never let them see you cry...

i know that wanting to cry means i love my job.  the reason i know this is because i want to cry because i feel like i am failing my kids.  i teach a program i despise and the first benchmark of the year is coming up in a week and am beyond stressed out.  why am i already stressed out after almost two weeks of school you ask?  well, the first day was the rules, getting to know you, mumbo jumbo and then i realized that most of my students had already had my class.  how is that?  well i teach a class that is used as an intervention for 6th graders but because some schools keep their 6th graders so our former  curriculum specialist told our principal and counselor that it's okay to let the kids who failed the class retake it.  NO!  it's the exact same course in 7th grade since i am not supposed to have the same kids.  so now we are going onto week three of school and i am stuck with half a class of kids who have already had this class and won't want to read the same exact stories twice.  i have told the principal, i have told the counselor but let's be honest this isn't high on their to do list so now i am stuck.  did i mention these classes are 90 minutes long?  i have spent time on figurative language, genre, and now what do i do?  i need to get started but i know the kids aren't going to enjoy rereading a book they read last year.  i am also stressed because our librarian managed to get a new job in the district so she was able to leave before we had textbooks checked out, books checked out.  i was able to help a few teachers check out books but that meant i spent a day of  my class time in the library.  we also had a power outage last week and spent part of the day at the local high school hanging out in their auditorium.  i don't want to fail my kids but i don't know what to do.  i have no one to really turn to because our administration isn't so approachable, they are also in closed door meetings and to be honest they listen but don't listen listen.  i also seem to be behind the other teachers and i don't want that to happen this year but it is already happening.  i am frustrated and just want someone to tell me it will be okay.  we have great new language arts teachers but the ones that aren't new, are okay.  i have one teacher who wants me to hold her hand (she's been teaching longer than i have a been alive), my former mentor teacher who keeps trying to remind us she is a great teacher.  (she was but now she's not as focused so they have placed her our department but not a core english class) and oh the pe teacher who likes to attend our meetings but told me that and i quote "am not a real english teacher because i teach ramp up." i am a real english teacher, i chose to teach my remedial classes and i also have one on grade level class so let's not get started there.  so my question to all you teachers out there is what would you do? friday i had my students take an old benchmark (which i took too and it was super hard) so i think we will spend tomorrow going over it and discussing the things we don't know but how do i blend two separate curriculum's together?