so tired.

I am so tired at the end of each day. It's indescribable.
I do not see how I'm going to be able to withstand exhaustion as a teacher if I'm this tired as a student teacher!

Today, I was alone with my students. My teacher broke her hand in three places (spiral break -- looks horribly painful) helping her daughter do a back hand spring. There was a sub.. but my first sentence stands. I didn't want to waste the day just doing worksheets to keep the kids busy. So, I had a day's worth of lesson plans ready to go. I had math mini-lessons, English, writing, and science. Today is National Fairy Tale Day, and the kids wrote a fairy tale, which they loved.
One wrote, "The Three Little Pigs in the Hood." Oh yeh, it's as hilarious as it sounds. Most took the word FAIRY seriously in fairy tale and wrote about Tinkerbelle. One of the requirements was to include a moral of the story. Those were the funniest parts. A little boy in the class said his moral of the story was, "Don't go into the cave with this particular monster." I'm not sure that it's a moral, but I let it go since he wrote a good story.

Science was what left me so tired. I had laser discs (which I had never ever seen or used before) that described in short clips each biome. The students had to list the animals, plants, & climate of each biome and draw/color a picture of the biome on the other side of the paper. It was supposed to be more exciting than filling out a worksheet. The kids, I don't think, have ever watched a video in class before. They were talking, walking around, sharpening pencils, and I could not get them to settle down. I even paused the video, taught procedures of watching a video, they said, "Yes ma'am," and when I restarted the video, continued with what they were doing. I ended up having to stop the video, talk to several in the hallway, and assigning them a final assignment for the day: a friendly letter to the teacher describing their day with Miss Hurst & the sub. The kids were VERY honest. "I misbehaved all day. I wouldn't listen to Miss Hurst at all." "Mrs (haha). Hurst tried to do fun things to teach us, but we wouldn't listen." "Other teachers had to tell us to be quiet in the cafeteria." So-and-so "backtalked Miss Hurst at lunch. We didn't get recess because of it." (not quite true... they didn't get recess because they played all morning and chose to talk during my math minilesson, so I told them they had their recess for the day during that time. :)

I feel like I'm so mean to them, but at the end of the day, I don't know what else I could have done. One of the most precious teachers I've ever met (Mrs. Wilemon) told me it wouldn't have mattered if I had stood on my head and danced a jig, they wouldn't have done anything for me because my teacher was gone, plain and simple. Fifth graders always react that way when the teacher is away. I'm just ready for it to be my class... no matter what grade I end up teaching... it's so hard doing all of this planning and teaching and the kids just misbehaving right through it.

so, I'm tired at the end of the day...