In addition to being the last day of the week, Fridays are also awesome because I only have to teach four periods – woohoo! Every other day of the week I have three classes for a single period and one for a double, and the doubles are pretty killer. But Fridays I have three glorious planning periods, and I can usually enter all my grades for the week into my grade book, make posters for upcoming lessons, and do various other dorky teacher stuff with time to spare.

I had one student today that was really difficult. Porsche is about four feet tall, and the best way to describe her is definitely “spark plug.” Sometimes she gets really engaged with the lesson and is really fun to teach, but other times… She’s already been kicked out of my class several times for acting out, and suspended three days for fighting. I saw her in the hall this morning with her hood on and told her to take it off (hoods are against the dress code), and her response was that she was wearing it up because her hair was a “big mess, just like yours.” When it was time for my class she came in “really hyper because I just ate a bunch of candy!!!”, and within about five minutes somehow her notebook went sailing across the room. I picked it up and told her she could have it back at the end of class (it wasn’t her science notebook, so she didn’t need it), and she flipped out at me with “you’re such a white teacher!!” Then later on she was drumming on her desk and loudly singing, and when I told her that I was taking points off her paycheck she jumped up and screamed at me that I was a cracker. Yes, Porsche, it’s true – if I wasn’t white, it would be  totally acceptable for you to throw a private karaoke party in my classroom. Ugh.

On a more flattering note, today I walked into a classroom to pull out a student who had to make up a quiz. I always wear my (slightly too large) lab coat when I’m teaching, but since this was during one of my preps I wasn’t wearing it. I didn’t really think about the fact that some of the kids have never seen me without my lab coat, but when I walked in without it there was this excited murmur that built up to one of the kids calling out, “Dang, Ms. Rubin is mad skinny!” I know I shouldn’t care about the approval of a bunch of twelve-year-olds, but after spending all year drowning my stress in ice cream, it’s nice to know that at least I’m not mad fat.