Teaching Kids Not to be Bullies

This is probably the hardest part of my job. I have 5th graders in the South Bronx. They are 10 year olds that travel by taxi, public NYC buses, and NYC subways in the early morning and late at night to get to and from school. They are tough; they are mean; they are not like regular 5th graders. They don't really get to act like children anymore. It could change their life if they act like a child while walking home or taking the bus or subway and someone jumps them.

But how do you teach kids like that in school to stop being an jerk? I had one kid make a comment today to another kid and I had to stop the entire class to talk about how being a bully makes them a loser. Some kids don't know how to defend themselves without being mean and they don't know how to come over and mention it to their teachers because they are embarrassed or uncomfortable doing it.

It kills me how absolutely rude and mean my kids are. I had to stay after school yesterday and talk to a kid and his mom because he was being bullied in the bathroom by a kid in my class and his older brother.

Ugh. It's not fair.

When did kids get so mean?

And now that they have facebook, Instagram, twitter, and text messages and email, it makes it like 100 times worse!

There are so many ways to bully now, it is hard to keep it under control.

Any suggestions? How do you handle it?

Winter Tan Blues

Puerto Rico

Is it just me or are you counting down until the next day off or until winter break? I am absolutely. I am missing the sun, the beach, the ocean, the warm weather.

I NEED some vitamin C in my life. Since fake tanning isn't an option being preggo, I am seriously pale. I tried spray tanning; and yeah at first I was really tan. But then, eventually it started to come off, and I looked spotted.  THANK GOD it is winter and no one could see that because it looked absolutely awful!!!

Also being pregnant I have had very VERY itchy skin. I have been through many different types of lotions and finally have found one that doesn't drive me crazy anymore. In the beginning, I used to get these huge bruises all over my legs because I would be scratching my skin in the middle of the night! Talk about feel like a crazy person!

So I am literally counting down until we buy our plane tickets (pay day tomorrow) then I will be counting down until February 17th when we leave for Puerto Rico.

Earthquake or not Puerto Rico, I am coming to the goddamn beach!!!!

Rainy day today doesn't help either.

Post Winter Break Teacher Blues

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It's definitely been one of those crazy weeks where you come back from winter break of being off for two weeks and need to get readjusted to real life again.

I have been in definite need of this Friday alllllllll week long! Although now being pregnant Friday's have a different meaning for me. It's not going out and getting smashed or seeing my friends. Now its about going out to dinner and seeing a movie or making dinner and watching tv with the husband. Such a crazy difference. To more correctly state my life prior to marriage, I would usually be bartending tonight and making good money but this would be my 6am wake up and 5am go to sleep night where I am working almost 20 hours in a day.  I do not wish to go back to that life!

Happy Friday..... Counting down the long hours!!!!

Ps... my belly has gotten much bigger this week, actually really it seems to have grown humongous over night. Is this what happens at 5 months? Your stomach grows over night?!

Teaching in the South Bronx

This is absolutely true.

Whoever said teaching was an easy job because you got so many vacations, was a complete idiot.

Teaching is not an easy job.

In fact, it is one of the hardest, most stressful, and time consuming jobs I have ever had in my entire life.

Not only do I have to be at work at 7am and don't leave work until 4:45, but then I go home or on the weekend and I write lesson plans, I grade papers, and I have to enter grades in. Or do whatever crazy thing my administration needs me to do.

I have the privilege of teaching 5th grade ELA and Social Studies in the South Bronx. Don't get me wrong; I am completely grateful for getting this teacher job. When people say in the teaching world, the only way you will get a job is if you know someone, and they are ABSOLUTELY 100% correct. I would have never found this school if I hadn't went to college with one of the administrators. I lucked out. That is for sure.

But then step into my classroom and take the crazy children that are in it, and every day I wonder, did I really luck out? Or am I totally insane for trying to teach these kids anything. 

Some of them are incredibly smart; I was even surprised. And sometimes, with the attitudes that come out of these 5th grade kids, I truly forget that they are 9 and 10 years old and are in 5th grade. Their smart ass comments can drive someone completely insane. But then again, in the South Bronx, you have to take it with a grain of salt.

These kids lives are like no other school I have worked at. I am used to the rich white kids in upper Westchester. And if you have never heard of Westchester before, it's a ritzy area that has money. Switch over to the South Bronx, it is like a completely different environment.

I can say my first week starting there was the hardest week of my life. I was newly pregnant and my stress level was on 100. I was fighting for respect with 42 5th graders and they absolutely did not want to give to me. The teacher before me I found out was a straight up evil woman and she would make fun of them in front of the whole class and make them feel bad. I was not about that life. So now trying to win over these kids and get them to listen and stop talking was very, very, verrrry difficult.

At times I was so overwhelmed not knowing the ways of the class, not knowing their names, or their habits, or what we were teaching (which I have to create the whole history curriculum --- no big deal! --- and then time manage correctly so I am not doing work until 8pm at night, and then make sure that when the principal walked in the room these kids weren't going psycho. 

So, you can say I my plate FULL! I never thought it was easy, but in grad school, they don't tell you or teach you these kind of things. No one can prepare you for what you will deal with in the South Bronx. I don't actually think my school or my kids are dangerous, but getting out early on Halloween because its gang initiation day...... that's pretty new to me.

Or kids coming in with strange cuts on their arms or faces... also new to me. 

In my opinion, they are in school for too long. Our charter school hours are way too long and by 9th period at 4:00, these kids are checked out. They are also in a school with high schoolers! I think 5th graders should be still in elementary school - not with seniors who are 18!! It just really changes how they act and making them grow up fast.

On the other side of that, these kids are taking public transportation like city buses and subways to get to the school, all by themselves. They are 9 and 10 years old walking alone early in the morning and at night being with strange people on the buses and subways and at that age, forcing them to be grown up.

These kids needs to know what's happening at all times and they have to worry about getting jumped on the way home or shot! Those are things that kids at the ages of 9 and 10 shouldn't have to worry about. Ever.

This is just the beginning of my stories coming out of the South Bronx. Overall, as much as I hate my kids, I like them too. They frustrate the hell out of me, but I want to give them a fighting chance. I have a lot of knowledge to share, and even if in their other schools before me they haven't learned shit, at least I know that coming out of my classroom, they will know how to write an essay, and they will know the 50 states in the US, and they CAN spell words and they CAN be responsible. 

I will not fail them. 

This is my chance to change lives. 

2013: The Year of Transformation

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It has been quite awhile since I have sat near a computer and actually wrote anything meaningful besides writing lesson plans for work. I have definitely neglected a talent and hobby of mine that I was incredibly in love with over the past four years. But life got in the way and caused me to have to find different ways to make money, which was bartending while trying to finish my master's as fast as possible. So, if you have ever bartended before, you can imagine the hours that I was working in order to make the most amount of money as possible.
And I honestly wouldn't change it for the world. It was an amazing experience and I met and worked with so many people and learned a lot of management skills and forced myself to multi-task going to school to finish my master's, working at many different schools being a substitute, and bartending as many nights of the week as possible to pay my rent, and inevitably trying to have a social life! So, my hobby of writing, really got pushed to the very very end of my list of important things in my life.

As I enter 2014, my life is 100% different from how I started off 2013. If I were to have told myself in 2013 that in 2014 my life would be like this, I would have laughed in my face! But it has been the worst, best, hardest, most incredible experience ever in my life and I would literally change nothing or want it to be any different.

I can never just change one thing about my life. It usually has to be like if I change one, then everything else needs to change as well. Every year I think has been the hardest year of my life and I have accomplished one great thing and so forth, but 2013, this year has been the BIG year for me.

2013:
Graduated, received my master's and got 3 New York State Teaching Certificates
Went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Met the love of my life
Rented a shore house
Went on vacation to Europe: Austria, Germany, Italy
Got engaged
Found out I was having a baby girl
Got Married
Moved into a house with my husband
Got my first 5th grade teacher job in the Bronx

See what I mean, I don't do anything just half assed. I make sure its all the way!
My life has went from being the single girl who lived with her friends and was just making it by from bartending and working at shitty preschool or substitute jobs to being a grown up.

My life that lays ahead of me is so exciting, I wish this baby would get here now. Collecting girls clothes and getting ready for June 2014 is like the countdown of a lifetime.

I also never thought I would find the man I would love, marry, and have a child with, ever in my life. I literally couldn't have ever been so lucky. I actually still can't believe I got so lucky. After all of these years of having such shit luck, it finally changed.

And here's to the transformation that is about to happen in life.

And as for transformation, I will be focusing on my new life: Army Wife, Teacher, Mom to Be, House maker, life.   Ahhhhhhhh who would have ever thought!!!!!!

Stay tuned.

Bad Mood Blues.

It's too late. Deed it done.

I woke up this morning and I was fine. I was a little late, but that's normal.

Then I got to work and people started whining and bitching and moaning, and that just makes me so angry! Obviously it is time to get the hell out, but there is NO WHERE TO GO!

I have applied and applied and applied. And that's about as far as anything went. I am trying to be motivated to do work and I am trying to pay attention and not do other things, but I just can't. The position that I have is getting so screwed. The bonus plan, the amount of work I have to do compared to the reps, etc. No fun. So that is my feelings on work.

On a brighter note, I finally am done with the application process for my Masters in Childhood Education Grades 1-6. I am accepted to the program and I have already started... I need 11 more classes to go! Sees like no a lot, but it is a lot of $$$$. I just need to stick with it, this is my 3rd grad school I have applied to and taken classes at and decided I didn't want to do that degree anymore. So I was excited about that, and as soon as I walked outside to go back to work, I had a flat tire on my car! Wonderful -- is that supposed to be irony? And THEN I went the class I am taking towards this degree and I failed the midterm! More irony? What is it trying to tell me! But I am not the only one who failed --basically half the class, and the teacher knew everyone was going to fail, he said it the first day of school. But still. What a great way to enter a program with a positive attitude. All smiles.

Should I just keep going? Because I have a list of things now that I think about it. An ex-friend of mine, mind youwhom is a evil cheating, liar, bitch, whore, got ENGAGED! How is that even possible? And she is happy! I thought bad things are supposed to happen to bad people, not good things! While, my best friend, who is NOT an evil lying cheating hoe, is having serious issues with her boyfriend and they are in the process of working things out, hopefully! How does that work? Where is the karma people? Where! Also, this week my brother got dumped, she used the "its not you, its me" excuse. As well as my other best guy friend got dumped too, because his girl is a crazy bitch. So with a week full of break-ups (usually bad luck comes in 3's so I think that's it for now) and then her being engaged, it's shitty.

LET ME JUST ADD THIS.... There is this girl who when I was in high school and dating a guy I dated them, the first serious boyfriend of mine, she was in love with him. Ever since then, she has been trying to get with him and kind of stalking me. So I went off to college and him and I broke up. He was mad at me and he knew me and this girl didn't like each other, so he slept with her. It didnt really matter, we weren't together but then the next year she went to MY college! She left 2 years into it. So that was strange because there are SO many colleges out there, how are you going to choose the one I go to!? So now, we are friends on facebook, because I am nosey, and recently I see these weird coincidental things: she is dating HIM, she went to Malaga Spain just like I did, and she has a mini cooper -same car I want. I know this is really coincidental things but oh my god! I should probably just delete her from facebook since she is a little stalkerish. One day, when I decide not to be so nosey, I will do it. Just thought I'd share that with you.

Okay I am done now.

Writing about it is good because once I re-read it, I don't feel as bad. And the count down to the weekend continues...