Reality Hitting

Solo Week has gone smoothly... no disasters or even panicked moments.

My cooperating teacher has been camping out in the library all week -- she says she's getting so bored with getting all the non-teaching-type stuff done that she's really ready to get her classes back.

She was there in the library during advisement today, when the modified 5th grade class was brought in to do some special computer thing. She was chatting with one of the boys either before or after that activity, and somehow the it came up that next Friday is my last day. At first he misunderstood and thought it was my birthday (even though he knew my birthday was last month). She clarified it for him, and she told me later that his face just fell, and it was the sweetest thing.

When that boy and a girl from that class came back to my room just before lunch, the girl was trying to tell me something about my last day and missing me, but I wasn't able to totally figure it out, because the boy kept interrupting her saying, "Don't tell her!" Now I know it was about what the boy had talked to the other teacher about.

Nice to know my few weeks here have had some impact. That girl is the one who wondered the other day if I was coming back eventually.

I've always said if I have to choose between being liked and being effective, I'd choose being effective, no question. However, it's nice that those two things aren't really mutually exclusive.

Hopefully, tomorrow I can make an impact on the 8th grade boys. Two out of three said that a man who can make 12 pies in 96 minutes can make 5760 pies in 8 hours. (If you're wondering, that's 12 pies a minute.) And not one of them correctly answered the trig problem that I know they all know how to do. They'll probably get a clue if I can get them to sit still long enough to think about it.