I've been teaching how long?

There was an article in the local paper this morning about an event last night at the high school for the incoming freshman to get to know the school. I was looking through the pictures when it really hit me that these incoming freshmen were my first 5th graders. I can not believe that I've been teaching long enough to have former students heading to high school in the fall. I seriously do not know where the time has gone, and I'm not sure I approve of how quickly it has left. That is all.

Teachers are people, too

In the interest of my staying employed, I've deleted this post. Not because I was told to, or because I even said anything remotely identifying, but simply because I'm not going to risk it. We were sent an email that our principal received from a principals' association listing all of the things teachers have been suspended or fired for concerning social networking and blogging. Some of the things were pretty serious, others were downright ridiculous. That being said, I don't want to end up on one of those lists. So, even though I thought this was a pretty good post, and had a good message, I'm not willing to jeopardize my career (especially 1 year from tenure!) and my life. But just remember...teachers are people, too.

Snow Day...the aftermath

I have always been told that I'm paranoid. You may remember that thought #4 flying through my mind as I crept up the hill in the snow was that I was probably just paranoid, but I was imagining the middle school staff watching me through the commons windows and laughing at my misfortune. It turns out, I'm not paranoid. I just really, really know my co-workers. After having the day off yesterday for snow (I bet you thought I was going to say extreme heat) I returned to work today to be met with a roomful of "So, have any trouble getting home Friday?" while biting their lips to stop smiling and trying stifle their hysterical laughter. That's right. My friends, my teammates, the people I spend more time with than anyone but my husband and son, were in fact, standing at the commons windows Friday, pointing and laughing. But that's ok. I know it was all in good rib jabbing fun. Plus, I'm totally ok with being the resident transplanted southern girl who doesn't understand why any of them would be fine with bus duty on a day with wind chills in the negatives. I think I'll continue to greet children right inside the door, in front of the toasty warm heater and I'll get there by hitching a ride with a snow professional.

You have got to be kidding me!

I am from the south. Growing up, I thought a bad winter was one that dipped below 40 degrees for more than 2 consecutive weeks. By this time in February, we were pretty much just waiting for the jonquils to pop up and the robins to return any minute. It was quite delightful. Summers, on the other hand...well those, not so much. But the winters, overall, were not at all terrible.

I do not live in the south. I know there are many places in the US that are even more not in the south than my small town in northwest Missouri, but for all intents and purposes, this is a tundra compared to where I grew up. This has been, by far, the snowiest winter I've seen, and I've lived here 5 years. Now, due to my southern background, the first snow of the winter, I'm as giddy as a little kid because quite frankly, never enjoying a large amount of snow as a child, I feel a bit cheated. (But then I remember how not cold it was and feel better instantly.) Even the second and third snow, I'm a little excited. But now that we're on like the eighth snow (I've lost count) I'm just a wee bit tired of the stuff. We've missed 6 days of school, which we make up at the end-and don't even get me started on why my southern hometown has actual built in snow days (where it rarely snows) and we have no built in snow days (where it's snowed every year I've lived here). There have also been 2 or 3 days this year that we've had to dismiss early for the weather, which are the most chaotic days ever. Such a thing happened yesterday.

When I was getting ready to leave my house Friday, I had forgotten all the talk of possible snow until I opened my front door. It was just starting to snow. Now, most days my husband and I ride into town together (it's about 7 miles from our house) and if it's looking bad, we take the 4 wheel drive 4 runner. It just so happened that my son was still sleeping angelically at 7 a.m. when I was ready to leave and I just didn't see the point in awaking him, therefore, putting him in a bad mood and causing a bad day for everyone involved. My husband said are you sure you don't want me to just wake him up and drive you in? I said oh no, I'll be fine. I don't think its supposed to be that bad. That is where I went wrong. I just wouldn't know it for a few hours.

I left my house and when I got on the highway, I was surprised at how covered it already was. No problem, I've been driving on this stuff for 5 years now, and I really was fine. Got to town, and was even more surprised because the roads hadn't been touched by a plow or salt truck. Usually, they are very quick to work on the roads the second it starts precipitating. I guess they were sleeping in a bit while the rest of us were heading off to our various places of employment. I arrived at school and made the treacherous walk to the building. (The parking lot is very far from the front door. Sometimes I question the design of that particular feature and Friday morning was one of those times.)

The kids were abuzz with the weather situation. If you've never heard 10 and 11 year olds speculate on the possible outcomes of situations, it's really funny. They sit around like old men in the coffee shop, but the only thing they can add to a conversation is whatever they've heard their parents say. They try to sound like they know what they're talking about, but they usually get it confused and it's just hilarious to listen to. (Case and point, election time. These kids don't know a thing about politics but the stuff they ranted about during the presidential election was positively hysterical. You can not tell me a 10 year old would actually think a thing about taxes and what possibilities each potential president might bring for those taxes. Little ears hear very well and little brains remember a lot-except when they need to remember it for a test.) So, naturally, every 5 minutes we were asked "Are we getting out early?" which I suppose is the school equivalent of "Are we there yet?" We attempted to get on with our day, until 8:50 which the loudspeaker dinged. This was it. The fateful announcement. School would be dismissed at 11:15, which is pretty early. They usually try to have us stay until 1:10. Of course, the entire school erupted into spontaneous cheers and the next 2 hours were completely worthless in terms of learning.

We made it to 11:15 and sent the kids on their way. Some of the buses hadn't arrived yet, and the teachers are asked to stay until all of the buses leave, but my team (we have teams of teachers at the middle school, and I'm on the 5th grade team. Because I teach 5th grade. See how that works?) was kind enough to let me head on since they all live in town and I do not. So I gathered my uneaten lunch and my purse, bundled up, and headed to my car. I hadn't looked out the window in all this time (I was too busy until then) so I didn't really know how much it had snowed. Oh wow, it had snowed like 3 or 4 inches since I had arrived. I got in my car and let it warm up for a few minutes, while I plotted my course. When I felt ready to tackle my trip home, I eased it into first gear and started to leave the parking lot. I got to the end of the drive where I had to stop and look both ways for traffic. I was turning left out of the parking lot. The road in front of the school is a slight hill to the left, and I'm pretty positive when I say slight, I mean slight. I've never had any trouble on it with any other winter weather so I really didn't think it would be a problem. Again, this is where I went wrong.

I waited until there were no vehicles coming, thank goodness, and turned left. My car literally inched out into the street. Inched. Out. Into. The. Street. I finally got fully in my lane and then continued to inch up the hill. Literally, inch by inch. I had the gas on the floor and I was going nowhere. I was rapidly switching my feet back and forth from the clutch to the gas like I was Dale Earnhardt, Jr. or something, and I was still inching. My pulse quickened. I started breathing fast. My face turned red. I continued what I was doing, because there was absolutely nothing else I could do. I kept inching. Then my face turned even more red when cars started passing me. You know they thought I was just some scaredy cat that didn't want to go more than 3 mph (at least I think that's what the speedometer said. It's hard to be exact when it's under the 5 mph mark.)

As I continued to inch and hyperventilate simultaneously, several thoughts flashed through my head:

1. I should have taken my husband up on his offer to drive me into town. Then I wouldn't be shaking like a trailer park in the path of a tornado.
   
2. Why, oh why, did my driver's ed instructor see fit to entirely skip over the chapter about driving in winter weather? Didn't he know that just because we were taking the course in Arkansas in the summer time, didn't mean that one day, the chances might be pretty good of at least one of us landing in the great white north somewhere in front of a middle school, inching our way up a very slight hill?
   
3. I wonder if this is what it would be like to try and luge UP the hill. (I've been watching too much of the Olympics, apparently.)
   
4. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I could swear the entire middle school staff might be looking out the front windows, pointing and laughing at me inching up this hill.
   

Pretty much the whole ordeal was brutal and it felt like it took me about 8 hours to get up to the top of this hill.

I finally got to the highway, which still wasn't cleared, and safely made it the 7 miles to my house. I have never been so grateful to get out of a vehicle in my life. It took me almost 40 minutes to drive what normally takes me 15. I spent the rest of the day inside resting my frazzled nerves. All I can do is hope that everyone was intent on their own safe driving, that no one realized who was in that silver Volkswagen inching up the hill, because I seriously, seriously thought I was going to die. From embarrassment, that is.

Live in the moment...or some equally cliche title

Note: I wrote this a week ago but I wasn't near a computer when I wanted to write it. So, I've been carrying it around in my purse on a small notepad I grabbed off my desk at work. (I'm taking the notepad back, in case any boss type person happens to read this.) Anyway, I'm obviously a huge procrastinator since all I had to do was type it and here it is a week later and I haven't. I had every intention of doing it this afternoon, but at 3:05, tragedy struck room E151 and I was in such a, for lack of a better term, crappy mood, that I thought it was bad karma to type a tranquil post while radiating fury. (Don't worry, I'm sure I'll share the tragic story sometime) I eventually calmed down, watched my favorite sitcoms, and am in a much better place, so I'm giving it a try. Enjoy.

As I look back on my life growing up, I really had much to be thankful for. (For which to be thankful?? The teacher in me just can't take a break) My parents loved me and spent many hours with me, either playing games, teaching me something, talking with me, and supporting me in everything I did. Sometimes, it was the simplest things that made me so happy. One of my most favorite things to do was to load up with my dad (& oftentimes my pesky brother-I mean that in the most loving way possible) and go look for deer at Fort Chaffee. We would fight for a turn with the binoculars (camo colored, small, had a distinct rubber smell to them that to this day I can swear I smell sometimes) and keep track of how many deer we each saw in a slight competition (slight might be an understatement). I loved looking at the old buildings around the base, and trying to imagine them when the paint was still fresh and with the hustle and bustle of an active base around them. I liked pointed out the chapels, the golf course, the swimming pool, the cemetery (was there a cemetery? Now I'm thinking I made that part up...). I even remember one time we took my grandfather's Cutlass convertible-it was a profitable evening in terms of wildlife spotting. I believe we even made up a song to keep track of our numbers-something like 28 deer, and a buck, and a bird, and snake, and a bobcat (Obviously, song writing was not our strong suit.) Anyway, these excursions stick out in my mind as some of the best family spent. Side note: That Cutlass has since been fully redone by my grandpa and is so stinkin' cherry that I wouldn't dream of taking it to look for deer. One of those crazy animals might jump out in front of it and mess up the paint job!

Last Sunday afternoon, we were feeling a little cabin feverish so my husband and I loaded up our son and took to the gravel roads. For 2 hours, we drove the countryside, watching for wildlife and taking in the sights. Seeing crumbling, abandoned farmhouses and barns and watching animals dart through the trees reminded me of the wonderful times my family used to have doing exactly the same thing. That's when I realized that I can treasure the memory and be grateful for the experience, but I don't necessarily have to long for times gone by, because now I have the chance to pass the experience on to my son. I truly hope he can learn to enjoy the simple things in life the way my dad taught me with all those lazy Sunday drives.

It could be worse...

Do you ever feel like you just can't win for losing? Like everything you touch will somehow go down in flames? Everyone has those days, I'm sure. Don't worry, I'm not hanging on to my sanity by a quickly fraying rope or anything. It's just Monday, and for some reason, it just always feels like everything that can go wrong, will...especially on Monday. I recently received an installation of really awesome teaching tools in my classroom. I've had the Interwrite board (AKA Smartboard, just by a different name) for about a week and I am already in L-O-V-E with it. It's so much fun to do activities on with the kids and they really enjoy the opportunity to play with it. Except that this morning, when I turned on the computer and tried to start it up, it wouldn't work. "Device not connected" to be exact. Ok...I'll click "connect device." Nothing. Click again. Nothing. Clickclickclickclickclickclick...oh good, now something is happening. Oh no, wait. Now it's frozen. (I have a problem with clicking too many times in a row because I'm not impatient at all...which often leads to a confusion inside the technology, which then leads me to wish my profession didn't involve being watched by ten year olds because many 4 letter words are running through my head...It's a nasty cycle.) Let's restart the computer. Tick tock tick tock. No learning happening. Well, except that one word I let slip that they hadn't heard before...JUST KIDDING! I've never let my mouth slip in front of my class, although now that I've admitted it out loud, I probably will tomorrow. Fantastic... Anyway....

Restart the computer. Device is still not connected so that pretty much takes us into 3 consecutive rounds of the above described events...I'll spare your eyes and my fingers from the repetition of it, but I assure you, it happened. So pretty much I just start clicking buttons, unplugging wires, you get the idea. 32 minutes into class, a 5th grade miracle occurs before our very eyes and a bubble appears proclaiming "device connected." Well, hallelujah! Too bad our classes are only 39 minutes....hhmmm. Teacher fail. This was only 2nd hour, so it really set my mood for the rest of the day. Nothing else seemed to go as bad as this episode, but still, it doesn't really put you in a good mood for your day. But as bad of a mood as it may have been, I really should be counting my blessings that my embarrassment for my technological inadequacies were only displayed for 4 ten year olds. Because when it boils right down to it, all I can say is "Man, am I glad I'm not her!"

What are you looking at?

What is it about the checkout line in Wal-mart (or any store for that matter) that prompts people to look at your cart of goodies? The marketing department of said company does a fine job of filling every available space with trash magazines, sugar filled snacks, and every single doodad that you can imagine might need to grace the inside of your purse in the event that you need to MacGyver your way out of a situation. Now I know the purpose of this ploy is to get you to part ways with your hard earned cash, but I also feel that they are there to entertain you while you wait. Why then, do people feel compelled to check out what you are checking out with? I just don't get it. Why is it, when I'm waiting in line and I just happen to have a new toilet seat in my cart, you immediately then glance at the box of Fiber One bars that I decided to try out? Are you trying to tell me with your eyes that I have a bathroom issue? I can't help it that my toilet seat needs replacing at the exact time that the advertisements for Fiber One have convinced me that I need a healthy morning snack. Stop judging me, woman! Then don't actually look me in the eye and look back down at the 3 2-liter bottles of Coke that are in my cart. Woman, I know you are thinking "She wouldn't need Fiber One bars if she stopped drinking all that Coke..." and I can't help it that I happen to be supplying the drinks for a 5th grade 2nd quarter TA party two days from now. I mean, it's not like I was going out to the parking lot and slamming down the 2-liters, just waiting to get my fix. It's bad enough to be a public school teacher and have to buy feminine products, and the proceed to meet the entire middle school student population in every aisle you go down. I don't need some random person judging my purchases in the checkout line. Besides, I'm not judging you while I waited as you handed the checker no less than 10 coupons for the 3 items you purchased, and then continued to wait while you wrote out a check (they still make those??), and then was asked to sign the debit/credit machine but had to look at it first like it was some kind of alien life force that was bent on sucking out your soul if you picked up the pen. Then again, maybe I am....