180 days as a teacher

My brain is mush - I had great post ideas during the day, and now it seems these ideas have escaped the maze that is my brain (or more likely these ideas are lost somewhere between the codeine receptor and the sleep deprivation center).

One of my girls is simply not sleeping anymore, and I've been battling another migraine since I stepped out of school today. And guess who's winning?

Sleep deprivation is something I know very well - when the twins were born, the first three months were all about that, with less than 3 hours of sleep in a row - all I did was breastfeed and change diapers.

The human body is an awesome machine - I don't know how I got through that. And now, once again, I feel sleep-deprived because Christine wakes up every 2-3 hours and gets up between 4:00 and 4:30AM.

The pediatrician today said there isn't much we can do - giving her Benadryl or other stuff of the sort won't make her sleep in later. I personally would have enquired how much Vallium a 30-lbs toddler can take without permanent damage to the liver or other vital body parts.
The pediatrician also suggested (to my hubby) the best method may be to coach her into staying quiet in her room and keeping busy by herself.

If my head hadn't been throbbing when hubby told me that, I would have physically thrown myself on the floor and rolled around laughing. That's how I feel about "coaching" her anything - she's our little Hitler, telling everyone what to do, how to do it, and if you dare speak to her while she is giving you orders, she tells you to "zip it" - these are HER words. And she's all of 38 inches tall...

I have to make this post short (but I think it's too late for that already) - I need to enter the last bit of information about my students into the special grading software.

I thought that grading essay questions was difficult, I thought that being swamped with a million tests to grade was difficult, I found (and still find) it very difficult to see some girls fail the first semester - but just when difficult was getting easier, I found out I have to give each girl two grades (letters): one for their work (quality)and one for their behavior in class. Why can't we just let the numbers do the talking????? I've said enough already...

All this for tomorrow of course, and even though I would love to cut some of these girls up in small pieces, throw them in my crockpot for the low-temp 10-hr and feed them to the wolves (even if there aren't any in this area), it will be very hard for me to give them grades that will make them feel bad about themselves. I think I'm really not made for the "tough love" part of this job...