Punczki Day

Happy Fat Tuesday.

A day to be fat and to indulge one last time before the Lenten fast. I'm surprised that not many people out here know what a punczki is. I never really realized it was a Polish/regional Michigan thing. I did see them at a few stores however. I did not eat one today which is okay. Aren't they like 2,000 calories any way? That's like a days worth of food in a doughnut. I started the new job this Monday and I like it so far. I work mostly with fourth and fifth graders with behavior problems. There are 2 teachers and two paras in the class. I've only worked two days and have already learned a lot about dealing with kids with behavior problems. I defintely have not had to encounter kids like this in my five years or schooling and it is a good learning experience for me. Right now I am splitting my time between 3-4 kids. Trevon, A.J. , Brandon, and Jacob.

Trevon and A.J. are two African American kids I get the pleasure of working with. They are great except they get off task and in trouble very easily. I haven't had any problems with them so far. I have special hand shakes with each of them that they think is the neatest thing. I told them every good day they have I'll add something on to it. They like calling me Mr. "Magic", my nickname in the classroom.

Brandon is latino and speaks a mutant form of English where he mumbles a few words you can understand and the rest sounds like he is talking with a jaw breaker in his mouth. He knows english very well according to his teachers and I guess is pretty smart. He hasn't had an eruption yet, but I guess one time he ran out of the school and 3 blocks away. The cops picked him up and he tried to kick the window out of the cop car. I haven't really had the opportunity to work with Brandon one-on-one much yet. I have have started to build a little positive rapport with him and look forward to getting to know his habits more.

Lastly there is Jacob. Jacob is a white fourth grader, and like most of these kids has a pretty rough homelife. I guess he doesn't get much sleep. He arrives at school very cranky and it takes him a while to work. In the past two days he has thrown 2 tables, rolled on the floor mumbling expletives, called me a "Shit-muncher" among other things and pretended to "Pop a cap in my honkey ass". I cannot believe the vocabulary this fourth grader has. It makes you wonder where he picks it up from. It has to be either television, music, or unfortunately, his parents. I guess his Mom is a real piece of work. Jacob is very interesting though. He will go off and then after he calms down, we will work on a math work sheet and he'll give me a high five after we complete it.

These kids are fascinating to me. You may think that this job would be very stressful but I am finding myself enjoying it. You have to take everything they say with a grain of salt and just basically do the best you can. I have no planning to do so I basically leave everything in the classroom. I realize some of these behaviors won't change and there is nothing you can really do except weather the storm and work on small imporvements day by day. I have the feeling that everyday will be a new adventure. I'm sure this job will provide me with plenty of stories and I think this will be a great place to share them.

Onto a different topic. We lost our opening game of our J.V. city tournament. It was a heartbreaker but in the end our kids just didn't come to play. Our point guard turned the ball over at least 10 times and played horrible. Overall, everybody played very uninspired basketball, which is uncharacteristic of us. It just looked like we didn't want to be there and usually when a team shows up like that they get beat. We got beat. Hopefully thevarsity will have better luck Saturday but we play against a team with supposidly the best player in the state of Nebraska.

I went to a Lincoln Stars hockey game on Saturday. They are a USHL team? Regardless the ticket was free and I ended up having a pretty good time.

Michigan lost a tough one to Iowa Sunday. I think Thursday verse Purdue will be do or die for our tournament hopes. My prediction might not come true.

Tigers play their first Spring game tomorrow against Atlanta.

Weather has started to turn these last couple days but I hear we are in for a wintery mix by the end of the week which is unfortunate. I got to wear shorts and sandals walking Emma today which was awesome.

That is about it for now. Take care everybody!