Circumcision???

Wow two posts in the span of a few days I am on a roll. But I guess it is the new year, this is one of my resolutions and just as the fitness places are swarming right after the new year I guess my blog post might be flooded too. Hopefully I keep this going longer than March. Anyway

I was reading in the Bible today, yes I know it is a rarity. But my church is reading the Bible in a year and I have wanted to do this for some time but have not had the discipline to do it. So I thought why not now. That may be my motto for the year Why Not Now. 

Another tangent... So as I was saying I was reading in Genesis today about Abraham and God requiring him and any of those that follow they ways of the Lord to be circumcised. Circumcision has never been something that I have thought about much maybe because I am a woman, but I have always found it to be a little gruesome. Today though I found myself completely torn up about it. To think that these young children and some not so young at that time, are having to have their genitals cut up and to think that back then they did have anesthesia as we do today. It just pained me to think of how awful it had to have been when everyone needed to me circumcised. I turned to my mom and asked her what the reasoning is for circumcision? I knew that their had to be a reason, because (call me naive if you choose) I do not believe that God requires things for no reason. He always has a reason and I do not believe that it is vain or conceited either. My mother said it was probably because of cleanliness, which does make sense. But why have the foreskin at all if you are going to need to cut it off. I was thinking that maybe it is because it protects while the fetus is in the uterus. I know this is not essential to my belief in God nor is it essential in my life at all. But it was something interesting I was thinking about and wondering what the purpose of it was.

Random thoughts in my mind.

things I would like to do this year.

So it has been awhile.
But one of my New Year resolutions is to write a blog post weekly.
So I better start it out right.

I created a list of the things that I would like to complete before I turn 28. Well I haven't even turned 27 yet, but I thought why not start out this year will some direction. my birthday is only 2 months away and I could already feel quite accomplished.

So here are the 27 things I want to do before I turn 28
1.Read at least 10 books and keep track
2.I desire to have purple hair
3. 5 random acts of kindness, keep track
4. Try some exotic food
5. post weekly on my blog
6. go to a festival
7. go to a professional sports game
8. go to three concerts
9. finish my smashbook
10. document my life more
11. call a long distance friend once a month
12. declutter my wardrobe
13. meet someone to get excited about
14. donate plasma twice
15. disconnect from all screens for two days
16. create a vision board
17. work out at least 2-3 times a week
18. read the entire Bible
19. save more money
20. pay off 1/4 of my Sallie Mae loan
21. complete a 10k
22. take another class possibly art
23. go camping
24. visit states I haven't been to
25. sew myself a piece of clothing
26. do 5 crafts
27. do something that truly scares me.

I have it in a journal. I have a page for each task to help with keeping track and also creating a plan if necessary. We shall see how it goes.

Gone Girl

Seriously a must read. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It keeps you on your toes. A murder mystery, very twisted. Shows just how manipulative a marriage can get. It is beautifully written, just when I thought it was getting a little boring something would surprise me and keep me reading. It was so good. MUST READ.

Gluttons for punishment

The girls were still horrible. One of the ring leaders actually was getting a dose of her own medicine and was getting fazed out. I think she was beginning to see that it doesn't pay to be friends with these girls, but I know how girls are and they will still run back to them even if they make them feel horrible.

What is it about girls? It is almost like we are gluttons for punishment. We almost purposefully take the hard rode or allow ourselves to be treated like crap over and over again. We want the attention and affection so much we are almost willing to do anything. We will ruin ourselves just to feel it, experience love, belonging. But I do not believe that it is our fault. I feel as though we have this predisposition to seek love, to find love. The upbringings that we have do not normally help either. The absent fathers, the screwed up mothers with self-concept issues of their own. And we are expected to come out unscathed. "Beautiful from the inside out." When really on the inside we have no idea what love is or who we even are.

It is really sad because very few girls have this natural, healthy self-concept. Where they face the world head on, no excuses for who they are. They have this "take me or leave me attitude."

The rest of us spend our whole lives wanting to feel needed, apart of something, enough for someone. There are some of those, if they are lucky, that somehow change it, reverse it and are not completely consumed by this need to feel loved. They, through a long process, are able to, most of the time, feel good about themselves without any compliments or guys turning their heads. I will say it took how many years of making these bad habits and how many years is it going to take to reverse them?

I will say it took 23 years for me, creating these unhealthy habits, that I criticized myself for, but are actually quite normal for a girl. It took a good year of counseling mood swings, amazing friends with insight, and I finally got just that. Insight. I understood that God loved me no matter what, seriously no matter what. And it was something that simple yet that profound to crack through my shell. To finally shatter everything I had known. Because seriously I had heard many times Jesus loves you, God's love is healing, God's love is unconditional. But for some reason I did not really understand it. Maybe it was the right timing. Or some might say that I am naive and ignorant. Whatever you want to call it I feel good about myself. I am not self-destructive.  I do not have convince myself that I am worth it anymore, I know I am. So whatever you want to say I am better for it.

I feel for girls, especially those that I can tell simply want to be loved. Even more so these young girls that just do not know any better. They have figured out the girl game, and are ready to play. But they just want attention. I was wonder what is going on at home, or in their heads. Because most of them are not bad girls they are simply desiring a basic need, love. You may not say it is a basic need but really think about it. How fulfilling can life be if you do not have love. How far can you get in life if you do not have love. And women, I would say more than men, truly feel this void.  I feel for these girls, the girls who simply want to be loved.

Good behavior change I mean chain!

Wow its been awhile. Let me catch you up.

Well since my last horrific blog post I decided to turn things around. I was talking to a friend and she is a social worker at a school and she gave me a few ideas. The one I chose to go with was a good behavior chain. If I saw the students doing something nice for someone else or if a student came and told me about a good deed than that person would get their name on a piece of paper and that paper would be added to the chain. The students would get different incentives for how far the chain got. It did not even take a week and the chain hit the floor.

I began to realize that it is difficult for young children, okay lets be honest anyone, to simply do nice things for people. That is why I had an external award for these students. If they got the chain across the room they would get a pizza party. They had 6 weeks or so.

They actually were very excited about this. When it touched the floor they were ecstatic. They did not get across the room, but very close. I gave them ice cream instead of a pizza party, but it was still an incentive.

I think I am going to start it at the beginning of this next year, I will have four classes and I think I will make it a competition among the classes and see how it goes.

The behavior did seem to be better, at least in front of me.

The girls were still horrible. One of the ring leaders actually was getting a dose of her own medicine and was getting fazed out. I think she was beginning to see that it doesn't pay to be friends with these girls, but I know how girls are and they will still run back to them even if they make them feel horrible.

See the rest in my next post about girls!

At my end!

So I have reached my end. I know that I have complained about my job before, the administration, the kids. But seriously I have never felt this way before. Where I really do not know if I can put myself through much more of this.

I feel as though I have mentioned before that my children are a little difficult. They constantly talk when I do, and it is not as though I let them. They go up in arms when someone so much as looks at them the wrong way. And my girls oh do not even get me started on my girls, but really that is where the story is going to lead any way.

My girls are the meanest girls I have ever come in contact with. They are seriously every single mean girl that you have ever known all put into one classroom. They put Regina and her clan to shame. These are the real mean girls.

I know that I was not friends with the best people when I was in fifth grade. We are not very nice, and we broke the rules and picked on people. But I feel as though we knew the line and tried our best not to cross it. But with these girls there is no line. I have been combating these bullies the whole year. With little help from the administration. They would have discussion with them and maybe give them detention, but to these kids they needed a wake up call and they should have been suspended right out of the gate. Then they would have known that the school was not kidding around with bullies. But they did not so of course it escalated and that is where I am at right now. The escalation and me at my end.

It was Friday, the day before Spring Break starts, and we are taking our bathroom break. Which we do twice a day. My least favorite part of the day. I hear an eruption of noise and go in as fast as possible, just in time to see two girls going at it, they split apart so fast when they see me and I am livid. I yell at them to go up stairs, to the dean, and I am just at my end. They begin walking but one is in front and the other lingers behind me. They both know shit, we just crossed the line. (And these are the good girls). I see the dean as I am walking them up and I just yell at him, "You better get them, they were fighting in the bathroom." I walk back to my class and I am yelling at them, "If anyone is laughing or talking, you are going with them." One girls did so she went up too.

Come to find out that the ring leader of all the girls instigated the whole thing. She got them all heated and then told them to fight, so they did. That was all it took. She told them to, so they did. I cannot believe this.

They way they treat each other breaks my heart everyday. It actually grieves my soul and I feel as though I am doing the best that I can and it is just not enough. I do not know what else to do. It affects the core of who I am and I am not sure if I can watch these children treat each other like pawns or dirt.

This is at the end of a week that began with a girl telling another girl that she is gay and then that girl going around telling everyone about it and then all these mean girls confront her and make her feel less than. She did not show up at school on Thursday or Friday. I have tried to call home but do not have the right number.
They do not understand that you cannot treat people that way.

I am not sure that I can handle this anymore. I could not sleep that Friday night. I could not stop thinking about it. I cried a lot. I just don't know.

good days and bad days.

So Friday was not a good day.

I have realized that it was not so much because my children couldn't keep their mouths shut, because that happens everyday. It was the fact that they were getting nothing accomplished. I mean seriously some of them had 45 minutes to get something, anything done, and after numerous redirections they were incapable of getting anything done.

It was very disheartening. I was not sure if I was so mad, or so sad. I was very annoyed, but also equally able to cry at any moment. It was so disappointing. I felt as though I was nagging all day, non stop, do this and don't do that. I mean it was immensely exhausting.

As I told people this on Friday many of them asked me if I was looking for another job, another school, another teaching position. Because it is about once a week that I leave completely exhausted.

But my response to them was that I would have this anywhere. Those days that are great and remind me of why I like to teach and those others days that make me question if this is what I really want to do. Those days that I end feeling that I am completely capable and competent as a teacher and then there are those days that I feel insecure and wonder what in the world am I doing.  I felt as if I would have those types of days anywhere I taught, or any job that I might have. Those days that remind you that you are doing what you were intended to do and those that days that make you think you made a mistake. I think that is when you know that you are doing what you are suppose to do. If the job was easy all of the time you would not have anything difficult to work through, nothing that required you to dig deep and find strength you did not know you had.

My job maybe be difficult at times, but it would. be anywhere. I know that it is not easy and I know that I am doing some good. It may be hard to see but I know that I am. I want to stay because it is not easy. I want to stay because I once heard that anything easy isn't worth having. I feel as though it is conformation that I should be here because I cannot just rely on myself to get through it. I need to rely on God to help me to stay patient and be kind. That is why I choose to stay.