My mom's home--tired but doing well. That means her dachshund, Cookie, who peed, pooped, and vomited on my carpet this morning (some surprises are hard to wake up to!), is back home as well. Bad Cookie!

Evidently, my class thinks having a sub is a license to forget all of the behaviors I've worked so hard to extinguish this year, particularly talking nonstop and getting out of their seats to visit whenever the heck they want to. Three people had to go into my classroom yesterday to tell them to shut up. The lead teacher blamed it on the sub, who doesn't have enough presence in the classroom to get them to stop. That may be, but I still expect them to act like my students whether I'm there or not. They really let me down. And, maddeningly, they couldn't understand today's effect (loss of recess) was due to yesterday's cause (misbehavior).

Is it just my students or do all students forget the classroom procedures we've had all year after one day with a sub? Every single day we've been together, my students have kept their math and language arts assignments so that we can check them together the next day. And even though my sub notes state this, the subs still take up the work and my class tries for days afterward to turn it in instead of keeping it to check together the next day. Why? What is so hard about understanding this?

Okay, that's all for today. Progress reports go home tomorrow, so I must grade and grade tonight. I wish teaching was a 9 to 5 gig because I'm tired of working for 1-2 hours at home, daily.