First Week Of School–Peachy Prevails! September 6, 2014

Am I exhausted? Yup.

Am I already playing catch up? Yeah.

Did a student ask me if I was going to give them the money to buy their supplies? Yes, indeed.

It’s been a loooooooooooooooong week.  I lost a couple of dear friends to other assignments.  Teachers get tight. It’s hard to lose close friends and supports in a building.

We have added an hour and a half to the school day.  Buses are late. Little children are so tired. Conversation with a sweet little guy waiting for a bus reveals that he is from Tanzania, then Congo.  They left because it was dangerous. “All these people were coming.   There were things falling from the sky.” Wow.

While I am responsible for “digging deep” into targeted instruction aligned to the Common Core, I consider the challenge of making a kid like this feel safe more crucial.

Today, my kid (my actual kid) forgot that he was on the phone with me when he “put me down” for a minute to check out at the grocery store. It was hilarious; I don’t take this shit personally.  He had been telling me about his “budget-making” adventure. Part of this included a long-term goal of giving 10% to charity. My son has surpassed my virtue. I’m so cool with that.

Back to School Messaging August 27, 2014

Evidently, I took the summer off from blogging. Oops.  I was too busy doing nothing + professional development.

Back to school, I have been enduring some meetings that lasted for what felt like the entirety of summer break.  At one point, I decided that it would be a super idea to enter my administrator’s number into my cellphone, in case of emergencies.  So I carefully transcribed the digits to the screen, adding a cheerful “testing” message as well.

A few hours later, when I had received no confirmation, I followed up with a request for a return text, verifying that things were in place.

The response, which fell slightly short of said verification: “You are an ugly man stop trying to stalk me loser.” It would seem that things are most certainly not in place.

This administrator has a sense of humor, but not enough to pull that off. I responded.

“Okay so def wrong number!”

The good-natured reply:

“Your d—k was tiny as hell.”

Well, that does make sense, seeing as how I am not a dude. . .

Ah, back to school—where the improbable becomes the commonplace.

The moral of the story: check the number, with spectacles in place.