Stress... and a marriage proposal...

Work has me stressed.to.the.max. I know, it's the story of all of our lives, but it isn't usually the story of my life. I'm just bogged down with lots of paperwork (welcome to the world of special education) and a whole lot of kids. I went from having 5 kids at the beginning of the year to 9 in the past two months. Normally it isn't that big of a deal, but both times I got new kids, it was multiple kids at the same time. In my classroom, any changes upset the apple cart and we go through a metamorphasis and a trial period of re-establishing the pecking order. Add to that a new assistant and the news of another student joining us. Needless to say, my class is chaotic. Again, I know most of you teachers out there are balancing life with 25+ kids, but my kids have some pretty intensive needs on top of living in extreme poverty. So when I'm not dealing with the emotions that come with teaching students who are emotionally disturbed, I'm dealing with issues like neglect, abuse, and being impoverished.

With all of the bad that comes with my job, it would be easy to have a negative attitude. And some days, I have to really remind myself that there are plenty of positives in my crazy classroom. Like the kids who are learning to read. Or the kids who ask if we can do more math. And even the kid who changes from saying f*ck you to I hate you. We are making progress. We are learning. And we are trying really hard to be decent human beings. So, even though it may be chaotic.. it's life. It's my life. It's their life. And we can have rainbows and butterflies in addition to our tarantulas and spider man. And yes, in a classroom full of boys.. we have LOTS of tarantulas and spider man. In fact, I have a kid who answers just about every question with tarantula or spider. With an eye raise, he'll give me the correct answer. And that's progress. Because at his old school, he never gave the correct answer.

And now to the marriage proposal. We were talking about marriage (it's been a theme lately and I'm not sure why...) and one kid asked me if I would ever marry a kid. I explained to him that no, adults don't marry kids because kids don't get married until they are adults. Not pleased with my response, he asked, "How about if you wait to marry that kid until he grows up to be a grown up?". I had to laugh and then asked, "What kid would want to marry his teacher? I can't imagine any teacher being that cool." He looked at me straight in the eye and said, "I want to marry you. Please wait until I'm a grown up and marry me."

Awww.. little dude, if only it were that simple.