Out of Synch

This week is not going so well. I was out last week to do my first observation for Elementary training. During the entire observation, I couldn't stop thinking about my own classroom. What are they doing? Did they get my class a substitute? Are we going to slide backwards?

The answer to that last question seems to be yes. Yesterday was kind of chaotic. I felt like I only got a few lessons in and I felt distracted. It just seemed... out of synch. Then today was plain awful. Let's see, where to start?

The whole school changed the breakfast routine, which, in turn changed our morning routine, which had been running pretty smoothly. That was problem numero uno. My assistant was out which made me do my running around like a chicken routine. Numero dos. It actually wasn't so bad, until they sent another person to my room to help me. Yes, you read that correctly. Usually, the school doesn't send substitutes for assistants. This year, they are trying to change that. It's a really good idea. However, it doesn't help much when the person comes in at 10:30. (My assistant was returning at 12:00) and they don't really listen to you. Then when you do ask them to do something, they get an attitude with you. I actually think this extra person may have made things worse. The children were most definitely feeding off of my negative energy. And they were being, well, kind of nuts.

So, in general, I'm feeling pretty crappy. I think that the children's behavior is a product of many different things: 1) change of routine, 2) lack of help and 3) still working on normalization. However, it feels like defeat because we had been doing so well before. The children weren't spiraling out of control before I left. This feels like my fault. Before I left, it seemed like we were on the right track. Now, it seems like we've taken 10 steps backwards.

Ugh. This is so frustrating, I'd usually tell myself that I'll have a better day tomorrow, but that happens to be Picture Day. Everyone knows that picture day is always a crying, snotty, screaming debacle. Double uggggh.