18 Days left.

Well it's hit. The year is almost over and the kids know it. So the countdown begins.

Today was one of the those days. One of those days where you feel like you are nowhere, you have taught all those kids nothing and you just want to roll up in ball and cry.

Instead I chose to go home and loose myself in The Wire and pet my dog. Well. To be honest there was a little crying.

I put together this great probability unit back during my Master's year. Every year I take a piece of it and use it in my classroom. This year, I decided to do the entire thing. It's all hands on games. It was reviewed by a mathematician back in 2006. It's a damn good unit plan if I do say so myself. I weave fractions, games of chance and games of probability together so well, the kids don't realize until the game is over that they learned something. Sr. Callejo was so excited when I told him all about it. He said that my plan was exactly what he wanted teachers doing at our school all the time.

I came into school Monday so excited. I had spent a lot of the weekend thinking about it, working it through in my head and double checking to make sure I had everything. I start with the third graders. I get nothing. They throw around my manipluatives, refuse to think about the questions, all they want to do is fool around. My fourth graders did a little better but they fell apart today. I'm getting nothing from either class. It's so frustrating.

I know it's almost summer. (Hence the countdown) But I keep stressing to them that it's not over yet. It's just not.

Then at the end of the day I have a conversation with Sr. Callejo that leads me to believe I'm going to be teaching fifth (which is great, because I'll have my fourth graders that I usually love again) and the SIXTH GRADERS.

Oh to put the cherry on my sundae.

I guess my job doesn't have to make me happy yet.

There would be more choice for me with grade levels if I had my bilingual endorsement, but that's a really expensive thing to get and there is no help from the school or the state because they were in a terrible state even before the economy fell.

I'm stuck.