Late March doldrums

I am so tired of school right now. While I'm teaching my heart out over Act I, Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet today, I look out and see six heads down. I ask them, "What do you think you're doing? You're in a classroom - act like it!" and they say back to me, "There are so many people sleeping because it's boring!". My answer back is, of course, "I don't care. You've got to do it anyway. If you don't, feel free to fail." That's the kind of conversations I feel like I'm either having - or avoiding, by letting them sleep, and to be honest I do that sometimes, too, especially if they're pains in the ass - all the time lately in my afternoon classes. My morning classes are all awesome and on the ball, but my afternoon groups of kids are lazy and listless.

Not to mention, I'm overwhelmed and all I can think about is how next year, I'll be able to have a classroom and kids every day - rather than floating from classroom to classroom and having to see the kids every other day. I'm so sick of having to rebuild the structure of my classroom every other day because I'm in a different room. I'm so sick of having to fight kids on issues like hats in the classroom or listening to I-Pods while they're doing their drill. I'm feeling completely and totally unsupported by just about everyone at the school right now in any position of authority. I walk through the halls on my planning period and see kid after kid without a hall pass, and when I ask, they all have a different reason why, and that sucks. Kids shouldn't be in the hall without a hall pass. Period. This is something else that they will blame the teachers on, but the problem lies above us. They're so worried about bringing in school uniforms (which teachers will undoubtedly have to be in charge of monitoring and enforcing, rather than them) that they can't see that the school and its students are not following their existing policies.

Our administration right now needs to figure out a way to support us, because right now it's bad and it's going to get worse and worse as the weather warms up.