Every year since I began teaching, I have had a consistant nightmare before school starts.  It is always along the lines that the students are out of control and they ignore me.  I try my signals, nothing.  I yell, again nothing. They just continue to run rampant in the classroom.  I have lost complete control of everything.  It scares me.

I have since learned that it is a stress dream.  However, last year, it almost came true.  I had 43 kids and 10 of them were doozys.  They made my life miserable.

Let's see:  there was the boy who for no reason we could discerne, would suddenly hide under his desk and not come out.  The more you tried, the harder he hung on to the desk.  If you didn't try, he would disturb the entire class with moaning.

Then there was Dennis the Menace.  He was a bully and definitely cow poop.  He terrorized his younger sibs.  He terrorized his neighbors.  He even terrorized the police when they came to talk to him about his vandalism.  He was a real creep.  He moved this year.

I had the girl who was a Katrina victim and she was a bully too.  It didn't help that she was not only older by 2 years, but she was also too informed about the finer points of married life.  I always wondered about her background.  Mom was a real treat too.  A harder woman I have never met.

My last memory is the little boy who is so emotionally disturbed that at 4th (then 5th this year) he cried over everything.  I tried to get him counseling but the parents saw nothing wrong with him melting down over everything.  They hired a huge man in the middle of the year and put him in his class.  He just tells him to "suck it up."  It seems to be working.  All the strong women in the world couldn't have done what he did.  His mom is strong and she created him.  He cried over EVERYTHING!

However, this year my nightmare has come to pass.  My class is really awesome but they can't keep quiet to save thier lives, literally.  If we had a lock down, they couldn't quit talking while the bad guy passed the room.  It just isn't in them to be quiet.  I wrote Popcorn on the board and in the first half hour they lost three letters.  I don't know if they are going to make it to 2:00.