Something Funny

The teacher next door to me had a student turn this in for homework.

I Am Not Feeling So Smart Today

Wednesdays are early release days for the students. We usually have a lot of meetings filling Wednesday afternoons, but today our meeting was short because the speaker cancelled.

We all had more time than we are used to, so we were having a "team meeting" in superstar teachers classroom. At this "team meeting" we were generally talking about the latest gossip and they were goading me about Mr. Substitute and how he is subbing for Miss New2OurTeam tomorrow.

I was telling them that I can't go out with him not only because I think he is gay, but also because he wears weird costumes, in public (YEAH). Anyway, they wouldn't believe me. "I'll show you," I told them, "on facebook."

Well, of course facebook is blocked by firewalls on our school network, so I got out my phone to show them. I showed them, I really showed them, and I was feeling superior as we got back to the gossip.

The gossip was that Mr. Kindergarten, a new teacher at our school, got engaged after three months of dating a girl he met on line. This had been announced by his teammate today at the short meeting. Apparently, he didn't want anyone to know he got engaged, but too late for him because we all know now. He is a bit, um, odd aside from this whole thing.

So, as we got back to the gossip, my teammates were like, "Hey, look up Carlos Kindergarten on facebook, so we can see his fiance." He's not my friend on facebook, actually I don't think we've ever had a conversation in real life, but I decided to look him up anyway.

So, I typed his full name, Carlos Kindergarten, into my facebook search bar. Well, as soon as I typed and entered it, I realized that I didn't type it into the search bar. No, I typed it directly onto my wall. Yeah, Carlos Kindergarten's name right onto my wall which went directly to the newsfeed where all my friends from Fun School can see it.

Worse than that, I couldn't delete it; because while my phone can access facebook, the delete function doesn't work on my phone. Mrs. Partygirl, another teacher on BFF Team, immediately got out her new phone and commented on my post. She wrote, "Don't be sad, Ms. Understood." Which was just great because the announcement about his engagement had just been made.

In the end, my post was only up for about an hour. Mr. Bull, my former fifth grade colleague lives in the on campus apartment and he let me use his computer at his house to delete it.

Seriously, though, I'm pretty sure some people saw it before that. Plus, I don't know Carlos Kindergarten, but I get the impression he would not have a good sense of humor about this.

Revenge of the Secret Cupid

Well, I can't say I didn't get annoyed today. The Hulk was the Hulk all day long. But, I can say that I did not raise my voice and that we actually had a lot of cooperative work today. The kids really enjoyed the conversation heart data and pictograph activity and the story we are reading is a fun one as well, so I think that helped me enjoy Valentine's Day in an elementary school more...

I did find one reason to get really excited to go to school tomorrow. It doesn't really have to do with kids or teaching, but what are you going to do?

I have a prank in store for my next door neighbor. Oh yes, exactly the same neighbor who was pranking me exactly a year ago with all the secret cupid stuff.

Today, after Superstar teacher left, I snuck into her classroom and opened up the wire board in her computer table. I plugged my reciever for the wireless mouse into her computer, and hid my wireless mouse underneath her computer table to charge. The point is that I hooked up my wireless mouse to her computer and smartboard.

Now, every day at precisely 9:25, my class combines with her class to do the phonics program. It's a scripted program that she's bee trained on and I haven't, so she teaches both classes through the five minute routine every day. Tomorrow at 9:25, I am going to have some fun. While she is setting up, I will sneak over and get my wireless mouse. I'll use my coat to hide what I am doing and control the smartboard while she is teaching. At first I'll just move it and make her think that her smartboard is acting up, but then I'll use my mouse to access the marker tool and start writing messages, like "shhhh." The trick is going to be not laughing, that's how I could really mess this up.

Contagious

Today I walked into a teacher friend's room. I meant to ask her about the colored printer paper she kept in her room (we all share it), but that's not exactly what came out of my mouth.

"D-d-d-d-do you have colored paper in the cab-ab-abinet?" I stuttered.

If that was an isolated incident, I wouldn't even worry about it. However, my speech problems seem to be following a pattern: the quality of my speech is decreasing in direct correlation with the time I spend with this particular class.

I think it is supposed to work the opposite way. I am supposed to speak correctly and enunciate and use correct syntax and they start to increase the quality of their speech. Instead, I am speaking more like them every day.

Here are some troubles I've had recently:

*Finding the correct preposition is really hard for me. I'll say things like, "Everyone sit on your desk, in your desk, at your desk, by your desk."

*Sometimes I use words that aren't words, and then my statements usually dwindles into a question. "Picks up your book and--pick up your book? What was I saying?"

*Sometimes I can't remember simple level 1 vocabulary. "Please get your notebook, paper, clipboard, I mean binder--binder!"

Today, when I found myself stuttering after school, I realized I had hit a new low. Generally, I am pretty well spoken. Yeah, I am so detailed in syntax, I would make sure to use "me" only as an object, direct object or indirect object and "I" as a subject. Yet, listening to the speech I hear every day all day is starting to effect me.

The Intruder

My phone had been going off for over an hour, but I didn't hear it because I had a parent meeting at work. Eventually my battery had worn out and my phone shut down. The winter sun went down too, and I drove home in the dark.

I opened the squeaky door expecting to find Bailey and Sarah, my two best friends. We had big plans for a girls dinner, but the house was silent. I turned on the lights and headed to the bedroom to retrieve my phone charger.

That's when I noticed something strange: my bedroom door was closed. I threw it open and there he was, a monster. He had fangs and a cape and blood dripping down his face. Without a sound, he lunged at me and I ran for the kitchen. I grabbed the salt and started throwing it around. This had some effect on him, but he continued to try to pursue me around the salt. Eventually I was able to salt him into a corner.

"Okay, now what?" I thought. I couldn't remember how to kill a vampire. So, I called Bailey up. She and Sarah were at dinner without me because I had been so late and wasn't answering my phone. "You guys have got to get back here," I said, "I just trapped a vampire in our house and I do not know how to kill it."

"We're on our way," said Bailey.

I sat there staring the vampire in the face until my friends got back, but neither of us said anything. Finally, the door squeaked open again. "Just look at him," I said to my friends.

"Do you have a stake?" asked Sarah.

"What, we're going to drive it through his heart?" I said, stunned.

"It works," she answered.

We did have a stake so I pulled out a stake and a hammer. Bailey and I grabbed the vamps shoulders while Sarah drove the stake right through his heart. Bailey and I were a little freaked out still, so Sarah dug his grave in our back yard.

After that, we went out for strawberry margaritas and chocolate cake. It was a small consolation prize for missing dinner and finding a vampire in my house, but it was still good.

Okay, maybe that is not exactly the way these events conspired, but I felt that you guys couldn't really understand how I felt without a little embellishment. Here is what actually happened:

My phone was dead and my parent meeting kept me at work until late. I drove home in the dark and was surprised to find my house silent. Bailey and Sarah were already out to dinner. I went to get my charger in the bedroom, and the door was closed.

I opened the door and a giant black ghost jumped out at me, okay it wasn't really a ghost. It was a congrats balloon. My principal had given it to me last week when he threw a happy hour for our graduation from the Master's program. It had been losing air and now was somehow closing doors. As I dodged the balloon, I looked down to see a SCORPION. It was sitting there, in the entryway, wagging it's stupid tail at me. I wasn't sure what to do because you usually can't just kill a scorpion by smashing it. I went into the bedroom to find a weapon and I found a vase filled with flowers. I dumped all the flowers out on my dresser and grabbed the vase. I knew that I needed something to help me trap it. The only paper in my bedroom was my beloved National Geographic magazine, so I ripped the back cover off of it, and went to face my enemy. First I threw the wide mouthed vase over him, and he was mad. Then I wedged the paper under him and flipped the vase over trapping him at the bottom. I brought the vase to the kitchen, and put the magazine on top--just in case. I sat there staring at the vase until my friends came back.

When my friends got back, Sarah said we needed to kill him with fire, so we got the long lighter and Sarah burned him. It took a long time! The stupid scorpion can live through fire, for a while. Finally, it was dead and Sarah flushed him down the toilet, because Bailey and I were still really freaked out.

After that, we went out for strawberry margaritas and chocolate cake. It was a small consolation prize for missing dinner and finding a scorpion in my house, but it was still good.

Things That Make Me Wish I Was a Crab Fisherman, Extreme Logger, or Gold Prospector

I am sore all over. My foot is actually bleeding. I feel like I could sleep for three days straight. Also, I ate half of a whole pizza for dinner. Don't judge me; it's been a rough day. Did I play QB for a major league football team? No, it wasn't that. Am I returning from a battlefield? Not so much... Did I get in a fight? No, technically I did not. I administered yet another district writing test to third graders.

Administering the brutal three-hour-plus writing test to third graders is like being locked in an insane asylum all day long with twenty-three raving patients. Only, you have to get all of the patients to compose coherent essays. There is always that one kid who wants to make weird noises--you have to stop him. There's that other kid who wants to rock back and forth on his seat. Then there are the kids who just sit and stare. They don't start writing for an hour. All the other kids finish and we all have to wait and wait... for them... forever.

My foot is actually bleeding because I wore heels and I was walking around all day keeping the kids focused and quiet. I am sore because I was feeling so tense trying to finish the day strong. I'm tired because, well, this was tiring.

I will say, there was one essay that I thought was quite good. This kid drew on his personal experience to write a story. I think he'll be a blogger someday=).

What If My Life/Job Were More Like...

Mad Men
Ummmm, I don't think that this would be entirely bad. Keeping a fully stocked liquor cabinet in the pod would often come in handy. I really believe that there are some tasks I would perform better at my job a little buzzed. Wearing some awesome sixties powersuits, I can get on board with that too especially paired with some awesome heels. The sexual harassment, eh, I can live with it.

Survivor
I actually think that my job is a lot like Survivor. Not only because we're all being slowly voted off the island via the rif, but also because it causes me to lose weight every year. Also, I start to look more and more disheveled as time at my work goes on. But, my job could be more like survivor if I got to come in a bikini and participate alliances to vote others off the island. That part would be really cool.

The Bachelor
My life actually was kind of like the Bachelor when I tried Internet dating, but I wasn't that good at it. Anyway, if my job was more like the Bachelor, I would come to work in cocktail dresses which sounds pretty fun. There are already a lot of women at my work and I guess we could compete for roses from the principal, but I think the stakes would be different--for a lot of reasons. Anyway, there are definitely some women to supply the role of crazy girl!

That is my food for thought. Anyone out there want to take a stab at my game? Finish the statement "What if my life/job were more like..." by discussing what your job would be like if it were more like something from pop culture.

Maybe We're All A Little Disgruntled

Recently, the Gallup poll came to my district to give us a rating on employee engagement. Apparently my district came out well above national education stats on employee engagement and my school came out well above the district. Neither of these facts surprise me. My district respects us as professionals and my principal is awesome. The thing that is interesting is that we are still below the national average for all workplaces on employee engagement. The moral of the story is that people in other professions are happier than us. Why? I can't even do that question justice, but tonight I discovered someone who can. Mr. Teachbad's blog is soooo funny. I've been laughing out loud all night. Anyway, I am linking some of my favorite stuff.



Fake News Posts from Teachbad

Teacher Fakes Bomb Threat to End Faculty Meeting

Principal Seeks to Replace Student Body, Improve Scores

I'm Falling Off the Wagon Already

Today's Word of Wisdom: When your house starts looking like an office and your office starts looking like a house, you've gone too far.

My New Year's resolution, as usual, was to be more balanced and less ruled by work. It's not going very well.

Tonight I brought home all of this work and organized my stations of work into piles all over the living room floor. My mom called to see if I would come over for dinner, so I left all that stuff out. I got back and it was so depressing because I really turned my home into an office.

Then I realized that lately I want to buy things that should be for home for work and things that should be for work for home. I think to myself, "You know what I need? A better chair for work! I am always there and it would be more comfortable. I need a Fabreeze plug in for my classroom." Then, I start thinking about how I need a file box for home, so I can file away all the work I do at home. Pretty soon I'll be voluntarily moving my bed into the pod of our third grade classrooms and wall papering my living room with data charts.

It is not right.

P.S. Sorry for the gratuitous profanity at the beginning of this video, but seriously, this song suits my situation. Plus, this concert looks fun...

The Name Game

My brother and his wife are expecting their second child, a son. (That sounded very Biblical, no? I didn't do it on purpose; I told you I have a theological background.) Anyway, they have been going through the process of selecting a name. All this name drama has made me realize that being a teacher makes it nearly impossible to name a child.

I just realize that I have so much history with so many names that it would be hard to find one that works. For example, it only takes one bad "Jackson" or "McKenzie" to ruin a name. After spending a year of my life saying, "Kyler, don't touch him. Kyler, I said get back to your seat. Kyler, we're waiting for you. Kyler, we don't talk in the hallway. Kyler. Kyler!" I just wouldn't have the heart to name my own child Kyler. Even though I know that a whole new set of memories that are more important would redefine the name in my heart, I couldn't do it because of something else. There would come a day, in the future with my own child, when I became frustrated with that child. I would say to him, "Kyler, we are running late; let's go right now," and suddenly it would happen. The frustration and the name and the tone would transport me back to 2007. I would half expect "bad Kyler" to come running down my stairway. Actually if I ever have my own children, I am just going to get a baby book and cross out all the "no"s first. It will be best to get that out of the way.

As my brother and his wife brainstormed names for their child, I had my own conversation in my head that went something like the following.

"We should name him Ben."
Ben--Exposed himself on the school bus to an entire bus full of children.
"We should name him Mason."
Yeah, if you want him to throw himself on the floor and throw temper tantrums.
"How about Michael?"
Why don't you just gage his ears for him during infancy? He'll clearly end up goth anyways.

I don't say any of this out loud. My brother and his wife are still kind of mad at me because when they wanted to name their daughter Uvi, I told them it was too anatomical. Seriously, think about it: Uvi. They should thank me for helping them dodge the bullet on that one.

--I promise not to tell them about Kyler, though.

The Major Award

Today, blog friends, I won a major award. I won the award for Best Employee of All Time. It was an ultraHD FLip video camera. Awesome, right?

How did they decide who was the best employee of all time, you ask. Was it a vote? No, it wasn't a vote. Was it based on test scores? Goodness no, it wasn't based on test scores. Was it based on hours put into the job? Not so much.

It was decided by a sorting hat. The hat said I belonged in Slitherin, but the camera was my consolation prize. Just kidding, it was decided by casting lots, and God chose me. Okay, it was kind of decided by a sorting hat which cast our lots. We put the names of all the employees into a hat, and out popped mine. Some have called it random or a raffle, but I won't let them rain on my parade.

Oh Life

If you had been in my classroom Thursday morning you would have heard the following.

Ms. Understood: Good morning boys and girls! You may have noticed our schedule is a little bit different today because of the guest author I told you about. Math will begin at 11:30 and we will do one half hour of math in our classroom. Then, we will take a break and go to the library where the guest author has come to present to us. We will come back to our class at 12:30 and do another half hour of Math before we go to PE.

About five hands go up in the air.

Ms. Understood: Yes, Quinton.

Quinton:I don't get it.

Ms. Understood: What do you mean you don't get it? We are going to begin Math after lunch--just like we do everyday--after half an hour we will go to the library to hear the guest author's presentation. Then, we will go back to our classroom to finish our Math lesson. Yes, Aniya?

Aniya: So, when are we going to Math?

Ms. Understood: We will do Math after lunch--exactly like we do every day. Exactly as the schedule on the board says. We will complete our Math lesson after the presentation by the guest author. Yes, Parker?

Parker: How can we have two Maths?

Eight hands are up in the air.

Ms. Understood: Everyone, put your hands down. Listen carefully. We will start Math at the usual time: 11:30. At 12:00, we will all go to the library for one half hour. Then, we're going to come back here and finish our Math lesson. Seana, what is your question?

Seana: This doesn't make any sense.

Ms. Understood: Okay, you guys will have to be surprised by the schedule. Everyone will see what happens when Math time comes. Alexis do you have a question?

Alexis: Does this mean we need to go to the library to hear the guest author right now?

My job this year is kind of like being Alex Trebek on celebrity jeopardy...

Rumors

This guy that I went to high school with is subbing at my school this year. Everyone is very concerned about my single status and men are in short supply around an elementary school, so naturally I have a lot of matchmakers. I've been told recently that I should hit on the UPS worker, flirt with the workers at the after school day care, and most recently that I need to date the substitute teacher I went to high school with.

Now, this guy was my friend in high school, and I certainly have nothing against him, BUT he is very odd. Also, I think he might be gay--BUT I can't prove my point about that because I'm not sure. If someone asked him and I was wrong that would be bad.

Anyway, my point is that lots and lots of people at my school were talking about this. I wasn't really paying too much attention, nor was I really bothered about it. I ran into Mr. Substitute about four times since he started subbing at my school. Each time he was friendly, but very casual. Until I saw him yesterday. He actually sought me out to walk me to my classroom and was just acting very differently.

It didn't bother me, and it actually wasn't forward at all, but as I walked into my room I thought, "That's weird because he has never been so friendly in the four times I've seen him recently." That is when it occurred to me that someone is telling him either that I want to be set up with him or that I like him. No one would confess, but everyone I accused had great stories about how it was someone else at school who has been talking about this. "Oh well," I thought.

Then, tonight at the third grade Musical, all the little girls in my class were crowded around me before we entered the auditorium because they are always fascinated that teachers still exist past 3:00. "Ms. Understood, you're so pretty. You really don't have a boyfriend? Why don't you have a boyfriend?"

"Girls, I already hear this from my mother. We are certainly not talking about this at school," I told them.

"You do have a boyfriend," one of them said to me. "That substitute..."

"What substitute?" I asked. "Why would you say that?"

"The substitute from Mrs. T's class who wears Converse shoes. Isn't he your boyfriend? He seems like your boyfriend."

I wracked my brain and there is no way these kids have ever seen me talking to Mr. Substitute. Honestly, I've barely talked to him even after school. How can rumors in a school fly so fast?

Side Note: There is no real reason for the song excepting that I like that song and if I were to be my own matchmaker I would want a guy to embody that song. Does that make me high maintenance?

I Have No Ambition

Sometimes my job relegates me to the role of being a sixteen year old trapped in a twenty-five year old's body. Okay, more like being a sixteen year old trapped in an eternally sixteen year old's body trapped in a twenty-five year old's life. I never quite lost that maiden form. Too much information? Sorry, I think my sense of humor is regressing too.

It's just that sometimes I feel like I've been possessed by a sulking teenager. I know I can't blame my job, but this phenomenon is at least correlated with my job. I mean injustice in education world is not unlike injustice in teenage world. I just want to sulk sometimes because "It's not fair." I want to have a bad attitude and be sassy.

Last week, my mom was asking me about my upcoming graduation and what I planned to do with my Master's degree.

"What are you going to do with it in the long term?" she asked me.
"Probably, spend an additional twenty years getting screwed over by the education system; it's just digging my hole deeper," I informed her.
"Very funny," she continued, "Seriously, do you plan to become a principal someday?"
"That is the last thing I want to do. Being a principal is like asking to have all of the politics and parts of the teaching job that are miserable multiplied. It's masochistic."

Tonight, as we started our final class toward the Master's program, Issues in Administration, I realized how much I really do not want to be a principal. I was thumbing through one of the recommended texts tonight. It posited the maxim that as an administrator it is important to always keep a minimal level of anxiety about the feelings of teachers when intervening. I could never ever do that. I just have no desire to. Teaching is the hardest job, and if I were a supervisor of teachers I would always care about their feelings.

I do feel anxiety if I have to confront a sensitive student. I have anxiety if I have to fail a student. I have anxiety if I have to give a parent news that will be difficult on them. It should be impactful to hurt another human--even when it is a necessary evil.

Anyway, my point is that my total lack of desire to ever be involved in educational administration is a little alarming. Honestly, I am twenty-five. I have already been teaching full time for three and a half years. I will probably not be able to retire until I am well over fifty-five. That gives me thirty more years. I can't imagine thirty years of doing the same thing either.

I don't know. I guess in the analogy of my growing up being like my maturing as a teacher, we have entered the teenage years. All I can say is that my life is not fair and no one understands!!!

I guess that parent was right about young teachers. Damn the irony, but I am feeling the part I am trying so hard not to look. Yikes.

999 Dead Tiny Sea Turtles

The story in our reader this week is called Turtle Bay. It is actually a very cute story and the kids really like it. It is about a wise old man who befriends two kids in Japan. Together they watch sea turtles come ashore and lay eggs and then watch the baby sea turtles go into the ocean.

I thought I would tie in an informational story about sea turtles returning to the beach where they were born before we read the story. So, this morning, I went to the school library to look through our books on sea turtles. I found a story with beautiful illustrations called One Tiny Sea Turtle. It looked about the right length and seemed like a good tie in, so I didn't bother to read the whole thing in the morning.

Reading time rolled around and I decided to start my lesson by reading the kids One Tiny Sea Turtle. I started reading the story and the kids were really into it. The baby turtle hatched and went into the ocean. She swam around for years. She made her own nest and laid eggs on the beach.

Then, we got to the part where the baby sea turtles hatched. I started to notice something was up before the kids because there were these ominous looking sea gulls overhead in the picture, and then these evil white crabs came. Well, the crabs and the gulls massacred the baby sea turtles until only one tiny sea turtle survived.

The looks on my kids faces went from awe and wonder to horror.

In the end, I still think the lesson was good because it did help the kids understand the story and nature is what nature is, BUT it was not exactly the way I pictured that lesson going...

Lost All of My Cool

Recently there have been two home invasions in my neighborhood, but that doesn't really scare me. I've always lived in a city, and I find myself to be the kind of girl who goes to look for what a noise in the night is armed with only a baseball bat and a cell phone.

Well, today we had a home invasion of sorts. The intruder was about one inch tall and two inches long. Yes, that is right, I saw a mouse in the house.

Now, I like to pride myself on staying calm under pressure. In tough situations I usually keep my wit. I have learned about myself that there are two sure fire ways to reduce me to a hysterical woman. That would be big spiders and any sort of rodent.

I can't explain what my process of thinking was when I saw the mouse. I was doing Yoga in the living room when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It. Was. a. Mouse. Running across the floor. Once it saw me looking at it apparently it was scared too and it ran back into the kitchen. At which point I ran halfway up the stairs that lead to my roommate's room. I was saying repeatedly, "Oh my gosh, a mouse. Oh my gosh, a mouse." I wanted to get my cell phone to call someone to come help me but I was scared to go in the kitchen. Finally, I ran to get it, at which point the mouse ran back into the living room. I ran back up the stairs. Then, the mouse ran into the office.

First, I called my roommate and left a message telling her to get her boyfriend over here to kill this mouse. She didn't answer, so I called my brother. "Please, tell me you are not too busy to come over here right now!" I said. Well, he was on his way to a wedding! I felt that saving me from the mouse was more important than the wedding, but he didn't agree.

Anyway, in the end, my roommate's boyfriend, his cat, and a friend of my brother's showed up to go on a mousehunt. We all moved every piece of furniture, inspected every cabinet, and opened every curtain. Guess what? We looked for two hours and never found him or any evidence of him. We put up a mousetrap, and we will see if it catches him.

I know it is irrational, but I am still scared to sleep in this house. Seriously, I feel like my reaction to rodents is biological. I. Cannot. Handle. It. My roommate is the exact same way, yet all of the guys we called over seemed to feel that this is not a big deal.

I feel like this situation is going to continue to make me stupid because I cannot be rational about big spiders or rodents. When I was about fifteen, I was visiting my relatives in Texas, and they took us to the sand dunes. After we finished, my cousin and I were showering in the women's shower facilities. As long as you stayed in your stall you had a certain amount of privacy, but there was a big window in the main facility. Well, I was peacefully showering when my cousin said she could see something on the ceiling and I should look up. Yeah, she could see something, hundreds of spiders! What did I do? I ran out of the stall stark naked, what else? I demanded that she bring me my clothes because I was NOT going back in that stall.

So, what would I do if I saw a rodent when I was showering here. Who knows? I cannot seem to remain rational in the face of rodents or spiders.

Never Mind

I had to get finger-printed today. Apparently the state department of education is quite worried that I've secretly become a criminal some time in the last three years. So, I get to pay 69$ to the state for them to run my fingerprints through some system. I've made very clear how I feel about the bills I incur FOR DOING MY JOB (here, here, and here), so I won't go down that trail today. However, it should be noted that I AM THINKING IT VERY LOUDLY!

So, the H.R. representative was fingerprinting me today. "With this new system, you'll never have to be fingerprinted again," she told me cheerfully, "of course, you'll still have to pay to have them run it."

"Well, at least when I get arrested I won't have to go through this again! I want to get my money's worth."

Then, she just looks at me with a shocked face.

NEVERMIND. I guess when you are getting fingerprinted it is no time for jokes!

I Didn't Suck... For Two Hours Anyway

I got crowned today. It wasn't nearly as much fun as getting crowned in checkers, but it wasn't painful at least.

I had to rush to the dentist straight away from graduate school because my class ended at 12:30pm and my appointment at the dentist was at 1:00pm. It actually didn't hurt when they drilled my tooth or put on a temporary crown, but then again, my mouth was totally numb.

After the procedure, I had pretty sore gums and some pain. I didn't feel like chewing, but I needed to eat because I skipped lunch due to my tight schedule. I still had two gift certificates to Jamba Juice left over that I got as gifts on the last day of school (on a side note, those would be gone already if they were to Starbucks). I decided a cold smoothie sounded like a good idea.

I got my smoothie and as eagerly as gingerly put the straw in my mouth. Nothing happened! All that stuff they shot me up with left me with no function on the left side of my lips. Apparently those muscles are necessary for using a straw. I had to laugh at my pathetic self in Jamba Juice, but I also had to rush home. In this part of the country, a five minute car ride could definately spell a completely melted smoothie. I made it though!

Now, I've got to get on that homework!

Blonde Moments, Moments of Genius, and Moments to Remember

Blonde Moments

I've been doing surprises with my students every day, and one of them was an experiment to make sedimentary layers in glass jars. I had the directions for the experiment up on my computer in the front. I had the kids mix up plaster of paris (dry), sand, and pebbles. The layers were supposed to settle and show how sedimentary layers are formed. Well, at the end of the day all the jars were sitting there looking like I filled them with cake mix. Why didn't it work? I forgot to add water. We added water the next day and it worked beautifully, but it was a definite blonde moment. I am blonde. Maybe I have a few of those I can claim.

I had another blonde moment today when I was trying to enter SIP data into the shared drive. "The file is deleted," I complained to my next door neighbor. "I can't find the one to this year anywhere!"
"Here it is," she showed me.
"No, that's 2009-2010," I corrected her.
"It is 2010."
"Oh. Can we pretend this conversation never happened?"

Moment of Genius

Teaching my ELL student to play Guess Who was one of the best ideas I've had. It was soo much fun and she was learning vocabulary rapidly.

Moments to Remember

We pranked Captain today. He teaches one of our small groups for third grade intervention Wednesdays. We usually send him 8-10 kids, but the groups vary among all of us and there is no set number. Today we sent him 120 kids, a few at a time. Soooo funny.

Butterfly Bloodbath

We got butterflies. It's not even a third grade objective, but some parent who works at a "Montessori" school feels that we don't do enough hands on learning. So, she donated butterflies to all four third grade classrooms.

I am person who has romantic notions of butterflies. I remember watching them as a child. I saw the beauty in the image and the metaphor even then. Do you want to know what will crush romantic, poetic notions about butterflies? Watching the stages of butterfly development...

My butterflies emerged last night. Right in the middle of state testing. I found them this morning. One was flying around. Two had their wings literally in pieces and were dead at the bottom of the cage in pools of their own blood. IT WAS DISGUSTING!

I didn't want my kids traumatized by the bloody scene, especially right before state testing, but I didn't want to touch them, so I hid the butterfly cage in the POD. First thing they asked me, "Where are the butterflies?"

"Umm, they can't be out during state testing, like all the signs on the wall." All the kids had a look on their faces like they were imagining how butterflies could give them answers, but they accepted this answer FOR NOW.

The only problem is that one of the kids from the other third grade classes saw the cage and asked me about the bloody mess. I think the truth might come out soon!