Maybe It's Me

Ok, so maybe it's me, but I'm not very happy with Logan's teacher. Actually, his long-term substitute teacher. I was ok with his regular teacher. It wasn't ideal, but she was a good teacher and Logan was starting to get the hang of how to stay on the good list. Then his teacher goes on bed rest for early labor and he gets a sub. He didn't give the kids any time to adjust to his style. He is much stricter than their regular teacher was. Which is fine on it's own, but it's a little difficult for kids to adjust nearly 3/4 of the way through the year. Logan's behavior card ends up on orange a lot, instead of blue for really good, green for good or even yellow for caution. When his regular teacher left, he had just had 3 weeks of nothing but blue or green. He ended up with a red card last Friday. And it's all for talking. He once had to change his card from green to orange within the last 10 minutes of school because the kids were reading out of the dictionary (I know, what a great use of taxpayer money) and he turned around to tell the child behind him a good word to look up (it was basketball). I was concerned with his behavior card the first couple of weeks, but considering the teacher is quick to have the kids move their cards down, but not up, I'm over it. Logan doesn't care, because the sub has never been told that the kids were supposed to lose 1 recess if they ended the day on orange and 1 recess and lunch if it was on red.

But I've gotten over that. Logan isn't getting in big trouble. He's not grabbing anybody's glasses off their face, he's not getting sent to the principal, so talking I can deal with. But here's what's gotten me upset with the sub now. The kids have been working on a "famous American" project for the last couple of months. They did research, typed up a report and presented it, in costume, in front of their class. Then, on Friday, the teacher sent home a paper doll to cut out and dress up like their famous American, with things around the house. So my friend's twins come home yesterday from school and say that the teacher said that if the paper doll is sloppy that he's going to tear it up and they'll have to do it again. It's due on Wednesday. He assigns it over Easter weekend, gives them less than a week to do the assignment, and then tells them he is going to rip up their work if it's not good enough. I understand giving it back if it needs to be done better. He could make a note of what needs to be changed, even give the child a new paper doll to start out with if need be, but to tell the kids he's going to rip up their work is absolutely inappropriate. How is that going to make a 2nd grader feel? What good could possibly be gained by telling that to the kids? And it obviously made an impression, because both of the girls mentioned it after school and Logan agreed with them that he said it.

Part of me wants to say something to the teacher and part of me wants to just not bring any more attention to Logan and just finish out the school year. But what a jerk. I don't even like to go to Logan's class to meet him after school and usually just wait by Rowen's class now. I guess only 34 days of school left, I should just get over it, but it's really been bugging me all day. I've been working on the newsletter all night, so now I'm just tired and I should probably just try to get some sleep and see how I feel about it in the morning. Except that now Maddoc is crying because the poor little one wants to sleep but he can't breathe through his nose. Guess I'd better go see if I can help him.

What a dreary post, but I do feel a little better, just getting it all out. Meh, what a day.