Stupid in the Water?

I have to ask myself this periodically, especially after weeks like this one. It's not even over yet, and I can't imagine what tomorrow will be like.

Monday was an absolute zoo. I'm pretty sure the kids were still on their sugar highs from trick-or-treating on Saturday. One seventh grade class was so completely incapable of being quiet to get instructions on their assignment that finally I lost my temper entirely, handed out the worksheet, and told them to figure it out on their own. There were written directions on it, in case you are thinking that this makes me the worst teacher ever. Whenever any of the middle school teachers asked for help with discipline from the principal, they were told to "handle things in our own classrooms" using the "procedures set in place" because he was "too busy" to deal with anything. Awesome. Thanks for the support. And by the way, the only "procedures" we have are ones that WE came up with.

We went to a conference on Tuesday. I went to one really good session and the rest was pretty much crap. Even the lure of free stuff from the vendors wasn't enough to justify the gas and parking fees I had to pay to attend. My iPhone saved me from insanity during the worst of the sessions, however (shout out to the LOLcats and remover apps. Good fun. Highly recommended).

The past two days have just been full of instances of people doing dumbass things. Like fighting. Like telling another student's grandmother to "Shut the fuck up, bitch." Like calling another student a "faggot" right in front of me. Like screwing around in the hall after getting kicked out of class for screwing around in class. Like getting off the bus and skipping school but first making sure to tell everyone in your class what you're doing and being seen by teachers and video cameras. Like printing off job applications and letters of reference on the school copy machine and not picking them up in a timely fashion. Need I go on?

I was really worried about tomorrow because I thought we were going to have three (out of the six) teachers in the middle school absent. Thankfully it turns out that only one of them will be gone all day, one of them will be back by 10, and the third one ended up not taking the day off. We shall see...