Feeling the love

I feel very loved today.

Project "decorate Ms. Rubin's room" continued today.  While I was teaching first period (my 9th graders) a boy came in to ask about snowflakes that he was making to hang from the ceiling.  He wanted to know which ones I preferred and how low to hang them.  I naturally told him I loved them both and totally trust his judgement on what he thought was best.

While he was asking I heard some whispers in my class that they couldn't believe my students were making all this stuff for me.  They said that they must really love me.  I don't think they thought I heard their whispering. ;)

The next period is my prep so the boy came back to put up the snowflakes.  While he was there, another bunch of boys came in with the shelf they had been working on to go in the back of my room.  

This is the before:

And this is the after:

Is that amazing or what??  The boxes on there are V-math which is an math intervention program for a class that I'm teaching.  Until today they were all sitting in boxes because I had no place to put them.  This shelf is just perfect to hold them all.  And I love the counter on top.  It was a bit of a dead space back there until now and I hate wasted space.

But wait..it gets better...

How awesome is that?  I never want to leave my classroom.  It's so cool in there. :)

What's even more awesome though is that some of my kids feel the same way.  My kids are starting to stop by every morning to check in and say hello to me.  When they leave other classes to go to the bathroom they pop their heads in to see what I'm up to.  When they hear that I got something new in the room they want to come by and see it.  When they have free periods where they're not doing anything they come to my room.  If I'm teaching a class they sit in on it.  It's much easier to teach them and get them to do work when they actually want to be there.

Today a kid came to my room instead of going to lunch and sat down at a table.  Honestly as long as it's not distracting anyone I'm cool with this.  I went over and asked if he just didn't feel like going to lunch and he said yeah.  But then get this, he told me that he had some work to do so he would just do that instead. This kid skipped lunch to sit in my room and do extra math work??!  Crazy.

I have another kid that came in on Monday instead of going to lunch just to sit.  I carried on with class as usual and told him he was welcome to stay.  I had a few jobs I needed done (like cleaning some stuff) so I asked if he wanted to do that.  He said he didn't really want to which was perfectly ok.  I didn't ask any questions and let him be.  At the end of the day I found out that he was having a lot of problems going on at home and things were really getting to him.  I'm really glad to be able to offer him a place where he feels welcome and where he knows he can just sit and not answer any questions if he doesn't feel like it. It also makes me happy because I know he isn't off doing something dumb like cutting school or roaming the halls...instead he's sitting through an extra math class.

Then to top it all off I found out that a kid that realllly struggles with math went to my principal to tell him how much he likes me as a teacher and how he wishes more of his teachers taught like me. How sweet is that?