Not One of the Better Days
Well, it's finally happening. The first two days of this week have been less than stellar. I shouldn't say that I haven't had any bad days since I've been in St. Louis, but most of them were the result of frustrations with the organization more than the anything at school. However, I will say that if this week is the worst week I experience all year while I'm serving at L'Ouverture Middle, I have to consider myself fortunate.
The last two days have been very difficult mainly because I haven't been feeling that great. I think it's a combination of allergies and some sort of respiratory infection. Put it this way, my eyes, nose and throat are either very itchy or producing fluid of various sorts depending on the source (not a pretty picture I realize). On top of the allergy feeling, my chest and back feel like a ton of bricks are being pushed against them from both sides. Unfortunately, it hasn't been debilitating enough that I feel like it warrants staying home from school. It's the classic case of being just bothersome enough that you feel like crap all day, but you'd feel guilty using a sick day for something so minor.
Because I haven't been feeling that great, I haven't been too enthused about pulling kids out for one-on-ones or even being around them for that matter. I don't think most of them understand that I'm not feeling very well, which means my tolerance for little things is greatly reduced. Today, there were several times where my rarely-used angry demeanor came out. I'm happy to say I was able to hold back, because one of the things I've been able to avoid all year is yelling or showing that I have lost my temper. Today my patience was definitely tested, but in the end I practiced the same restraint I have tried so hard to instill in the students that I'm working with.
To top things off, I got a chance to look at all of my students' report cards. Much to my disappointment and dismay, not a single one of them improved. In fact only 1 maintained the same GPA from 2nd quarter the 3rd quarter. The rest of them all dropped in GPA. I wasn't happy to see that there wasn't any improvment, but I was even more devestated that not a sinlge one had a 2.0. For the first time I started feeling like my work has been pointless. In the past few weeks, I thought I was really seeing significant gains in their classwork, but it appears that it was merely a figment of my imagination. What I find really frustrating about the grades is that several of the students could be decent students, but they just don't do the work or miss so much school that they fall too far behind to make up any of the work. As I sit here and think about the situation, it makes me think that some of the blame for the poor performance in school lies on me. The reason I took on this role was to help kids improve academically, and when I see that the results are going in the opposite direction, it makes me wonder where I've gone wrong.
I apologize to everyone for making this post a bit depressing. I'm still searching for the silver lining. Writing about the situation is definitely helpful in this search. You can all be sure that I won't let these last couple of days drag me down so much that I can't recover and thrive for the last 6 weeks of school.
The last two days have been very difficult mainly because I haven't been feeling that great. I think it's a combination of allergies and some sort of respiratory infection. Put it this way, my eyes, nose and throat are either very itchy or producing fluid of various sorts depending on the source (not a pretty picture I realize). On top of the allergy feeling, my chest and back feel like a ton of bricks are being pushed against them from both sides. Unfortunately, it hasn't been debilitating enough that I feel like it warrants staying home from school. It's the classic case of being just bothersome enough that you feel like crap all day, but you'd feel guilty using a sick day for something so minor.
Because I haven't been feeling that great, I haven't been too enthused about pulling kids out for one-on-ones or even being around them for that matter. I don't think most of them understand that I'm not feeling very well, which means my tolerance for little things is greatly reduced. Today, there were several times where my rarely-used angry demeanor came out. I'm happy to say I was able to hold back, because one of the things I've been able to avoid all year is yelling or showing that I have lost my temper. Today my patience was definitely tested, but in the end I practiced the same restraint I have tried so hard to instill in the students that I'm working with.
To top things off, I got a chance to look at all of my students' report cards. Much to my disappointment and dismay, not a single one of them improved. In fact only 1 maintained the same GPA from 2nd quarter the 3rd quarter. The rest of them all dropped in GPA. I wasn't happy to see that there wasn't any improvment, but I was even more devestated that not a sinlge one had a 2.0. For the first time I started feeling like my work has been pointless. In the past few weeks, I thought I was really seeing significant gains in their classwork, but it appears that it was merely a figment of my imagination. What I find really frustrating about the grades is that several of the students could be decent students, but they just don't do the work or miss so much school that they fall too far behind to make up any of the work. As I sit here and think about the situation, it makes me think that some of the blame for the poor performance in school lies on me. The reason I took on this role was to help kids improve academically, and when I see that the results are going in the opposite direction, it makes me wonder where I've gone wrong.
I apologize to everyone for making this post a bit depressing. I'm still searching for the silver lining. Writing about the situation is definitely helpful in this search. You can all be sure that I won't let these last couple of days drag me down so much that I can't recover and thrive for the last 6 weeks of school.
posted by Tim Weiss at 7:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home