That's Why

Each week I give my students a spelling test. Isadora also gets a weekly spelling test, and she's in the first grade. Yesterday she said that a boy who sits near her is starting to look at her paper when she does her work, including her spelling test. "And that's why he's getting such good grades now," she told Mommy and me.

The toe still hurts. Once I get my shoes on and walk around all day, my toe feels not awful. It's in the morning after I'm in bed all night that it hurts the worst.

Lots of drama in my class. This is nothing new. Every year I deal with "girl drama." Popularity and friendships have become huge by the time the girls get into fourth grade. I have two sets of girls, plus one that is completely on the outs. One set of girls consider themselves the "popular" girls. This group is all smiles to onlookers, but they can be very mean, even - or especially - to each other. There's one or two girls who consider themselves the queen bees, the rest (two others) are just hanging on. It's the queen bee (or bees) who say mean things to each other behind the others' backs. It's terrible.

The other group - another four girls - sometimes includes my daughter. Gabriella, as much as we counsel her otherwise, still sometimes tries to be part of the "popular" group. In part, I think, because two of her regular friends became extremely close because they spend lots of time at each others' houses due to a shared car pool deal. Fortunately, my wife and I talked to the girls' parents, and now the two girls have become more open again, and Gabriella and her other friend are once again close.

This makes me happy, if that is the right word. When Gabriella hangs out with the popular girls, she gets an attitude that Lu and I really don't care for. She is also very mean to her sister. When we get her away from these girls, her attitude improves. Considering that our school has only one class per grade, and it runs Kindergarten through eighth grade, she's going to be with this same group of girls for a long time.