Monday

So I thought today was going to be one of those Mondays. We have tomorrow off for July 4, and some schools had today off. Russ, my roommate, for example, had today off. This meant he got to sleep in for an extra hour. The problem here is that I've been sleeping with ear plugs in--we live right across from the computer lab, which can get noisy at night. The ear plugs are powerful enough that I sometimes don't hear my alarm, and more occasionally don't hear Russ's, either. But I made sure Russ set his alarm for 5:40 so that I would hear that and get up then. Around 5:00 AM I was half awake and looked at my watch to see how much more sleep I could get. And then awhile later I was half awake again, and it struck me that it seemed like a lot more than 40 minutes had passed. So I looked at my watch at it was 6:15. Luckily I've been getting up way too early, so I had time to get dressed, pack up, and eat breakfast before my 6:50 bus.

I was kind of frazzled for my lesson today, but I think it went well. I think my opinions on trying to discipline these students has changed. I was trying to live up to the standard TFA model of extremely silent, orderly classes, but I wasn't letting the kids have fun. They're well behaved enough that when I let them out of their seats today to do different problems posted around the classroom, they wasn't any problem. I also gave them some candy, with which we practiced finding ratios. Later on there was a rumor going around school that today was my birthday--I guess one of the other teachers asked where the bags of candy came from and one of my students said I gave them out because it was Mr. Upholt's birthday. Oh well.

There are only 6 more days of real teaching before I head back up to South Dakota. Houston has made South Dakota feel very much like home. Or at least a place I would much rather be.