Everyone is ratty.... me included.

You know those weeks where something catastrophic happens? But then the next day is ok, and you think Well, clearly I've dealt with the worst of it, now my week will be.... as it turns out, complete and utter shite. I shouldn't say that, there have been some bright spots, I'm just having trouble redirecting my focus.

Two of my families are moving in January; I've worked with them for 6 & 7 years respectively and they're well-established kids in Book 4. Both girls will start Year 7 and we've done quite a bit of the adolescent drama already... wish they could have moved at the end of LAST year! No, that's not it at all. It will be sad to see them go and I hope desperately that their music thrives in their new environments.

Today's gotten my goat a little; while it's IMPOSSIBLE that children should miss a minute of morning class time, and are under no circumstances to be absent from their clasroom for more than half an hour, Grade 5 & 6 have just swanned off (at the end of lunch) to Community Sport. (Oh, and they spent AN HOUR of morning class time IN THE POOL today) This is a weekly excursion in which they try out lawn bowls, tennis, etc and so forth. You are right! They should have no say in whether or not they want to try these things out, because playing lawn bowls six times is entirely more valuable than continuing to develop their ability to play a musical instrument. And the pool time this morning? Oh, it was free time. Because God forbid we should make constructive use of that alert morning period.

Can you tell I'm funimg? There may have been an exhange in the staff room today that went thusly:
"I felt really bad becasue this child had a hearing problem and I didn't find out till he was in Grade 2 when I brought up his naughtiness with his classroom teacher."
Let's just put the indignation I felt at THAT aside for a second.... as I hit a home run for homeschooling and pointed out how important inter-school communication is:
"Yeah, when I went to high school I had a sport teacher who didn't realise I was two or three years younger than everyone else in my class. It took her about two years to catch on."
The surprise that greeted this statement was only upstaged when I answered this:
"Oh, so that would have been boring, all those hours at home doing schoolwork by yourself."
"Mm? Oh, we only did two or three hours of academic work each day."
"But why were you so young when you went to high school? Why would they put you in Year 7?"
"I won a scholarship."
(Mum, I left out the part about yr 9 math, they were having enough trouble with the bare-bones basics.)
Yes. Watch those faces trying to add two or three hours PER DAY up to nine-year-old-getting-high-school-scholarship.
Frick.