End of the Work Week
N. was doing his math homework while talking to R. so he wasn't getting it done very quickly. I kept taking his paper when he wasn't working on it to see what kinds of problems he was working on. They are working on algebra basics. I'm not sure they actually understand what's going on or if they've just memorized how to answer the questions. At any rate they were talking about the subjects that they enjoyed the most. Neither of them enjoy Science because of the individual that is teaching it. I had my two Algebra books with me and got them out because they wanted to see them. As they were paging through them one of the kids came over and said to N., “You're not smart enough to understand that”. When I told him to be nice he looked at N. and said, “Don't worry I'm barely smart enough to understand it”. It was our only incident for today.
P. was absolutely off the wall today. He and his friend sat and played Legos for the whole time. I don't think he sat down once though. He was jumping all over the place and in general being a crazy 8 year old on a Friday afternoon. He came over and asked N. if he could do N.'s homework. I mentioned something about plagiarism and copying work and P. said, “I know you will never learn it for yourself and you'll fail the test, so I know, I know, and you don't have to tell me”. This all came out in the span of a second and a half. He went back to playing Legos. He was quite happy when his mom came and picked him up.
For those of you who are keeping score I was hit in the arm by a 5 year old, 3 5th grade girls tried to play hide and seek with me in the hallway, and the word of the week was “discipline”. It wasn't a horrible week, but it was a long week. Next week will be different and hopefully I won't have to deal with those things again. At least for a little while.
I've been writing graduate applications again and the list looks like this in no particular order:
1. Brown
2. Maryland
3. Michigan
4. Boston U.
5. UMass – Amherst
6. UIUC
7. Florida
8. Georgia
9. Kansas
10. Missouri – Columbia
11. Iowa
12. Iowa State
13. Arizona
14. Ohio State
15. North Carolina – Chapel Hill
