Cold, tired and scared

What do I do if they just won't do the work?

In English class, it's bad enough. They pull the rest of the class toward the bottom of their slime-encrusted pit. They accomplish nothing and seem to see school as an interrpution to video games and television.

With some of these students, I can feel myself emotionally moving toward a point at which I stop caring. I'm tired of failing to reach them. Still, I don't want their apathy to infect me. I can't seem to allow myself to give up. It feels like that would be an even WORSE failure.

So I keep trying to encourage them, and I keep failing, and it keeps hurting. God, I want it to be Friday.

No, wait - forget that. I want it to be SATURDAY.

Don't even get me started on Journalism class, where if they blow off the work I can't just give them an F on it. Or, rather, I can give them an F, but it still has to be done, since people have ordered the damn book and that means we have to produce it.