My thoughts on today

Overall, I have really enjoyed the day being here at school.  Most days, I do!  Overall, we have good teenagers.  Of course, there are some who are challenging, but most of the kids are just fine.

Three of the classes I've had today are honors kids.  In the last honors class of the day, many of the students come straight from my husband's class.  We'd had a debate in his class on how long meat was safe in the refrigerator (I had a plan period at that time) and the conversation carried over to my class the next period.  Those kids are fun.

Not every kids is awesome of course.  Generally speaking, I can handle the kids that aren't angels.  I just don't tolerate much crap, and the administrators, of course, support that.  I also try to make sure the kids never know if they get under my skin.  Can't let them have that power!  I know some of the kids who are challenging come from homes that are less than ideal.  They may not live with parents, or maybe the parents are there, but only physically (or not even that much).  There could be economic issues, or drug issues, or illness, or you just never know what there might be.  There are kids that try to appear tough and "edgy", and some of them I know are using it as a defense mechanism to try to get through life.

However, I was highly irritated when I graded papers for Andrew this morning.  He was acting administrator yesterday and had a substitute teacher in his classroom.  The students were assigned to look at these two articles, take a couple of notes, and write an extremely short (one sentence) opinion.  They could even choose two articles from among over a hundred to read.  Basically Andrew was trying to "give" the students some points just for doing the work.  And there were students who turned in the paper with their name on it, and literally that was it.  They had the entire period to do about 20 minutes worth of work, and they couldn't do anything at all.  I was infuriated.  It's hard to feel compassionate and empathetic towards those students who are given opportunity after opportunity, and choose to do absolutely nothing.

Overall, my prayers go out to today's teens.  After all, they are the future!