Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Big girl jobs suck. I have a love/hate relationship with my grown-up-ness.

Things I love about my job:

My students have stopped calling my "Yo Miss" and now call me Miss Trump (or Stromp). I can tell I am starting to become an authority figure for them. They respect me and can be quite polite to me sometimes! For example, I lost my voice two weeks ago and while I was reading aloud from Because of Winn-Dixie , I had a coughing fit. A student hollered from the back of the room, "Its okay Miss Trump! You take your time!" How cute! I also have SO MANY funny stories about them! Not to mention the great time we all had at 5th grade camp (highjacking a yacht may or may not have been involved...). I have a lot of fun with my kids and the other 5th grade teachers I work with. And of course I am basically BFFs with the secretary (who has a love of pretzels, which I use to my advantage... Bribes? Who, me?).

Things I do not love about my job:

I go to bed before 10pm (if I know whats good for me) and I get up at 6am. I am not used to these old woman hours! My nocturnal hedgehog hasn't gone to bed by the time I wake up in the morning! Luckily my roommate keeps the same hours as me. Which means we both have learned the hard way that it is NEVER a good idea to stay up past midnight playing Super Mario World because you need to beat one last castle before you can save your game. I also cannot do 5th grade math. My lovely roommate bought me the Wii game "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" for my birthday this weekend. As it turns out, no. No, I am not smarter than a 5th grader. And finally we come to the motivation behind this blog entry. There was an incident with one of my students today. Without going into details, I will just say that I did not feel safe in my school today because of something that student did. That student is not coming back to my elementary school, but all the same, I'm still upset and freaked out. What kind of homelife does a child have when an 11 year old resorts to violence? I'm taking the day off from teaching tomorrow and going to a training session about strategies to use when teaching students who do not have English as their first language. The training will be good for my resume and the break from my classroom will be good for my mental stability. Whoever says that teachers don't earn their benefits and summer vacations obviously don't know any teachers...

Hypnotist, Baby!

Saturday night I attended a hypnotist show put on by Grand Valley's Panhellenic organization. The hypnotist is Dan Lornitis and he was fabulous! One of my good friends and sorority sisters, Kristen was chosen along with around 10 other students. Lornitis made them do things that were amazing and hilarious but not embarrassing or dangerous. My favorite part had to be when Lornitis told them that they were 5 year olds watching Bambi. When he told them that Bambi's mom just died, everyone cried. Except Kristen. No, my friend was up on stage laughing and clapping her hands in glee. When Lornitis told them they were now watching a remake of Bambi where Bambi's mom doesn't die, Kristen threw a slight fit. I'm thinking this girl needs therapy. Here is a video of Dan Lornitis. The examples shown in the video are essentially what he did at Grand Valley. I would recommend paying money to see this man, so a free concert was extra amazing!