Roller Coaster

It's up and down with these kids right now, no two consecutive periods (we're together for three periods a day) the same, forget about two days the same. I'm trying to remember if I ever really like them in the beginning, asking colleagues: "Did I feel the same way last year at this time?" It may seem ridiculous, but my kids, most of them, literally transform, undergoing that metamorphosis life-change from pupa to larva to some form of flying insect. A lot of this has to do with age 11-12 moving into 13 and so on, but a big chunk is just what I do, breaking em down, building em back up. [Cheesy line coming]: Molding like a master sculptor. I'm sure this is true to some extent in every classroom, but my kids look, act, and function academically in drastically different ways by the end of the year. Maybe it's too easy to remember how we left things, forgetting how we got there in the first place.

In any event, I'm not having a whole lot of fun right now. Hard-core, authoritative discipline is clearly needed at the moment, coming hand-in-hand with a lot of relationship building, and it's frustrating and I'm in a rush to be there.