So bored in fact that I have decided to put up a post. This is not a usual factor that spurs my urge to blog. Usually blogging couples with stress or anger or happiness but today it is simply boredom.
Today was a horrible day. Firstly, I spent close to $100 getting fingerprinting done for my second choice school. Another hundred dollars out of the other several hundred dollars I've closed my eyes to and flushed away for purposes of enhancing my education and credentialing myself to teach.
Well after teaching today, I figure I'm going to need this higher education anyways. After about a half an hour of explaining how order of operations work, I had begun doing practice problems with the younger students while the older students set to work on a worksheet. We had gotten through the third practice problem without too much drama when out of nowhere, Adam explodes into a million pieces. He's crying, throwing things around and crumpling things up. I am so bewildered but after pulling myself together I said sternly to him to "pick that up." He did... but after he picked up whatever piece of paper that had fallen victim across his furious rampage he would rebelliously throw something else across the room. Next I waited patiently for him to calm down so that I could talk to him like a civil human being. I wanted to explain that it was alright for him to get a problem wrong or to not understand what was happening. But what was not ok was his behavior and attitude. When I sensed he was beginning to settle down I would open my mouth and he would throw a fit again. Another vicious cycle. At one point, I wanted to burst out laughing because of how ridiculous he looked.
The aftermath of this incident:
I came home wondering what on earth went wrong. Perhaps he got angry because his friend had moved on to being allowed to independently work on a worksheet. Or perhaps he was just really mad that he wasn't getting it. Or maybe he just didn't want to be doing math at an afterschool program on a Friday because lets face it...who would? If it were me, I'd be freaking pissed too.
Anyways, more importantly I came home determined that I was going to make Adam try harder at what he did. He has a bad habit of giving up when he actually has to work harder or when things don't come easily. He also tends to refuse to continue if he gets something wrong.
This got me thinking about myself. I thought about all the times I've failed in my life and all the ways I will probably fail in the future. If I were to give up after anyone of those times, where would I be now? Definitely a college drop-out. I certainly wouldn't have a math degree. I certainly wouldn't have graduated in 3 years (still a stupid mistake) I also certainly wouldn't still want to be a teacher. My academic high school and college memories are marked with sleepless nights, endless preparing, stress induced sickness and disappointing exam papers. How on earth did I cope? How on earth will Adam cope?
I tend to have vivid childhood memories. Here's one of them:
This memory took in sixth grade, Mrs. VanderVorst's class. I walked into history feeling a little apprehensive about a test taken the previous day. It was time to pass out the graded test papers and I sat there chatting away with my friends not knowing what was about to hit me. One by one everyone looked at their test score and then exclaimed something witty about how well they did or how they wished they did better. The teacher approached me, gave me a questionable look, handed me the paper, and walked away. I stared and slowly took in the big fat red F sprawled across the top of the page. My heart skipped a beat, the blood rushed to my head and my fingers suddenly felt clammy. I shoved away my paper into the deepest cranny in my backpack, and was determined never to dig it up again. At the end of class, Mrs. VanderVorst called us up one by one so that we could check what our grades in the class were. I had a D. That night I had a nightmare engraving this traumatizing event into the deepest folds of my conscious. This marked the first of many failures to come. After that day, I worked my sixth grade ass off to get a passing grade in the class and did I pass? yup.
This is what I'm going to make Adam learn.
