Okay, fire drills actually aren’t that exciting. We’ve had four of them since Friday, because apparently there’s some quota every school must meet by a certain day and we only started having them three days ago. But today one happened in the middle of our unit test on rocks and minerals, and it was a pretty spectacular disaster. Kids started literally screaming and running in circles, and before all was said and done I had two students in tears – one because he got kicked in the chest, another because he got perfume sprayed in his eye (and no, I have no idea why Marie thought it was necessary to spray perfume during a fire drill). Needless to say, we’re going to have a second attempt at the test tomorrow.

Also, I’ve gotten three new students in the past week. One transferred from another school, and two were just mainstreamed from self-contained special education classes. I know that it’s likely I’ll keep getting new students all year, but I still find it very annoying. Especially the ones that transfer in from special ed., since they don’t know what’s going on in class, are already self-conscious about where they came from, and often feel the only way to save face is to majorly flip out. I’ve been trying to catch them up one on one and get on their good sides, but it’s going to be an uphill battle…