the teachers before school starts) Ryan shared from a teacher devotional on learning from our students. And here is the quote he read at the end.

        " If we stop learning today, we will stop teaching tomorrow."

      Well that is true. Because if I were to give up on my class and stop learning how to teach them their lessons, stop learning how to discipline each unique situation, stop loving, stop seeking God, stop enlightening my own brain...I would not be capable of teacher and it would become an overwhelming situation.

         Our crazy day started before school even started! When the bell rang Nella came in all exited telling me this story how the 2 other girls in her class were being mean to her. And also that Renel was being talked to by Miss Lori who was on for before school playground duty.

When they were all reunited and I had talked to Miss Lori  I told my girls we would talk about this later since we needed to start with devotions. Every Tuesday and Thursday we go downstairs to Miss Eberly's classroom to sing with them.Today I had asked Miss Eberly if we could have devotions together, because I had told my students we would play bible base ball with our bible memory passage that we are learning for quiz day and it would make the teams even if her class participated. She agreed so we all walked down and sang a few songs and had a loud game of bible base ball that I'm pretty sure put apprehension in both Miss Eberly and my heart at  to how well the rest of the day would go with such a boisterous start.

       When devotions was over and I had everyone back upstairs I addressed my class on the bad sportsmanship i saw exhibited during devotions and the rummer that the winning team cheated.(A rummer started by a jealous) Then got them to work on their we remember in math. Once that was started I called my three girls out of the class room to the closet...were the bad, the ugly go down but yet we hopefully come out a repentant and wiser person. Anyway I talked very sternly about how I had been noticing this grouping up and ganging up of two persons towards one that was unfortunate enough to be left out. Normally it had no rhyme or reason to which was that unfortunate person except usually the one heading up the gang normally had something bribe worthy to draw in the other person.After telling them it is not tolerated in this school and an encouragement to do better (which involved telling them about how I use to do stuff like that when I was in school but how unkind it was) I left them of with a warning.

      They say that when you have kids you reap what you sow..as in you most likely will see similar behaviors in your kids that make you pull out your hair. In which most cases if you recall your own parents pull out their hair for similar reasons regarding your behavior. Well I know I don't have my own kids yet but yet I do have my own set of kids that I am responsible to help train for a year and you get to see a lot of things in them that you see in your own life or in some cases are brought to light through their shenanigans.

      We went back to the classroom and had math class thankfully it was rather a quite class due to their slightly subdued spirits. But it didn't last long. Noise was our constant companion through the whole day. And at the end of day when comparing notes with the rest of the teachers I learned that several of the other classrooms had a rather crazy loud day too. Full moon was Sunday or Monday and normally we notice it in our students but this time around i think the affect of the moon came a few days late!!

     But by no means is that all that happened that day. Why you are only viewing the tip of the iceberg! (I hope I do not come of as complaining it is only set down in writing here to show you a little of my life and what I am learning as I go through it)

      At  the end of second brake things started in earnest again. Darrell came in through the sanctuary which the have to pass to get to our classroom. And for apparent reasons we are suppose to walk. He was going just a little to fast so i asked him and a next boy to walk to the door and back. But Darrell wasn't really happy over that because no he wasn't running but i know if i let this go it will be running that i'm dealing with next. Well he got back before the second bell and still had time to take  a drink but he decided to get his snack out instead and eat some of that so as i was telling him he could have a hand full then he needed to put it away the second bell rang signaling then to go to their seats and be quite.. well already tried up in a knot that didn't go over well with him and he decided to make up a story about how the other kids pushed him around so he couldn't go to his bag but i stopped that promptly since i had watched him push his own self through his classmates, walk to his bag and come back without getting his drink. There was then an anger issues and I warned him that I didn't want to hear any talking back while I was explaining to him. But that was not to be so. Any way we took a trip to the closet..again but i realized he was in to much of a state that I felt a lash would not be the right punishment and anger would be what we needed to work with. I could see the anger in his eyes that i hate seeing because you can tell its a lot of it all penned up in there and this is his way of letting some of it out. So i told him  straight up that I could see the anger in his eyes and that he needed to cool of. I told him that anger can hurt you in a lot of ways that you don't even know about. So i gave him a paper and pencil with the question.."how does anger hurt you" and told him that i would leave him and when he was done he could come back to class. I went back to my desk and wrote

  How does anger hurt me?
1. I may not hear the who story.
2, I hurt other people with my words.
3. I hurt other people.
4. It makes me sad, unable to enjoy the happy things in life.
5. It is disobeying God.
   
      When Darrel came back he seemed calmer and i gave him my paper to read while I read his paper. but here he had not answered my question He wrote something about how he thought ______ ______and _____ got to do fun stuff in school but he couldn't. And how they get treated better. But yet he did not acted anger towards me and he has pulled this on me before but it seems like it is something he picks on to cover up what is truly the matter. I don't know for sure,and I'm not were he picks up these kinds of things but I patiently explained things to him and he seemed to be fine infant rather almost indifferent like he had said his piece had got the overflow of anger in check and could move on till the next eruption. How do you get it all out???? I don't know how much he believes of what he said to me but he does have this attitude that if something happens to him that obviously that person is mean and does not like him. I think he is controlled a lot by the people around him and forgets how much he is a leader and looked up to in his class.

     As lunch period was coming up my students seemed to think it was fine to talk, make noises, walk around, and in general brake the rules. No amount of me telling them to be quite or giving of warnings seemed to help much so i told them that 3 min. of playtime was going to be taken away and that did the trick.

         Well after taking 3 min out of their play time after lunch they went to brush their teeth and I congratulating myself on fixing that problem when in to the classroom stepped a next one. First Darrel, giggling and then in traipsed Leadon soaking from head to feet. And then came the flow of words!...

      "Darrell spit toothpaste on me and Renel and Darrell made me wet!!"

      "No, I did't!"
(ect. ect, ect)

      So of to the closet the three went. While i waited in the classroom for the rest of the kids to come back and dismiss them for recess because it was our day to go up to a pasture and play games but I now had other pressing things deal with. Therefore  unable to walk them up to the pasture. So I had to tell them they would have to stay back and play at school.

    While this was taking place all i could hear were shouts of anger from the closet. By the time I got there they had at least stopped yelling and we sat in there searching for the truth... after a little we found Renel only an (hopefully) innocent by stander. We released her after finding out as much of the story as she could tell.

      Leadon said that Darrell spit toothpaste into his hair and after asking Darrell over and over again if he did it and each time he denying it and Leadon going into another yelling fit which made Darrell start yelling back I separated them and got each side of the story. And it still sounded like someone was lying.

       Finally i though of asking Darrell if he Accidentally spit toothpaste into Leadon hair. Hoho!! That was the trick! That  resulted in me sternly talking to Darrell about admitting something right away even if he did do something by accident because then we would not have had all this yelling.  It all ended with Darrell telling Leadon sorry for yelling and giving a few reasons why anger can heart you (he actually did remember one or so of my points) and me reminding him about how it can hurt us if we don't find out the whole story before getting angry. Then  Leadon had to tell Darrell sorry for yelling and admit that it did cause a lot of trouble by getting angry right away. Then they both spent some time writing verse before going for the remaining break time.

      Towards the end of the day we had yet another issue arise this one coming in the form of note passing. Leadon was in his desk laughing when i came up to Renels desk. There was a scrunched up piece of paper in Renels desk which sent off my teacher alarm. So i unfolded it and found "Darrell you are a bighead" which what ever that isn't really nice but the bigger issue was that notes were being passed and if you haven't heard we had issues earlier that year with inappropriate stuff going on with notes so i took passing note seriously and i needed my kids to take it seriously to. Renel said that it wasn't hers and that she hadn't wrote it so i calmly opened her note book and fit in into the place were it was ripped out of and just showed it to her with out a word. Her eyes got big but stuck to her story that it was Leadon. So once again I sent Renel and Leadon to the closet but I had a hunch that Leadon had little to nothing to do with it so I went to Darrells desk and found another note that read "Renel you are a bighead" so he went to the closet to....

   To make a long story short Renel denied it up and down and then Darrell admitted to it right away. I asked Renel again telling her that she was going to get in a lot more trouble if i found out she did do it after lying for 5 mins. straight. Finally she said she did it and then after asking her if Leadon had anything to do with it she answered that no he didn't. Any way Darrell got a few lashes and then Renel got licks so I hope she saw the importance of telling the truth right away. She has had trouble with telling the truth in the past too so hopefully she takes it to heart.

      Well that was a long update as well as a long day! But I am blessed to have these amazing children to help guide them in the growing up process. And although there was a lot of drama God helped me be almost stress free. It was def. draining though!!!

        Well it's time to go. Hopefully you haven't got any grey hairs by now if you read all of that!
God bless and have a good rest of the week!