Oh, 3rd Grade. Madness.

Today while I was walking back home from another terrible class with the out-of-control third graders, I tried to concentrate on what exactly I could do to help out the situation. Unfortunately, for at least three of the kids I can think of, their behavior is so completely beyond my comprehension that I have no idea how I can help them. One is from a very unstable home life and I have suspicions that the others have equally bad situations at home. And so their interactions with the other kids end up being violent, confrontational and downright rude. And they are in the third grade. I try to comfort them as much as I can by speaking to them calmly and get them used to me but still they hear one offensive remark from another student and they are yelling, punching, kicking and biting. In all honesty, my school doesn't have enough resources to really be able to help these kids and they are just put into the same classrooms as all the other students. And that means that their likelihood to resort to violence feeds an unhealthy atmosphere in the classroom. The kids that might be fine otherwise but the craziness of the class gets them riled up to the point of no return. Today I did collect a group of the students that had finished their tests and I read from an English storybook for a little while. Unfortunately, the noise of the troublemakers was too distracting for us to have too much luck but I did hear one of the kids mention that he was understanding more than he thought he would so that made me feel pretty excited. I think that having a substitute teacher is also really not helping the situation at all. So for now, all I can really do is try my best to help out.