4...3...2...1

I almost killed a handful of kids today. No joke.

I have been feeling uncharacteristically stressed these days, and it's really starting to take a toll on me. Between trying to predict the math budget for next year, establishing a "core curriculum" in each class offered by the school, and accomplishing the general day-to-day requirements of being a teacher, I am feeling the mental and physical effects of stress unlike any I have felt in years.

And today was the breaking point.

For those of you that think that teaching is what people do when they can't "make it," keep a few things in mind. First, my lessons are all hand-crafted. There is no "big bank" of lessons to pull from, or notes to steal off the internet. I painstakingly handcraft each of my lessons, complete with handouts and an interactive white board flipchart. Second, I put thought into how I teach a concept. I bait the students with rhetorical questions until they come up with the theorem or rule. I try to teach them to learn through exploration and questioning.

So when a group of students won't stop asking questions, or commenting about someone's questions, or shouting out random shit, it makes it impossible for me to get to the punchline. I can't teach if I never get a chance to talk interrupted.

::Breathe::

After only getting through half of my lesson in 40 minutes, especially when I accomplished the task in 35 minutes three prior times today, I took matters into my own hands. I contacted the parents.

God bless the parents. They have emailed me (one even stopped by my classroom) to apologize and to say that they are going to take care of it on their end. They say that they support me in whatever discipline route that I choose to take, and that they want to know if there is anything in the future they can do to help me out.

So although they can't help me with my budget, or my curriculum, or devising and typing my daily notes, at least I know that this matter is hopefully one of the past.

And maybe tomorrow I won't have to cackle like a crazy person in lieu of losing my cool and throwing things at the kids' heads. Yes, I cackled. And yes, I'm sure it was quite frightening.