Crying Day

As my students would say in their diaries, today was a "crying day."

At the end of our last class on Thursday, a bunch of students started crying for various reasons. In one corner of the room, two boys were teasing one of the girls so she started crying. Then in the other corner, two boys who are usually friends were play-hitting each other, and then one of them started crying too. After that, in the middle of the classroom, one of the girls started crying for no reason. My co-teacher was getting frustrated because of all class period, the class as a whole hadn't been paying attention very well so we finished class 10 minutes late, and she told all the students who were involved to go to the 6th grade teacher's room. I sat next to her while the students explained what happened and apologized to each other. (At least, that's what I think they were doing. I figured I would just provide some "moral support" even though I don't really know what's going on/ being said.) When they were finished, she let them all go... and then my co-teacher started crying too!

Let me just say that I think my new 6th grade co-teacher is one of the most awesome people I've met. She cares about teaching, she cares about the students and tries to learn the names of all 200+ of them. Well, she explained that she was crying because she felt bad. The third girl who started crying had been fooling around before, but when my co-teacher scolded her, she thought she would try hard to pay attention. But right at that moment, my co-teacher scolded her again (for some other reason) and the student felt sad because she wanted to impress my co-teacher with her behavior but instead of noticing, she reprimanded her again. It was just bad timing. So the reason my co-teacher started crying was because she hadn't realized she hurt the student's feelings and felt sorry!

No, I did not start crying at this point. (Just tried to smile and tell her that students are happy when she's happy so she should try to smile too!) Although it was really touching how much she cares about her students! It's so great to finally work with teachers who love the students they teach.