Today was a very long Wednesday! To begin, before the bell even rang there was drama. One of my students came up to me and said, "Ms. Hertogs, *student* kicked me out of our locker." (the students share lockers in the hallway). So, I approached this student and she said, "*student* is just too messy for me and I don't like it." I told this student that she can't just kick people out, and that they need to talk about it. They are still paired, so things must have gotten figured out!
This was a rough Dojo morning, we ended up taking a whole class point off, but most of them earned it back after math. Since it was Wednesday, the students had gym class. I was hoping they would be able to run off some energy and be ready to learn after that! After gym, one of the teachers came in for tech time. She taught the students about self control, and to not act on impulse. For this lesson, the teacher brought the students outside. They had to stand in a line while the teacher blew bubbles at them. The trick was that they were not allowed to act on impulse and pop them. They had to just stand there and do absolutely nothing! All of the students succeeded in this, so they earned a Dojo point! After this, the students played red light/green light, but the teacher added a yellow light. At yellow, the students had to walk very slow, and not act on impulse to walk fast or run. Most students earned their Dojo point for this activity, but some did not because they were not walking slow.
The rest of the day was pretty chill. Since there were parent/teacher conferences the students only had school until 11:30am.
After school, Mrs. Palmer and I prepped for the conferences. We put together the data and student work for each parent to see. Overall, these went very well! The bulk of our conferences was today, we met with 16 families. They were only 15-20 minute meetings, so they were not stressful at all. It was so nice to meet the parents of my students and to talk to them for this period of time! I was at the school until about 6:45pm, so it was a long day! As I was leaving, Mrs. Palmer told me to relax and do nothing for the night, which I could definitely do!
This was a very long, but good day! The half day was nice because we got to go outside for tech, and conferences went well!