Ice ice baby

My daughter Hope and I are not actually from The South. We moved here from Out West so that I could teach at an underprivileged school/make a difference/inspired young minds/etc. (hasn't happened yet but of course I will keep you posted). So imagine my dismayed surprise this morning when I came out to my car and discovered a sheet of ice covering my windshield. What to do??? Quickly discovered that rubbing it with a fast food napkin has little effect. Windshield wipers equally useless. I ended up backing out into the sunlight and sitting there waiting for it to melt. Almost late for work- lovely. Later, as I was working with students on Making Predictions, it occurred to me that this was a unique opportunity presenting itself to me! So I posed the following to my kids- "Suppose someone came out one morning and found a ridiculous amount of unecessary ice on their windshield. Predict what they would do next." Among the responses: hot water, cold water, spit on it, breathe on it, go back to bed (I like!!), scrape it off with your shoe, use the defroster (huh? never heard of it). Then one bright and charming young man piped up "Hey Miz Cracker- you should just buy you a new Camaro! They've got heated windshield wipers!" Oh, well of course. Let me just run right out with my massive teacher's salary and do that.

chain gang

I'm going to shackle the little monsters together. Not quite literally but almost. I've decided to pair up the top students with the lowest performers. If they won't allow me to help them, then maybe they can pull each other up. I'm going to average together both their behavior grades and their quiz grades so they will be forced to be responsible for and to each other. So there! (this better work- it's almost Christmas and I'm running out of management options)
And can you believe I am on the verge of being fired over potty problems? Not mine, although not having an opportunity to go to the bathroom for over 12 hours should certainly qualify as a problem. No- I actually have 6th graders that pee their pants on purpose and then blame me. Even though I take the entire class to the bathroom frequently. As in every hour and a half. And then their crazy illiterate parents come into my classroom and scream at me in front of the kids. Isn't teaching wonderful? Doesn't it just give you a warm feeling inside? Or in the case of my students- a warm feeling inside your pants?

Down the hatch!

I began my very first day of teaching by accidentally swallowing a massive mosquito. Down here in The South, we take great pride in smacking the "little" buggers flat in midair. Which is exactly what I did at breakfast- only I was unable to locate the body afterward. Oh, well. Moments later, I downed my last gulp of hot tea. Oops. Found it! My teaching career was off to a fantastic start!
And it got even better. By lunchtime, I had been abandoned in an empty field by a fellow teacher (don't ask), went to the bathroom and couldn't find my way back to my classroom (the janitor now thinks I'm truly brilliant) and got called (for the first time ever!) a cracker. By a second grader. I was speechless.
Internal Dialogue: Excuse me? Did he really just call me that? What year is this? Does he even know what that means? Do I? When will Ashton jump out?
And my pithy, mature, teacherly response? "That's Ms. Cracker to you."
And off we go!