Spring Fever Makes Me Inarticulate.

Today I don't want to talk about the injustices of education, foisted on children by adults. Because today, my annoyance lies elsewhere.

Namely, with the children.

Lately, my classroom has been suffering from a severe case of spring fever. It happens every year to some degree; the kids get restless, punchy, and seem to lose the ability to listen to anyone over four feet tall. The result is no mental downtime for the adults in the room, as we are constantly arbitrating, repeating ourselves, and trying to introduce new/cool stuff to keep boredom from compounding the problem. The constant need for me to be "on," combined with whatever level of punchiness the children exhibit, is a nasty recipe that causes me to be far less patient with them and produces the need to nap the instant I arrive home. Being exhausted and annoyed with the kids makes it more difficult to come up with awesome plans and continue doing the documentation that I share with colleagues and families, all of which generally makes me cranky.

So hopefully, this too shall pass, as I have seen the good stuff come from these kids over many months, and this will turn out to be a short period of disequilibrium in the longer stretch of a happily functioning classroom. Children, like adults, have times when they are more wacky and moody than others... it sucks, from the adult point of view, to ride it out. But if I've done my job right, they'll get through it and we'll all move on!