Thursday, December 15, 2005

the stress of teenagers or why miss h is too tired

i have become hyper involved with things at school. in addition to teaching six normal classes and tutoring the kids who need help from those classes, i have told you about helping the basketball teams, i have helped at a couple of wrestling events, i am coaching a team for a science competition and now i am teaching saturday school as well. (saturday school= recap/review sessions for students who have failed or are failing and need to relearn the material).

my basketball players are failing and need lots of extra help. hell, a good number of my students are doing far worse than they should be doing. so they all want help, or they want to do make up work. and they want to get the help on their time, when it works for them. so that is an adventure, especially since i won't help on days i have to travel with the basketball teams and there are always some meeting or another that i have to attend after school. now there are those kids who will wait for me to get to go over things, and there are those kids who will just blow it off and continue to perform worse.

yesterday i had a hard session with one of my students. she is a basketball player, and the coach asked me to help out (aparently a woman is capable of something that three men are not). the girl is trying to pass classes, play basketball, and help raise her young family (not her children, but her mother's...though that is not a difference you can see). the kid is so stressed that she is having anxiety or panic attacks. it makes me want to cry. i think this the first time i am going to be willing to give out my home number to help this kid.

sigh. H