Six Things That Make Me Happy

M tagged me for this meme and specifically asked for Luke pictures, so here goes--six things that make me happy, a photo essay.

1) This face:



Loved mostly because it's simultaneously his "yummy" face and the face he makes when you ask for a kiss. My boy gives kisses! It's really all I can do not to ask for them every five minutes.

2) This face:



Just look at him! Coloring (brief moments of marking the page in between attempts to eat the crayon) and smiling so sweetly it makes my heart melt.

3) Not Luke, but I have to brag about my AP students for a moment. They're just the best group of kids I've ever had the privilege to work with, and I'm particularly proud of the boy who transferred in halfway through the semester and has already surpassed most of his classmates in terms of writing ability. He's going to pass the big test in May, I can feel it.

4) My family:



5) Dancing!



This is unfortunately the best picture I have of Luke dancing. Anytime music comes on the radio (or from one of his toys) Luke dances by shaking his hips. It's simply adorable, and the fact that we have yet to catch it on camera is criminal.

6) January 20, 2009



Can't come soon enough, my friends.

C and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

1:00 AM: I wake up, WIDE AWAKE with a throbbing sinus headache
3:00 AM: Still awake
4:00 AM: Still awake
5:00 AM: Drift off
5:45 AM: Alarm rings, time to get up
6:00 AM: Luke starts crying, get him from his crib, somehow manage to smear poop all over one of my hands during diaper changing.
7:20 AM: Finally get out of the door, ridiculously late
7:30 AM: Drop Luke off at daycare, he screams bloody murder when I go to leave. Worst dropoff we've had in over a month, I feel horrible and worry that he's getting sick again.
8:10 AM: Finally get to work and find a line of students already forming outside my door because (of course) today is the last day for them to turn in late work before I have to hand in progress report grades.
8:20 AM: The first bell rings, I realize I forgot to put on deodorant and socks today.
8:55 AM: Finally get the students working independently so I can turn my attention to the piles of papers that have magically appeared on this, the last day to turn them in.
8:56 AM: My computer dies. Really dies. Blue Screen of Death Dies.
8:58 AM: IT says to bring it down but they aren't making any promises. Also, I can't have a loaner computer to finish my grading. Sorry.
9:00 AM: My headache returns with a vengeance.
9:15 AM: I call Juan (who's working nights and is thus home, sleeping) and beg him to bring my laptop from home to school so I can enter grades. He got no sleep the night before and doesn't think he's safe to drive. Dammit.
11:30 AM: I get my BFF to cover my study hall so I can leap in the car and race home to get the laptop
12:15 PM: Get halfway back to school with the computer before I realize I forgot the power cord on the kitchen counter. My battery can last around 30 minutes at this point without needing to be plugged in, so I've just made this trip for, essentially, nothing.
12:17 PM: My head really hurts
12:30 PM: Get back to campus, inhale some lunch, greet my next class
1:10 PM: My laptop, predictably, dies.
1:15 PM: A student asks if I'm okay. I seriously consider bursting into tears but decide against it.
2:00 PM: Dismiss my last class, run to the library (tailed by half a dozen students wanting help with late homework) to log onto one of their computers so I can finish grading. Also hoping for some leftover pot luck chocolate cake and/or Diet Coke to make myself feel better.
2:03 PM: No cake, no Coke. No librarian (who I love and wanted to vent to) since she left early. I should have left early today too.
4:00 PM: The final bell rings, I'm maybe a third of the way through my stacks of papers. Realize I'm going to have to come in over the weekend.
4:30 PM: Kick the last of my students out of the library, close up, head home.
4:35 PM: My head REALLY hurts.
5:00 PM: Get home. Luke screams and bursts into tears the second he sees me since he knows that Mama coming home = Daddy leaving soon.
5:20 PM: Luke stops tantruming.
5:23 PM: Juan gets up to leave, Luke starts crying again.
5:30 PM: My head--in case you were wondering--HURTS.

No news is...no news. Also, news!

No announcement has been made yet about the Chief position. We don't know when the word will come down (tomorrow morning at the earliest, though) or if the decision has even been made yet. It's frustrating, but we'll deal with what comes.

In other news, today was the first day back at school. My students were great, I had a lot of fun, and we get to do it all over again tomorrow. Yay! Oh, and as an added bonus I get to teach a 9 week novel study class to a small group of students who all enjoy reading and discussing books. It's a little reward for them since they passed their state competency exams last year and one for me after I taught test prep during that slot for the last two years.

Finally, I'm officially down 16 lbs since I started Weight Watchers seven weeks ago. I honestly can't believe I've managed to lose that much so quickly. Twelve more to go until the promised land!

Looking Ahead

It's going to be a long week. Tomorrow is my last day of summer before heading back to work for (possibly) my last school year here. Being perfectly honest, I'm nervous about leaving Luke at daycare (because it's new, not because I don't trust our center) but heartbroken that this time next year there's a very good chance I won't be teaching at my current school.

This is the last year of Juan's residency, and he's interviewing for the Chief Resident position Wednesday. If he gets it, we'll stay until June 2010. If he doesn't, we'll leave at the end of this school year. The decision will be announced next Monday, which just so happens to be my first day of classes. If he doesn't get the job have to find a realtor, cancel tentative plans to visit family over Spring Break in favor of a house-hunting trip to wherever it is we'll be heading, and I'll have to begin putting my portfolio in order so I can hit the ground running job-wise next summer. I don't want to do any of those things. I want to play with my baby, go shopping with my friends, and know I have time to start building up a stronger AP program at my school because I'm going to be there to see those plans come to fruition. In short, I want to stay.

So, if you have any spare "good luck" thoughts/prayers floating around, please send them Juan's way this week. There's a lot more riding on the panel's decision about who will become Chief than just his job.

All good things...

Six days from now the school year will be over and I'll be a free woman for ten glorious weeks. Summer break truly is one of the best perks we teachers get, and this time of year almost feels like vacation already because the students have taken their finals and are just doing busywork-type assignments and watching (mostly relevant) movies while we feverishly grade papers and finalize their grades. Even though my inbox is full and I have piles of books and personal items to pack up and take home in the next few days, the overall mood is so relaxed that it's hard not to get sucked into feeling like it's summer already.

However, it's also a sad time of year since I love my students and won't see many of them again once they graduate and move on to bigger and better things. I've found myself tearing up in class on more than one occasion because really, these kids are amazing. With remarkably few exceptions they're interesting, well-behaved, inquisitive young people; and while they drive me crazy on a daily basis I absolutely adore being their teacher.

So while I'm looking forward to being a pseudo-stay at home mom until the next year starts in August, I'm more than a little maudlin at the thought of saying goodbye to "my" kids next Tuesday and leaving this job I love, even for a much-needed break.

Done and done

Thank God it's Friday. No, really, THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY. If I had to go back to that school in anything less than 48 hours I would probably go crazy.

(this is where my rant about today's administrative fuckup would go if, you know, I could blog about it. Suffice it to say, there was a fuckup, I will quit if it isn't resolved, and there's nothing I can do about it until people I don't completely trust do what they need to do)

BUT, the silver lining is that today is also the day we booked our tickets to GREECE for our anniversary/medical conference trip in June. It really can't come soon enough.

Moot Point

Well, it seems as though Luke read my last post because he's been waking up at 2:30 for the last three mornings. Oh well, we'll get this "through the night" business down someday, I suppose.
In other news, I've been approached to maybe possibly teach AP English next year. Everything depends on what a couple of other teachers decide to do (one possibly retiring, one probably transferring to a different campus) but if the spot opens up it's mine. I'm afraid to get too excited about this because it's still very uncertain, but since I have to start doing prep work now if I'm going to be ready by next September it's been on my mind pretty much constantly since I found out about it on Monday. It would be huge for me to get this, not only because it would be an amazing challenge in and of itself, but because it will look really good on my resume when we move at some point in the next few years and I have to find another job.

Onward and upward on a number of fronts, it seems.

Lull

I'm liveblogging straight from parent/teacher night and it's...dull. Many of the parents of my problem students have shown up, many of the parents of my good students have shown up, but it's still slow. Bummer. The one thing that kept me from bursting into tears when I left Luke with the sitter this morning (the first time I've left him for longer than a standard workday and only the second time ever I've not been the one to put him to bed) was the thought that at least I'd be too busy talking to parents to miss my boy. I'll give you one guess as to whether or not it's working.

Can I go home yet?

I still suck, but somewhat less than yesterday

Yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It started at 6:45 in the morning when I went to the garage to pull some breastmilk out of our chest freezer. I've been dipping into my freezer stash (mass quantities of frozen breastmilk left over from my maternity leave for those who've never had to stock one) and discovered only three bags were left. Three bags, or six ounces total, out of a stash that had once been close to 300 ounces. Since those six ounces combined with the twelve I had managed to pump on Monday only equaled 18 and Luke needs 24 while I'm away, I had only one option: formula.

Now, formula isn't the devil. It's not even close, and all along I've known that this day was going to eventually come. I've been back at work for over 4 months now and can only pump twice during the day--getting 24 ounces in two sessions just isn't realistic. Still, I had to battle a lump in my throat when I pulled out a dusty can of (not yet expired--I checked) formula we got as a sample when Luke was a newborn and walked across the street to the nanny. She was very understanding and assured me repeatedly that he was going to do great, but I still felt like a failure. I wanted so badly to make it through Spring Break next week without supplementing and I was this close to making my goal.

Anyhow, that put me in a funk the rest of the day, which wasn't helped by the dozens of kids who either A: didn't do their midterm projects, B: did the project wrong because they didn't read the assignment sheet carefully, and/or C: waltzed into my room five minutes before my final deadline to hand in make-up work wanting to know how they could pull their 35 up to a 70. Needless to say, I did a lot of yelling.

I finally shoved the last kid out the door with a reminder to DO HIS WORK ON TIME FOR THE NEXT REPORT CARD and made it home around 5:20. Luke and I played for awhile and then it was time for him to eat dinner. Dinner these days is one jar of baby food and three tablespoons of oatmeal cereal mixed with breastmilk. He'd been balking at cereal for a few nights, but I honestly thought it was because he was full rather than because he changed his mind about liking it. Wrong. After three bites (and I should say here that I think I'm mostly to blame for this since I realized after the fact that I made the cereal thicker than he's been eating it lately and I suspect he didn't like the texture) he gagged and then vomited everywhere. His high chair, the floor, me, the dog, you name it. Poor baby!

Naturally I panicked a bit since this was the first time he's truly thrown up, so after consulting Baby 411 and scoffing at their suggestion to give him only Pedialyte for the next few hours (at bedtime there ARE no more hours, plus we had no Pedialyte in the house and Juan was still at work) I threw him in the tub and nursed him to sleep. Then I called my husband and my mom, in that order, needing some TLC.

Today has been quite a bit better, but I think what I really need is a vacation. Good thing Spring Break is coming up next week and I can spend the whole 9 days laying around the house, playing with my boy, and trying to remember that the good days vastly outnumber the bad ones around here.

Random list of things on my mind

We've been going through a bit of a household purge/upheaval over the last month. First we got confirmation that the roof needed replacing (lovely), then we decided to buy a dining set and replace some ruined couches (courtesy of the lovely Miss Arcadia who's lucky not to be skinned alive over the cost), and then our nearly new TV set developed an unbearable high-pitched squeal that we can't turn off. The TV is probably a goner if what I'm reading on Samsung sites is correct, so that's likely another big purchase on the horizon.

Maybe I'm strange, but all of this change (new roof, new furniture, new TV) is making me twitchy. I like things to stay roughly the same from day to day, and suddenly I'm looking around my house and realizing that I hardly recognize it. It's a little disconcerting.

********************

It took me nearly 45 minutes to vote in the primary this morning even though I arrived promptly at 7:00 am. Our precinct had the slowest poll workers ever manning the Democrat table, and at one point none of the six Diebold machines was being used while all four poll workers took their time v.e.r.y. s.l.o.w.l.y. highlighting the names of people at the front of the line and filling out caucus receipts. If I hadn't wanted my "I Voted" sticker to use as an object lesson for the seniors who aren't registered to vote yet, I probably would have just walked out at that point and gone back after work. Note to the Texas Democratic Party--don't assign 80 year olds to man the polls first thing in the morning on election day unless you want 50+ cranky people who need to get to their jobs filing complaints with the Secretary of State.

********************

When my husband falls asleep on the couch and starts snoring it sounds exactly like there's an out of tune radio on somewhere in the house. Very disconcerting, especially after dark and especially when he claims that A: he didn't fall asleep, and B: he doesn't know what noise I'm talking about. I honestly thought I might be having auditory hallucinations for half an hour until I realized what the noise actually was.

********************

The English Language Arts TAKS test is tomorrow and I'm nervous as heck about how my students are going to do. We've been prepping for it for over a month and I know there are still kids who are going to look at the open-ended prompts and totally forget how to write their responses. Stupid TAKS. Stupid kids who don't pay attention in class. Stupid me for not starting test prep before Christmas.

Beating my head against a wall

Some days I truly wonder why I bother. After a series of increasingly depressing staff meetings today about budget problems, district mandates to teach to new tests rather than to return our focus to actual literature, "new" initiatives that were tried years ago and were retired due to complete and utter failure, and other equally upsetting topics; I left school feeling completely and utterly helpless to do anything that might actually make a difference in my students' lives.

At least part of the problem is, as I posted the other day, the fact that NCLB has made testing vitally important to the survival of every public school. Thus, our administrators are justifiably desperate for ways to improve performance, even at the cost of actual education. A bigger part, at least from today's perspective, is that instead of trying just one or two new initiatives every few years to see if they make a difference, we're thrown half a dozen every year and told to make them all succeed, even when some work at cross purposes. It's like the district throws handfuls of pedagogical spaghetti at our little wall in the hope that some strands will stick even if most of them fall to the floor. The problem with that analogy, though, is that when real spaghetti goes "splat" it doesn't carry with it the future of hundreds of children whose educational needs are going unmet.

As a teacher, my hands are mostly tied. I can speak my mind to my administrative team during staff meetings, I can even go to school board sessions and let them know what I think, but the ultimate decision makers don't have to listen to a word I say. They don't have to try to juggle all the balls we're supposed to manage each and every day. They don't have to explain to students and parents why they're having to learn yet another formula for writing essays rather than reading a novel or engaging in some creative writing challenges. Moreover, they don't have to try to look a kid squarely in the eye and try to come up with an explanation that makes any kind of sense for all the BS hoops she has to jump through in order to get a diploma. It's infuriating and disheartening, and it makes me wonder how I'm going to keep doing this job (this job that I love 95% of the time) in the long run if things continue like this.

Geek 2.0?

Juan and I have often joked that we've set poor Luke up to hate school. With an MD/computer geek father and an English teacher/history nut mother, we're both clearly a little obsessed with learning and want to pass that on to him and his (future, someday, WHOLE DIFFERENT POST ENTIRELY) siblings. Whether or not he'll love school is something we obviously can't know yet, but hopefully he'll at least be interested in a subject or two and motivated to get good grades the same way we were.

I worry about his educational experience, though, because as a high school teacher I see every day just how much the No Child Left Behind Act is sucking fun and innovation out of our classrooms. By way of example, at every high school in our city students spend 6-8 weeks in every core class (English, Science, Math, and Social Studies) doing nothing but preparing for the state assessment test. In English we teach them to compose formulaic responses that wring all creativity out of their writing. In history they memorize dates of "important" historical events that have a decided Western/European bias. In math and science they memorize formulas and have less time for practical projects and experiments than they did pre-NCLB. In short, even students who generally enjoy school hate it from January through April because the focus is on passing the test rather than genuine learning. Things are worse on the elementary level because many schools throw certain subjects out the window entirely for weeks before a different subject test to just focus on skills needed for that test alone. No science in the weeks before the English test, no English in the weeks before the math test, etc... It's appalling.

Frankly, it worries me to think that Luke will have to deal with the repercussions of this era of "standards" in education. To be clear, I think we do need to measure student achievement in some way that doesn't involve report cards. Standardized tests are simply not enough to measure that success, though, particularly when you consider the things that a standardized test simply can't measure such as creativity, an individual's unique learning curve (since not everyone learns at exactly the same rate), and intellectual curiosity.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that I am rather concerned that by the time Luke gets to school there won't be any room for the types of fun and innovative learning that Juan and I were exposed to as students, particularly in the areas of math and science. I confess that I wasn't a fan of math and science classes when I was in school. English, history, art, and drama were where my talents lay, whereas I struggled with concepts that involved numbers. I still do, as a matter of fact. Juan, on the other hand, excelled across the board in school but he was especially gifted in math and science, and thanks to some excellent teachers he decided he loved them enough to major in Biology and go on to medical school.

I want Luke to have that experience if at all possible. Not necessarily the majoring-in-biology-going-on-to-medical-school bit, but the fun and interactive math and science lessons that can really capture a child's imagination and give them insight into the genuinely cool real world applications for these disciplines. We all need to understand basic math and science principles to function in today's world, and a more advanced understanding (and passion) only helps people who have passion for those subjects. I doubt many parents or teachers would disagree with me, and yet here we are. We're losing the point of so many subjects--teaching children how to think critically rather than just memorize facts--so we can evaluate how much they're learning. In what twisted world does that logic make sense?

Hopefully the educational pendulum will have swung back in the direction of sanity by the time Luke is in school. If not, well, I guess we'll be investing in some home chemistry, biology, and practical mathematics lessons in addition to the hundreds of books we already own. It just makes me sad that we even have to think about how his education may be lacking the very things that made school so enjoyable for us.

This post was inspired by the Parent Bloggers Network's Bringing Science Back blog blast. Go to PBN and read more about it!

Things parents should never, ever do at their child's school

Report cards came out last week and we're all starting to hear from parents who just can't understand why Tommy or Suzy didn't pass English even though they received MULTIPLE calls over the course of the semester about their child's poor grades. So, in honor of those parents, here are a few things that drive teachers absolutely crazy. If you're a parent, please take note to never, ever do these things. Ever.

-Ignore academic problems until it's too late
Last year I had a student whose parents didn't care about his failing grade in my class until three weeks before graduation. THREE WEEKS. By that time I had made a dozen calls to his home to inform them of his grade situation, the school counselor had been in touch about his chances of graduating, and five progress reports had gone out, all of which had contained failing grades. Three weeks before graduation, though, was the first time anyone from his family ever wanted to meet with me to discuss the situation, and by that point it was really too late to do anything to fix things. He ended up taking the class over in summer school.

-Lie to your spouse about your child's grades
A colleague of mine had an irate parent call the principal last year to complain that she had never informed him or his wife that their son was failing. After some back and forth between my coworker, both parents, and the principal it finally came out that she had spoken to the mom--twice--about the kid's grade but Mom didn't want Dad to know about it so she never told him about the calls. Bad idea. It was, as you can imagine, horribly embarrassing for the parents plus their son had to repeat that semester of English the following year.

-Just show up in the middle of the school day without any warning
Now, don't get me wrong, if your child is failing my class I want to meet with you in person. I don't, however, want to meet with you while I have a class in session. Last week a parent came by with her son to ask why he'd been marked tardy so many times. I would have been happy to talk about her son's issues with getting to my class on time, but not while I was in the middle of a lecture. Word to the wise--if you want to talk to your child's teacher make an appointment. Just showing up in the middle of the school day will never get you what you want.

In short, pay attention to your child's grades throughout the school year, keep your spouse informed of problems at school, and call ahead if you want to talk to your child's teacher about a problem.

Did you know...

Want to know how to make 100 teachers scared out of their ever-loving minds? Spend 8 hours lecturing them about gang and school violence (complete with demonstrations on just how easy it is to conceal dozens of semi-automatic weapons in a pair of baggy jeans) but don't say a WORD about exactly which gangs are active at their school or what kinds of weapons the school's cop is pulling off students.

It's been a fun first day back at work.

We're starting to calm down a bit after the accident, in a segue that has absolutely nothing to do with the above observations, and I was even able to get a decent night's sleep for the first time since it happened. Hopefully that continues since the (suddenly scary) students come back to school on Monday and it's going to be a tough first few days back as they adjust to actually having to do work for the first time in two weeks.

I just hope none of them are packing heat.

Reasons why this is not a good week to mess with me

I am not the most pleasant person to be around this week. Luke has officially entered the 4 month wakeful stage (so nicely coinciding with the week we're taking him on his first overnight trip away from home) and I'm dead on my feet. Between his sudden decision to drop his evening nap and the last few nights of "MAMA, I IS AWAKE AND WANT TO PLAY!" shrieking into the monitor at 3:00 am (both before and after feeding, I might add) we're not getting much rest around here right now. Mom, Dad, Julia--you are officially drafted for baby duty when we get to Salt Lake this weekend so Juan and I can take a nap.

Anyhow, all of this is just to explain to you exactly why my students don't want to mess with my right now. Aside from the fact that I'm so tired I just spelled "right" as "reight" and had to pause a second when spellcheck flagged it because it looked okay to my sleepy eye, my work laptop was abducted by the IT department yesterday and I had nothing to do (seriously, I couldn't even grade papers, that's how dependent we are on those laptops at my school) for 8 hours. On a normal day that wouldn't have been a problem, but I was giving exams so I couldn't even while the time away by giving a lecture or three. I didn't bring my knitting because I thought I'd have my laptop, and reading a book during an exam just isn't kosher.

So, I started off the day in a bad mood because I was very tired and very annoyed that my computer was forcibly taken from me by people who swore that it would "only take an hour" to do whatever needed to be done to make the computer less vulnerable to hackers or elves or whoever else might want to invade my files. Then my students decided to forget the million or so reminders I had given them for the last week that their final was today and they needed their books, two pieces of blank paper, and a working pen or pencil. Over half of them showed up to class without anything at all and had to book it to their lockers to get the things they're supposed to bring to class every day.

I'd just like to state for the record that I was a very anal retentive high school student. I always brought my books to class; was never without a large spiral notebook and lots of pens; and I never, EVER forgot about a test. So, you can see how frustrating and perplexing it is for someone like me to be confronted with not one, but at least a dozen students who simply "forgot" that today was their test and *gasp!* they needed school supplies to take it. That doesn't include the two kids who outright refused to take the test (resulting in automatic referrals to the Assistant Principal's office) and the one kid who, for some reason, decided to crumple up his essay and put his gum in it so it was impossible for me to grade. I swear, the scheduling clerk gave me all the winners in this year's sophomore class.

Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to Friday since I have the day off to run errands and get us packed before we leave town Saturday. The kids and I need a break from one another.

That kind of day

Today was the kind of day that reminded me of the best and worst parts of my job. The best:

-actually getting kids who normally do nothing but goof off to do serious work,
-having a student trust me enough to ask for my advice about a serious personal problem,
-and having some free time during the day to stop and chat with my friends

and the worst:

-not knowing what to say to the student who came to me with the personal problem,
-having a student ditch class and steal my stapler,
-and practically dying of heat exhaustion in my classroom since the building's a/c is broken.

I also had the opportunity to learn that over half my students think that Europe, Africa, Paris, and Barcelona are all countries, and that two of them think that plagiarism shouldn't be a big deal because teachers apparently do it "all the time" with no consequences.

The extreme good and bad of teaching rarely coincide on the same day, but today was clearly special.

Dear Students (stupid, stupid students)

Dear Students,

You may wonder why my door is frequently closed and locked before school, during lunch, and during my conference period. Those of you who need to talk to me about different issues (usually related to excuses you have concocted in an attempt to get me to accept late homework) might find it irritating or inconvenient to come to my classroom only to find that you can't get in. For that, I am sincerely sorry.

Those of you who actually pay attention in class should remember that I have said (and repeated ad nauseum) that if you need to see me when my door is CLOSED AND LOCKED you should leave a note for me in my box. I'll come find you so we can discuss whatever pressing issue is on your mind. Those of you who spend class time braiding your hair or flirting with a member of the opposite sex, however, may not have absorbed this information, so you knock on my CLOSED AND LOCKED door when it is CLOSED AND LOCKED. Those of you with more than three brain cells to rub together will come to the conclusion that I'm not inside when no one answers your knock, and hopefully you'll come back later. Those of you who, I assume, don't have any brain cells at all (and no, I don't want to know why) will decide that maybe I'm inside, desperate to visit with you in spite of my CLOSED AND LOCKED door, and will rattle the knob. And knock again. And rattle the knob. And knock yet again. This tactic, while it will force me to make a mental note to remind all six of my classes of what to do if my door is CLOSED AND LOCKED, will not gain you entry. There is a very simple reason for this, and I guarantee you really don't want to know what it is.

Really? You want to know? That much?

When I'm in my room with the door CLOSED AND LOCKED and there isn't a class in session, I'm not grading papers. I'm also not talking to parents about confidential student issues (although this is what I will tell you in person if you ever ask). I'm not even having a wild party with all the other cool teachers. I'm pumping. Breastmilk. To feed my baby.

See, I told you that you didn't want to know.

So, I encourage you to respect the fact that when my door is CLOSED AND LOCKED, I will not let you in no matter how much you bang on the (tastefully frosted) glass or rattle the handle. Even if I'm inside, there's no way you're gaining entry. Accept it and move on, but please don't waste ten minutes of your time trying to break in. It won't work, and (if I ever find out who you are) it will almost certainly affect your grade in a very negative way.

Sincerely,

Mrs. M

P.S. I worry for the future of our nation when a 15-18 year old cannot understand that a CLOSED AND LOCKED door means that either no one is inside the room or someone is inside and they don't want to be disturbed.

P.P.S. In case anyone cares, our nanny made it home from Mexico late Sunday night, so daycare crisis averted. Barely.

Zzzzzzzzz...

Day three and I'm still alive. Being back at work has been hard. It's not just leaving Luke (who is doing much better at taking bottles, by the way) but it's also the fact that teaching is physically exhausting even when I'm not operating on 4-5 hours of sleep a night. I'd sort of forgotten how much energy it takes to jump around a classroom keeping kids engaged for 8 hours a day, and especially given the situation I'm coming back to discipline-wise I can't slack at all while they're in the room.

Anyway, I'm tired and will be going to bed now even though tonight is the premiere of Project Runway ans I never miss Project Runway. Better to delay the first "make it work" of 2007 than end up passed out and drooling over my laptop.

I came, I saw, I wanted to go home

Well, at least I didn't cry.

The first day back was predictably difficult and I spent most of my time feeling discombobulated after spending 6 months out of the classroom. The kids (who got away with murder during my absence) don't especially like the fact that I'm *gasp!* enforcing the rules, but I think things will settle down in a few weeks.

As for Luke, he spent the day displaying the kind of stubbornness only my child is capable of and refused to eat more than an ounce and a half all day. Wish us all luck in trying to convince him to take a bottle more readily tomorrow.

I may have a nervous breakdown, but at least I have a stapler

I've spent a good 10 hours putting my classroom back together this week (suffice it to say that I am less than thrilled about how my sub took care of it) as a way of focusing my anxiety about going back to work on something other than actual work. Fretting about the decided lack of a stapler in my room was a lot more appealing than thinking too hard about the fact that I would be away from Luke for at least 9 hours a day starting on Monday. We put the finishing touches on things this afternoon, and now all that's left is for me to walk in there tomorrow morning prepared to lecture my heart out about the English Renaissance and Elizabethan sonnets. Either that, or I'll break down in tears before the first bell rings. Who knows.