ahora vamos a contar

i thought calling this post "ahora vamos a contar" might seem stupid, but not so stupid that i couldn't tell y'all that i was thinking about it. point is, the countdown has begun.

today sucked. morning duty got things off to a fine start as usual, then once i entered my classroom nightmare mom waited patiently for me to stop chatting with my kiddos so she could let'er rip under my full attention. is under the right preposition? i've found that speaking spanish has seriously affected my ability to properly use prepositions. anyway, apparently last week there was some drama regarding her son's hat. he's been wearing it and i don't care, but the principal saw him and told him to take it off in the building. obviously, i insisted that he follow the school rule from that moment forward, i'm not an idiot. but apparently he put it back on at some point and another teacher took it off his head. mom says that it was one of the white teachers and that she did it forcefully and made all the other students laugh at her son, perhaps because she's racist, and it's important that i know and how should she handle this and to whom should she make a formal complaint? she wasted 15 minutes talking to me about this in person before following my repeated advice to go to the asst. principal. apparently he wasn't around, so she spoke to the administrative assistant before wasting another ten minutes of my time on the phone. i politely asked her what she would like for me to do, but of course she is incapable of directly answering any given question. i gave my co-worker a heads up, which led to a couple mini-conferences throughout the day. all because of a stupid hat and a metiche mother.

my problem child is regressing more and more each day. friday, while we were all sitting at the carpet, he decide to spit. on the carpet. luckily all my other kids are really good (except for la ladrona, of course) and told on him immediately. i sent him to another classroom without a second thought. this morning during silent sustained reading, he started drawing in another student's book. i'm getting really fucking fed up. i give him all kinds of positive reinforcement when he does good, and once upon a time he actually behaved pretty damned well as long as he had work to do. but no more. i mentioned the spitting and drawing to the asst. principal and he advised me to have el problemo talk to la ladrona about her community service experience. he also said that the next bad decision el problemo makes, regardless of severity, he will be assigned community service. punto. so after specials, that's exactly what i did. scare tactics, they have a short-term effect at the very least, right? WRONG. an HOUR LATER, he cursed on the playground to half the class.

the behavior management plan i made with another student went down in flames hours after implementation as well today. the enojona mother of my smartest guy flipped out on me after school because i confiscated her son's toy car but not another student's gameboy (which was never taken out of his backpack vs. the car which was being played with on the playground). and all my fun, fluffy cinco de mayo plans are dampered by my two jehovah's witnesses who apparently can't even read a book about piñata-making, because it will tempt them into wanting to celebrate.

I HATE THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR.

thank god i have another date with my eHarmony dude on thursday =D