It's been a bit of an interesting week so far. Yesterday (Monday) turned out to be a really good day at school - the kind that brought a smile to my face and reminded me of working at R. J. Lee in Brampton. Then, today (Tuesday) was not a good day -- oh, my, what a rollercoaster I am on! The most challenging boy in my class (Baylee) has been away for two days and the challenge girl (Mia) did really well on Monday as far as behaviour goes - so, that's why that day went well. Today, Mia was totally 'off' - actually, she did really well during the morning, but as soon as she didn't get her way for something, she became defiant and that was it for her. I spoke with her mom after school today and she told me that she is trying her best at home to discipline Mia appropriately. I suggested she try taking away something from Mia that she likes when she misbehaves. She told me that Mia really likes the mp3 player that she got for her birthday (can you imagine......a 5 year old getting an mp3 player!) and the mom's comment was that Mia is just getting used to her mp3 player. Sheesh - I am beginning to agree with the teacher who said the other day that adults should have to take a parenting course before they have children. No wonder this child is defiant when she doesn't get her own way. I know it's easier to give in to a child than to discipline or teach them to make correct choices, but I found that if you work hard at it between the ages of 1 and 3, it's so much easier after that. I am still thinking seriously about trying to get a job (supply, part-time or full-time) at the private school around the corner from here - I can imagine that it would be much easier and similar to teaching at R. J. Lee.
It's great having Chantelle there to talk with and to plan with. She and I see things so similarly and can easily run things by each other and/or moan and groan about kids and/or parents. She is going through a bit of a tough time with one of her parents at the moment and often needs me to bounce her frustrations off. I am only too happy to listen to her and share with her my experiences from teaching. Also, when you talk with someone else about what you are going through, they often can help you look at things in a different manner or they can also help you to validate what you think about the subject. Chantelle is young and so hasn't really developed her sense of knowing how good she is as a teacher. She's not great (I don't even think I am a great teacher), but she has a lot going for her - yesterday I had to remind her of that - she was beginning to doubt herself and I told her that she needs to remember that she is very talented and organized and motivated and puts a lot of effort into what she does.
I haven't done anything when I have gotten home from school both last night and tonight. I am feeling better each day, but I still don't have a lot of energy, so I decided to just relax and take it easy and get my energy levels built up again. It's really nice having Dad around - he has been taking such good care of me! :-)
Dad is back to spending his time doing census stuff and our moving boxes stuff. He spent Monday going through our boxes bringing in my teaching supply boxes so that I could look through them to find books which could be used to teach in the next term at school. He also got his tool box set up and some of his tools are now in it. He spent some time sorting out the training materials for his collectors - they need to study from them before they do their training from Dad which is in a week and a half. Dad attended a meeting with other census area supervisors and their district manager. It was an opportunity for them all to discuss any problems they were having, how things were going in general and to give hints on how to make things go better. Today he spent the day sorting the actual census materials for the census and began delivering the training materials to his census collectors - some of them have come to our house to pick them up and one Dad has had to drop off at the collector's house.
Dad had a cool thing happen on Monday. He had to put together his collectors' satchels - there were two plastic supports which went in the satchels, but it was hard to figure out where they went in and then when Dad figured it out, it was hard to actually do. So, after putting together his seven collectors' satchels, he took a few pics of how to put them together and wrote up instructions on how to do it. He then sent it to his district manager and suggested that she might want to share it with the other supervisors. One of our friends from church who is a collector, but not one of Dad's collectors, received the email which Dad had sent to his manager who had forwarded it to other area supervisors (with a note which read "Our resident engineer has prepared this for us. Many thanks Mike), one of which who had obviously passed it on to our friend, Christine. Chris sent Dad an email which said "Thanks, Mike. You are a legend. I had a feeling it was you they were talking about (when she read the email about the resident engineer). So, that was nice for Dad to be recognized for his work.
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