Come in, sit down and pull out your notes please.

I am now officially Miss Vierling.

I have learned to respond to this new name. I even respond to "Coach"-- gotta love the cheerleaders.

I now resist the urge to turn around whenever someone says "Sarah" in the halls. Like I said, this is big. I'm become an official teacher.

I have 2 weeks under my educator belt, 1 chapter test administered and graded, and yes, 9 fewer kids than I originally started out with.

There's the biggest shock of the school year: apparently I'm hard.

Who knew?! Here I was, totally stressing about not being their friend, chickening out of really giving someone an infraction, and desperately trying to understand the material I was to teach the period before I had to.... I didn't have the mental capacity to even consider the chance that I might be the exact opposite of my fears.

They are all dropping out of my class!

At first I felt personally slighted... like somehow they had decided they didn't want to be in my class because I wasn't young and fun like they had hoped.

And gosh darnit, I am fun!

I've made reference to National Treasure, Nicolas Cage, Michael Jackson, Captain Jack Sparrow and other such standard, classical historical figures in my lectures.

Who doesn't love that?!
I was thoroughly entertained.

But, alas, the fact that I expected them to read on their own and take notes during class proved too much for some of them.

I don't know about you, but I didn't grow up being spoon fed information or having grades just handed to me because I merely showed up.

So after a few lame excuses and a lot of obvious laziness, I decided... No more Miss Nice, Easy-going, Laid-back Teacher.

My catch phrase for these past few weeks has been the very sympathetic and understanding...
"Welcome to High School. You actually have to do work."

**Sidenote: I also feel like my naturally sarcastic wit has finally found a home. Although misunderstood by some, I find that this style of communication works wonders with freshmen boys.**

Part of me feels really bad and I want to be a positive, encouraging part of their day... but if they aren't going to turn in homework then I don't have time to sugar coat the outcome.

When did this happen to me?

Lest you start to worry about the fate of these students, the administration said that there were too many in Pre AP anyways.

Lovely, now I'm the "weed out" teacher.

This is so not the reputation I was going for... but I'm starting to find that it does have it's benefits.

I've heard rumor of kids studying for my class in other teachers' classes. (This makes me feel so cool for some reason.)

And since they're dropping like flies.... it means I have less papers to grade!


Now if I could just work up enough courage to actually give out an infraction...