Ouch

So I'm with the kids out near the bathroom, trying in vain to keep them calm during the post-lunch mayhem. "Against the wall!" "Hurry up!" "Stop looking in other peoples' stalls!" Seriously, the bathroom is like a friggin' playground for 'em. Anyway, I'm shuffling kids around while my bathroom monitors are dispensing hand sanitizers and generally causing more trouble than their worth. All of a sudden, I hear a yelp of pain. I dash over to the girls' bathroom and see a girl walking toward me, her face contorted with pain, her left hand clutching her right.

"What happened?" I ask. "I closed the door on my finger," she sputters, choking on tears. "Lemme see," I continue, motioning for her to open her hand. She obliges and a decent stream of blood flows down her index finger.

"Ah!" she yells, "I'm gonna die! Tell my mom I love her!"

Now, I am completely taken aback by this comment. The girl runs to the paper towel dispenser and yanks out a mile as I just stand there, stupified.

"Tell my mom I love her! Tell my mom I love her!" she continues, a shade past hysterical by this time.

I finally come to and wrap my arm around her shoulder, walking her out and away from the bathroom to the shouts of "What happened?!" coming from the kids.

"My fingers are gonna fall off! My fingers are gonna fall off!" her mantra continues. "Tell my mom I love her!"

As I'm walking I bump into another teacher waiting to use the bathroom and he somehow ends up taking her the rest of the way to the nurse's office, while I watch the two classes.

Turns out she gashed it pretty good and ended up going home. She may need stitches. Piecing together the wild accounts of seven-year-old witnesses, it turns out she was holding the side of the stall with one hand and, not looking, proceeded to slam the door on it with the other.

Afterwards, it was all I could do to not collapse with laughter. I know, I shouldn't! I mean, the girl thought she was gonna die! But it was pretty sweet that her "last" thoughts were of her mom- and her fingers.

Marital Issues

We started writing fantasy stories today in class. We talked about different possible characters and settings. Then the kids picked their own and gave them problems and solutions. Here's one student's take on it:

Problem: They [the prince and princess] going to have another baby
Solution: They going to talk it out

I'm not sure why, but it's just hilarious to me.

The straw that broke the camel's pants

So I walk the kids into one of those ever-so-stupid (but necessary?) fundraising assemblies where the candy man tells kids not to peddle their wares at strangers' houses. While I think the assembly is a waste of time (I could easily give them the safety lecture and hype them up in five minutes), I am glad to be there. Math was just plain horrible today. I could not get them to focus and, I must admit, my lesson was lacking. So when the principal announced the assembly with only twenty minutes advance notice, a wide grin grew on my face. "Close your books and put your pencils away!" I yell. I walk the kids down and sit them in the gym. Now, at this point I had been on my feet for almost two hours nearly non-stop. I was sweaty and tired and the kids looked entertained enough by the candy man that they wouldn't act up. So, I decide to plop myself down on the floor next to them, as teachers often do. Then, I hear the sound.

RRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIP!

My usually dimwitted reflexes slap the two books I had been carrying onto my lap. I stare blankly ahead, taking a moment to attempt to understand what just happened. All I remember was the sound and a flash of pale, pale flesh. I gulp and sweat begins to bead down my forehead.

"Are you alright?" says a teacher who happened to be standing next to me.
"Yeah," I manage to sputter.

The realization finally dawned on me. I had split my pants.

I panic immediately. The only reason people didn't notice was because of my lightnin' fast reflexes and the fact that I ended up sitting criss-cross applesauce. Upon standing, my not-fit-to-be-seen-in-public undies and unkempt thunder thighs would be visible to a couple hundred students and staff.

And the assembly was half over. I had to get out of there.

I yank a kid in front of me over. "Can you please go to the classroom and get my sweater hanging over the chair in front of my desk. Quickly." Alas, if it had only been winter. A nice, long coat may have worked nicely.

After what seemed like an eternity, the kid returns, sweater in hand. I had my covering, but how could I actually leave. It was the end of the day and in a few minutes I would have to walk the kids out to their parents. And I thought that that one time I ran into a pair of them whilst inebriated was the most awkward thing I would ever do.

I had to confide in someone. Someone else had to walk my class out. I motion the teacher who questioned me earlier.

"I've go an embarrassing situation," I whisper. "I seemed to have split my pants and I need to get out of here." "Oh no," she says, with genuine concern. "Yeah, could you please walk my kids outside at the end of the assembly?" I sputter. "Sure, sure," she says, "Where exactly do I take them?" At this point, there is roughly five minutes to dismissal. Throw them out of the fuckin' window for all I care, I think. After a lengthy explanation of the tricky subject of walking students outside in a straight line, I finally get the go-ahead.

With a simultaneous flip of the wrist and a smooth standing motion, I am upright with my sweater awkwardly, but adequately, covering my shame. I rush towards the door, feeling a particularly refreshing feeling in my nethers. I hit the first door. Damn, locked! I go to the next and it opens easily. I don't look back. I rush through the school, praying to Jesus I wouldn't see anyone, and out of the door. Cursing the fact that I parked in the school lot, I rush past milling parents, not daring to make eye contact.

Within moments I reach the sanctity of my car. Time to inspect the damage. I had not split the back of my pants, but the front. The tear stretched from my zipper down both thighs. The only remnants were fibers that lay blithely over my fleshy manscape. To get a clearer idea, inspect this shot of the pants in question, taken after I reached the comfort of home:



The best thing of all was that I had to return to school that evening for open house.

But, shit, I've weighed more than I do now and I've never split my pants before. And I've sat on the floor plenty of times on these self-same pants and nothing's ever happened! I guess they were just fed up with me. There is a lesson in all this though: I will never sit on the floor during an assembly again.

Gotta split.

PS- Throughout the whole fiasco, I could not get this song out of my head:

Spongebob Ripped Pants

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Now I see

It's like night and day with these friggin' kids.

Last week was hellish. I had no control over the class. The kids were blabbing non-stop. The boys kept on smacking each other. I was yelling from the top of my lungs just to get their attention. I was not able to teach everything I was supposed to. Every day of that week ended with a sore throat and a pounding headache.

But today was fine. Pretty good, actually. The kids were, aside from a handful of minor situations, chill. I was able to engage them in the content, they were sharing and working well together. One of my more "challenging" boys was moderately focused, a marked improvement to his usual zero to little percentage. He even wrote a story about football fueled by his own interest! (This may be an in, but, alas, I can't even throw a football properly)

The icing on the cake happened after our shared reading. We read a book about a blind kid who wants to play baseball. After reading the first chapter, I handed out sticky notes and told the kids to write one connection they could make between the book and either themselves, another book, or the world around them. The kids really dug the book and related it very well, but feast your eyes on the gem I came upon:

"Mr. Mocdow is blind"

A subtle yet telling criticism of my character? A witty rejoinder vis-à-vis my classroom management? Or perhaps a guess because I told them once they can never see me without my glasses. You decide.

I predict...

This week in school I've been talking with the kids about predicting. We've been reading several books and learning how to use clues to figure out what will happen next. As a culminating activity, I made up a book for them but wrote only the first and last page. It was about a girl who puts different small animals in her backpack as she walks home (it seems a slightly odd premise now that I think about it). I hoped the kids would catch the pattern and construct a story. Most were successful and went about creating impossible tales about shoving giraffes and fish inside of a book bag. One particularly precocious pupil went about weaving a yarn that left me in stitches. Here it is, her words are in bold:

Jennifer was walking home when she found a frog. "Oh, how cute!" she said. Then she put the frog in her backpack. Then she found a guinea pig and a rabbit and a dog and a cat and she walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and she got home.

Might I add, that the "walking" portion of the story was spread over four pages. I don't quite know if she was feeling lazy or felt that she got the gist of the story quite early and just needed filler. I see potential.

Long, hot days

The kids are gone and I still have so much to do. But I can never work directly after they leave. I need a buffer of at least a half hour to vent or shove the stress deep, deep inside of me.

Today feels like a venting day.

To begin with, the air conditioning is still not working. I spent the entire day with twenty-two second graders at the cozy temperature of 86° in a space slightly larger than my living room. I was sweating all day long, using sheet after sheet of paper towels to sop up the juices. I feel sticky, smelly, and just all around gross. Days like this make me miss shorts and flip-flops so badly. Wearing long pants and closed-toed shoes in times of heat just does not make physiological sense.

But besides the sweat, the day started well enough. I was a little later to work than usual this morning (Mainly because of last night's post but also due to the fact that I somehow cracked my phone in half. My phone, you see, serves as my alarm, and while the phone still functioned, the screen was completely white and, thus, I could not set the alarm. And, believe it or not, I had absolutely no other alarm of any kind. I resorted to finding online alarm clocks and leaving my laptop beside my bed. Hey, it worked.) I pretty much got everything ready in time and the morning went fairly smoothly. But if you've ever worked a full day in an elementary school (or can remember being there), you know the worst time is after lunch.

After lunch, the kids seems to lose all focus. I really can't blame them, though. They get fifteen minutes of recess a day. But take away from that the daily review of the playground rules and time spent lining up and they're lucky to get ten minutes. Add the fact that we were five minutes late today and you can see a problem. You see, kids need recess. We force them to sit still, be quiet, and learn difficult concepts for three hours, give them a ten minute break, and then shove another two hours down their throats. You may ask about lunch but that's just sitting and being quiet with food.

I seem to recall getting a lot more recess when I was a lad. And although I didn't usually run around and such, I did draw pictures and play random Asian card games. It was a rest for my mind as much as my body and most of my fondest school memories occurred on that cement field. No wonder so many of my kids cited recess as one of their favorite parts of their first day in their writing.

But, as I was saying, it was a madhouse in here. I teach math and writing after lunch but I feel like we really didn't get anything done. I kept yelling and the kids kept complaining and bothering each other. Mix in the heat and the fact that so many of these parents send their kids to school with far less than adequate sleep and you can paint a pretty accurate picture. It was so, so frustrating.

But now after getting that all out of my system, I cannot bring myself to do any work. I have no desire to put together conferencing notebooks or make a KWL chart or check short vowel worksheets. I guess that's why I show up to work at 6 AM. I'm gonna go buy a cheap new cellphone.

Sleep

I think I'd like to start writing a little bit more.

So, I'm sitting here celebrating my first Dreaded Sunday Night of the new school year. Sunday in and of itself is quite possibly the worst day of the week. It is a mystery why it is considered the Lord's Day (although my pastor taught it was really a Saturday and that those other supposed "Christians" were awful silly). I do not consider Sunday a part of the weekend. Upon awakening on a Sunday morning, I only curse the fact that in twenty four hours I will be awaking to a Monday morning. Doing anything at all productive seems moot because work will be starting again so soon. So the day is spent agonizing about the impending doom of the work week. Hours upon hours drift by while I look at stupid shit on the internet and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Then the evening time comes and bedtime rolls around. And I do not want to go to sleep. It isn't insomnia: my eyelids are heavy, my limbs are droopy, and the yawning is non-stop. But I don't want to go to sleep. These days, I think its due to the job. If I go to sleep, tomorrow is that much closer. Another day of stress, paperwork, sweat, and agitation will be born. So I slaughter hours of sleep in a delusional effort to stave off the coming dawn.

But I recall college summers at home doing the same thing. And with nothing at all to do the following day, I would frequently stay up until dawn watching cartoons and hanging out in random chatrooms (I really can't believe I used to go into chatrooms). It was quite an effort to keep my eyelids ajar but I just didn't want to sleep.

It takes a tremendous amount of willpower or just complete exhaustion to make me go to bed early. But if I ever get less than seven hours of sleep, I feel like crap all day long. The only equalizing factor is that as the evening grows later, the desire to sleep increases, as shown by Figure 1.a.:

Figure 1.a.

And now, as the magic hour approaches, I submit. Oh Mistress Nocturne, take my waking self and grant me bittersweet dreams of Freudian consequence.