The kids were CRAZY. Literally CRAZY!!! We had a total of 8 kids there today and 6 of them had a total meltdown or something close to it. They were hyper, touching each other, going behind curtains, throwing chairs...yeah, Crazy!
I'm kind of mad about the whole situation. We have two sunbeam classes and they stacked our class with all of the boys that are real behavior problems. (6 out of the 8 today were boys...) If you look at the other sunbeam class, there were four there today, three girls, one boy. And, they were perfect.
You might say that it's us and we aren't good at managing these kids and if someone else was in our position they could do better. Sometimes, I like to take the blame for things like this. Not this time. If you look at the other class, they have a substitute almost every week. Different teachers every week. And they are perfect every week. It's not a matter of who's teaching, it's a matter of what kind of kids they are and who they are surrounded by. 6 boys who are the same age, best friends, and are only 4...not a good combination. I don't care who the teacher is. The primary presidency should know this and spread out the tough kids and the reverent kids. That way it's only 3 hard ones instead of 6. That's a huge difference.
I feel like they (the primary presidency) think that we can handle hard kids because I'm a teacher, but I really don't think that is fair. Yes, I may have more experience with that many kids at the same age, but that doesn't mean we can handle 6 boys wreaking havoc!
Unfortunately, I think it will be just as bad next year. We had a Sunbeam Orientation on Wednesday so that the new set of kids could meet their teachers, and we had to do like a 5 minute lesson so they knew what it was like to be in Sunbeams. We had 5 there, the other class...3. We definitely had all of the crazy kids again. The other kids were angelic the whole time. I could only say that one of our kids behaved that night.
Needless to say, I'm not looking forward to the new year. In fact, I am seriously considering sending an email to the primary president and telling her we think it's a good idea to call another set of Sunbeam teachers. It's really not fair how this has played out.
For what it's worth, I'm so happy to find out I'm not the only one! My Sunbeam class was a disaster on Sunday! It's tough on the best of weeks and complete chaos other times. I'm the only teacher, which totally stinks. I have 5 girls and 1 boy. The boy is nearly perfect! All the problems come from the girls. I had to send one girl out of class to her parents. I've felt guilty about that since- like maybe I just can't keep control of my class. But at the end of the day it's a tough job and they're a tough age. Church is difficult because there is no formal disciplinary structure like there is at a school, and you're friends with the parents of the kids so it makes it more awkward when there are problems. I'm sure if you talk to the presidency they will be more than willing to help out however they can.
ReplyDeleteJust found your blog after book group last night and I wanted to say--tell the presidency! It really isn't fair! I have no idea why they gave you all those boys (and I've worked with them all, so I know how, together, they can be a handful) and they should be separated. Don't hesitate to talk to the presidency about it.
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