These days...

These days, teaching has proven to be a little bit more difficult for me. It's my fault really. I'm not as focused as I used to be and since students are very intuitive beings, fooling them was a total debacle (wow...studying is paying off at least)!

My students must have sensed my reluctance to be standing in front of them and in turn have been giving me a hard time in class. I find myself spending too much time saying "Quiet!" and "Louder!" in the same sentence. I want to laugh at myself and at the students but know it would seriously add fuel to the fire. I'm therefore extremely irritated with my students after class who really did nothing but mimic the teacher's attitude.

Sometimes, after having an abundance of impatient thoughts (I try really hard not to express that feeling--bad teachers do that), a simple glance into my students' eyes will reveal confusion. Oh, poor kids! They really did not understand what I was asking them to do. Here again, my fault for not taking the time needed to explain an activity properly and even worse, I got irritated at them for chit chatting. Needless to say, I get home exasperated and fall right asleep after such days.

So today I said NO MORE!!!! I got to class and kicked everyone out! I told them to come back in quietly and to sit down. When they did not do it just to my liking, I scolded them even more. The look on their faces was priceless---gosh, I wanted to laugh but instead I held my gaze. I punished and lectured them all day and the innocent ones suffered through. Group punishment was my strategy of the day and I was careful to express how the innocent were paying for the sins of others. Ah...what a beautiful day...what a beautiful day today was after that!

Aside from crazy days at school, I have a wonderful life! I exercise at home (although I haven't been able to wake up to run yet--it's dark at 6am now), laze around my house, spend time with friends, laze some more at home, think about how strange and pleasant it will be to be back home and then laze a few minutes more!

Life is beautiful these days!