"Miss Thomas, Miss Thomas, Miss Thomas..." AAAAAGHHHHHH

I don't know how teachers survive working for 30 years. I really don't. It is seriously the toughest job I think. I don't know if it's just my kids, but they are so needy! Every two seconds it seems like someone is right by my side saying, "Miss Thomas, Miss Thomas, Miss Thomas.....". I swear I just want to scream "SHUT UP!" sometimes! Some days I'm shocked that my kids can even tie their own shoes. They can't do anything on their own. It's so incredibly frustrating to teach a lesson, give a bazillion examples, have the kids participating in the lesson, and then when it comes time for them to do an individual activity or assessment, the lightbulb suddenly goes off and they all turn into little braindead children. Today was one of those days. And to top it all off, I was observed today by my principal. The lesson itself went pretty well because I was using manipulatives in math, which she LOVES, and I was also using lessons from this new math series that I just recently went to a training for and she's adopting the program next year. So bonus brownie points for me!!! But my kids were still so needy throughout the lesson that I felt even more nervous than I already was because I felt like I couldn't get to all of them and it made me look like I wasn't doing a good job of explaining things to them. I think she's supposed to come in one more time before she does her paperwork evaluation so we'll see how the next one goes.