I had one of those days today. I'll apologize right now, but this is going to be more of a venting post that anything else.

My day was going pretty good. My morning classes were pretty good - kids worked hard and for the most part, behaved. Afternoon kindergarten classes were better than normal. This was a little surprising since a college student was in to observe a library class for a while. Don't things usually go a little wacky when someone's observing? This time, they were great. Anyway, the day ended, I got some work done and then it was time for the after school math kids to come in the library for about 15 minutes before their after school teachers came to pick them up. Now, I'm not usually Mr. Strict during this time because I believe the kids need a little time to let loose after a day of classes and before another 45 minutes of learning. However, today, I lost it. There were about 45 kids in the library and things started to get a take a turn for the worse. First, a carton of milk, which they had for snack, suddenly spilled all over the carpeting, on it's own apparently, and no one told me about it for at least a couple of minutes. Then, I see several fourth graders playing a little tag - yes, running around the library. Of course, I tell them to stop. Then, some more wonder children decided that some pushing needed to occur. I'm not talking about a little one handed push - I'm talking two hands, hard to the back of another unsuspecting student. Well, this of course, resulted in the pushee shoving another student in the same fashion. The girl who got shoved, was pushed into some other students and I lost it. I yelled louder than I probably have ever yelled at a class. I told everyone to sit down on a chair at a table and be quiet. I would have loved to say "Get your ass to a table and shut the hell up," but of course, I couldn't do that. Since this was near the time when their teachers were going to pick them up, I now had an audience of a few teachers, including the principal, to hear my lecture on behavior and safety and so on. I'm quite sure the principal heard me blow up from where ever she was in the building. She took the 2 pushers and the other kids involved out. I left school shortly after that pretty pissed off. I feel better now, but it still bothers me that these little children don't know the difference between good behavior and screwing around. Thanks for listening. I hope to put together a more meaningful post in the next day or 2.

Since I'm at home with my sick three year old, I've decided to change the color scheme on my blog, add more of my favorite reads, and add a somewhat thoughtful entry later today. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you actually have some solid time to work.

California Teacher Guy wrote about Flash Drive Frustration - the bad feeling about not having access to a file you need. I had a similar feeling today when I was trying to email my lesson plans back to school. The problem was that they are on the district server, which I can't access from home. Why aren't they at home with me? Well, last year's format is, but not the new one and I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I'm in the process of trying to get in touch with a teacher I trust who can log in as me to the network, select the files I need and email them back to me at home. Of course she has all kinds of free time to do this. If all else fails, I'll talk to the sub on the phone and just tell her what to do.