Crazy Busy Life

     The new school year is well under way, and with it comes a crazy busy life and stress.  My students have been okay so far.  I've had better and more well-behaved classes than this, but I have also witnessed worse.  Andy has a few problem children, and of course, they're all in the same class period.  You would think the counselors would take things like that into consideration and not put all the "bad kids" in the same class.  Instead, they seem to all end up together.  Andy and I are patient teachers, but Andy was ready to call a parent on the third day of school for one of his students.  That's not a good start to the year!  I hope for his sake (and mine) that this child decides to grow up and act like a high school student... very soon.
     In the last post, I was bragging about our cross country team, and our #1 runner.  Yeah... well... she has a stress fracture in her femur and will be out the entire season.  Andy is already having problems in athletics (due to all of this support for football but no other boys sports), and then this happens.  It breaks my heart, and I know it ruined his outlook on the season.  You could tell today at the cross country meet that his girls team took a big hit.  They all relied on our best runner to lead them, and it's just a tough and emotional situation.  I really hurt for Andy though because I know he loves this teams and he loves coaching, but it seems that everything is just crashing down for him this school year.  (Side note:  Please keep him in your prayers because it's been a very rough year so far and we've only been in school for two weeks.)
     I, on the other hand, have had an okay start to the school year.  Nothing great and nothing completely horrible.  I am not getting a good vibe for this year, but I am keeping a positive attitude and maybe things will start looking better.  It's tough being married to a fellow teacher at the same school.  Andy and I find ourselves being irritated all the time because of his stress or my stress.  At least if we were at different schools, we wouldn't personally know or work with the people we were complaining about.  But... at the same time, it's nice to be able to walk to the next hallway to see each other.
     Monday we have "Meet the Teacher" for our campus.  Our principal always tells us to not allow the conversations to turn into a parent/teacher conference, but how can you not?  All the parents care about are the students' grades, and that's what they ask you about.  I typically get the "I'm terrible at math and so is my kid" speech from the parents.  Barf in my mouth!  You're only terrible at math because you refuse to learn it.  You're only terrible at math because you choose to be terrible with your negative attitude.  And whether you like it or not, this world wouldn't work without math!  So, you might as well deal with it and change your attitude.  I cannot stand it when I tell people that I teach math, and the first thing out of their mouth is "I hate math" or "I can't do math."  Get over it.  When someone tells me about their profession, the first thing I say isn't "oh, I hate that."  Ok, ok... I'm off my soap box.  I could keep going, but I better stop.  :)
     I have no pictures for this post.  Bummer!  Unfortunately, our lives are consumed with our jobs at this point.  I promised myself that I would keep up with this blog even during school.  So hopefully I will continue to find the time to post because it is rather fun!