Hugs Galore!

Today I got to visit my old school,LMS. I visited all the teachers I used to work with on a regular basis, and was lucky enough to see the teachers that I liked a lot whom I didn't work for.
And the big bonus, seeing two of my kids from last year who are now 7th graders (thank God, there's one that I seriously thought had a shot at being held back...). They were acquaintances last year, but appear to be really good friends now. I'll call one JB and the other JT. JT is the one that I worried about. He wasn't/isn't a bad kid; he just needed a positive relationship with an adult who cared enough to be patient with him to get him through the homework. JB is a GREAT kiddo. He's really intelligent, funny in a dry sense of humor kind of way, and an all around nice kid. Why he was ever assigned to me last year, I'll never know. Once I had him "in line," I still didn't send him back to classes because I could tell that he was having an affect on JT.

They both say that 7th grade is easier than sixth. This I can believe. Mostly because many kids on their team had difficulty with one teacher. The teacher is a nice person, not so great at showing a caring, patient attitude to students. Unfortunately, the school had rules against moving kids from team to team unless there were egregious problems between particular students. I believe that had the school moved JT and another young man to another team, they might have had more success earlier in the school year. The team that I wanted them moved to was a smaller team and could easily handle another two students. Oh well, they both seem to be doing well, and JT said he likes his teachers this year.

I bet the 7th grade teachers are ecstatic this year. They had a class from Hell last year. There were kids that I was ready to strangle, and I didn't work with them daily. They had other TA's crying. Seriously. The 6th grade class from last year is a great group of kids. They've all got good reputations from the schools that they came from the year before. The 7th grade teachers deserve a group like them after the group they had last year. They're like chocolate after a liver dinner.