I've already had one of those mornings where I wish I'd never gotten out of bed and it's not even 9 am. Mainly because my morning started at 3:30. That's right. I said 3:30. And I didn't get to bed until 12:30. The guy who lives above me has absolutely no concept of what is an appropriate time to be hammering. What is he hammering you may well ask. I honestly don't give a rat's behind of caring about what he is hammering. I'd really love for him to not do it in the MIDDLE of the NIGHT! I wish he would do it during the day. You know, when no one else is home and he's spending it sleeping. He doesn't work, he's home all the time. Apparently from what I've gathered he really only leaves to do grocery shopping and that's in the middle of the night. I don't really care what he does for the most part, but the music and television at full volume all the time even into the night was bad enough and now the hammering has started over the last couple of months. He gets a talking to and I'm pretty sure he's being fined as well for it. Every night I know that I will have to ask him at least 3 times to turn down the radio/tv. He turns it down, but then it goes up again within an hour. I've lived here for over a year now and it's not really any better than when I moved in. Unfortunately I think that the HOA may have to bring in the police over it because he's disturbing the peace constantly during the night and I'm not the only one affected. From what I understand it's been like that for at least 5 years.
It took me nearly an hour to fall back asleep only to be awakened by a huge crash of dishes in the kitchen. I admit I freaked a bit because I wasn't sure if someone had broken in or what. I grabbed a shoe and headed out there after verifying that the rugrat was in her room sound asleep. I know, a shoe is kind of dumb but I didn't have anything else and at least it has a pointy heel. To my relief there was no one there, but I did have a shattered bowl on my kitchen floor. It appears that one of the holder things for the shelf failed and dumped the contents. It was of course the top shelf in the cabinet because that's just how my luck goes. The bowl that broke is the middle size of a set of three I got at Costco. I'm sad because these were my favorite mixing bowls. Luckily I didn't use the middle size very often, so I'm not too sad. Along with the bowl on the floor there was a ton of silverware and my strainer. I'm a little behind on dishes and I got tired of doing them last night so I put all the silverware in the strainer on the counter. Yeah, they got caught by the falling mixing bowl. Is it bad that I just cleaned up the bowl and not the rest? I was too tired. Oh yeah and bleeding all over. Yep, you were probably waiting for that part weren't you? At least if you know me at all you were. I would have left the whole thing up except sometimes Malia gets up at night to get a drink and I didn't want her cutting herself. So I picked up the first piece and managed to slice open my left thumb. It doesn't look that bad, but that's because it's a pretty clean cut, just a bit deep. Not enough to warrant stitches thank heavens because I don't think I could have handled that this morning.
You may be wondering why on earth I wasn't asleep until 12:30. Well it was a not good day for Malia at school and the information I was given about her behavior. I talked about the color card system before. Well yesterday she was on orange. So I asked what she did and she told me she'd been patting one of the other girls on the head. I asked if she'd done it more than once because orange is the second card that you pull and she said that she hadn't. I admit that I didn't believe her and now I feel badly about that. She brings home a contract every day that is supposed to have her misbehaviors listed out on it. Starting the end of last week and the first part of this week it didn't say anything on it, just frowny faces and a comment that she was whatever color card she was. I wrote a note asking for the appropriate information because I can't back up their behavior program if I don't know what they feel she did wrong. Yes I phrased that correctly. I really think that the teacher has it in for Malia and has her pull cards for things that the other kids don't have to. Part of this is due to the mostly inane reasons given for pulling cards and the fact that the number of things she did wrong is not counting up to the number of cards she's pulling. She gets in trouble for things that all kids do. Like arguing over who gets to go first down the slide. She got a card pulled one day for climbing up the slide backwards. Seriously? That's worth a card? The other part is the way that Malia talks about it. She talks like she has to be careful about everything she does because she doesn't know if she's going to have to pull a card or not. I know she's not perfect and I know she misbehaves, but she's told me that she has to be extra careful in class to not get in trouble. She loves the school work but I can tell that she is noticing a lack of consistency on the teachers' part. I took a look at the contract for yesterday and sure enough it states she was on orange. It also says that the only thing she did wrong was pat a girl on the head. Nothing else. Am I just not getting their carding system? She's been on yellow before when she sat on a kid's feet. Is head touching considered way worse? I'm at a loss. I don't want to discount the whole thing to her because then she won't try to be good. I feel like I'm backing up a program that is inconsistent and frankly unfair as far as I can see. Anyway, I was up so late because I was trying to figure out if I'm incorrect in my perception and if there is something else I can try doing to get Malia to do what she's supposed to do. That is, if she doesn't start getting in trouble for looking at the other kids wrong. At this point in time I'm just kind of waiting for that. I added a note to her contract asking what else she did wrong yesterday because I didn't think that the information on her behavior was comprehensive as it didn't add up to Orange based on past contracts. Hopefully it wasn't too snarky, but it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't.
Here is a picture of the remains of my bowl:
3 comments:
They do the 'card system' at my kid's school, too. I don't get it either. I honestly believe it depends on the teacher's mood that day as to what is deemed "card pulling" behavior?!
Do you have an option to pull Malia out of the card system? It sounds pretty inconsistent to me. As a teacher, I know it's hard to be consistent but if you can't be consistent, then don't bother. You shouldn't have to back up inconstistency.
Is it possible to put Malia in a different class? I remember from the picture you posted of her class that her teacher looks young, maybe she's too inexperienced.
I don't actually have the option to remove her. I've been looking into charter schools for awhile and am seriously considering it for at least next year. If I can figure out the transportation aspect of it.
Yes, her teacher is very young and it's her first year. I've given her my feedback on the cards, so we'll see what happens now.
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