I'm sorry miss!

On Friday, one of my students left school early and I needed him to get a tutorials form signed over the weekend.  While my students were silently working on a writing assignment, I asked to borrow a student's phone so I could call Todd (I will change his name for privacy purposes) and remind him to get the form signed.  Here is how the conversation went:

Ring. Ring. Ring.

"Que pasa, pendejo?"
"Todd? This is Miss. Cooper."
"Who is this?"
"Miss Cooper."

Click.

He hung up.  I had an idea that pendejo was a bad word in Spanish, so I whispered to one of my trustworthy students and asked what it meant and her reaction was a loud gasp.  That was all I needed...so I called back.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

"Hello?"
"Hi Todd, it's Miss Cooper."
"Hi Miss. Cooper."
"Todd, you know I speak Spanish right?"
"......I'm sorry miss!"

After we hung up, I googled pendejo.  It means a-hole in Spanish.  Todd thought his friend was calling him, when in reality, it was his teacher on his friend's phone.  I couldn't help but laughing about the fact that my student unknowingly said "What's up a-hole" to his teacher.

Last week was mock STAAR testing and the pressure to get my students' scores up is on.  Only 2 weeks left until Spring Break, and I can't wait for a chance to catch my breath.  These past couple of weeks have been insanely busy, and I feel almost as overwhelmed as I did in the beginning of the school year.

At least I have funny moments like my students accidentally calling me an a-hole to look forward to.  

Too Many Lows

I've been horrible about blogging lately...I completely blame it on the fact that I'm a first year teacher, and barely have time to even sleep, let alone shower.  But as I lie here in bed on a Monday night, after taking my first sick day ever and taking my second sick day tomorrow, I figured I could do a quick blog entry before letting NyQuil take over my night again.  Here are the highs and lows of this past week:

Highs:

• Chris visited from Thursday to Sunday! We aren't able to see each other as much now that I tutor on Saturdays, so it was so good to see him for longer than a day and a half.  Having him here makes me so much more relaxed and I seriously don't know how I would have gotten through the last 6 months without him.

• 26 days until Spring Break! I can't wait for Vegas!

Okay, so...I always try to write more highs than lows in my blog updates.  It seems like it's better to focus on the positives in life more than the negatives, and while blogging the negatives is therapeutic, I always like to include more good than bad.  However, that just truly isn't possible for me this week.  So here goes the negative...

Lows:

• I was sick ALL of last week.  I woke up Monday feeling like crap, and progressively got worse. By the time Chris came Thursday, I was in full-blown flu/strep throat/am-I-dying mode.  This meant that our quality time together consisted of me sleeping ALL weekend, and drugged up on cold medicines the entire time.  I know he must have been so bored since we only left the apartment about 2 times in 4 days, but he was a trooper and took good care of me.

• My kids take their huge state test on April 24th...even though it seems like we have a lot of time left, with Spring Break and middle of year testing next week, it feels like I have hardly any instructional days left with them, and I'm terrified that they're not ready.

• I have no idea if I'm preparing my students for this test (and even their futures) well enough.  Lately I've been feeling very inadequate as a teacher.  My kids are misbehaving more than usual, I don't feel like the "fun" teacher that I used to be, and I'm feeling kind of down on myself overall.  This job is so difficult and I'm just not sure if I'm even doing a good job.

• I got a parking ticket.  I went to court to fight it because I thought the street parking signs were very misleading.  The judge asked me for any pictures that I took, and then proceeded to tell me that the pictures I showed him actually incriminated myself.  He even said to me, "I bet you feel stupid for showing me those pictures now, huh?  You just made my case." Long story short, he made me feel like a royal idiot, and though I tried to hold back tears, they definitely started flowing as I exited the court room.  Talk about embarrassing.

• The judge lowered my parking citation from $70 from $30.  This would be a high, except for the fact that the judge entered my citation number incorrectly into the system, so now it shows that I have TWO parking tickets...one for $30 and for $70.  I have called about 5 times now and each time the city of Houston tells me something different---"Oh, don't worry, I'll get that fixed for you, check back tomorrow it should be taken care of..." or "You're gonna have to come back in and see the judge to get that fixed.  I can't fix that over the phone for you." 

• Like I said, I took my first sick day ever today.  Of course, on the one day I need to take a sick day, no substitute signs up to fill my absence.  Someone from the front office covered for me all day, but I feel bad because I didn't want my absence to make it harder on anyone else on my staff.
• I feel like I'm not even myself anymore.  I have no social life, feel like I'm not even a fun person anymore, and don't even have time to take care of myself let alone spend time with the few friends that I have in this city.  Teaching is not the kind of job that allows you to stop working when you finish at work for the day---this job literally consumes me.  My teaching friends and I even joke about how pathetic our happy hours are since all we talk about are our students.

This blog does a pretty awesome job describing the life of a teacher, and kind of sums up how I feel every single day: 

http://www.loveteachblog.com/2012/01/why-teachers-are-complete-psychos.html