Gross gross gross.

This is what your children eat at school. I had a bite, and nearly puked... and I am goat-like in my eating habits. 

OT

Teachers should be able to take care of themselves, and tenure rears its ugly head again. 

The fleecing of your tax dollars

Warning: this is gross. 

Awwwww!

I spent the entirety of yesterday trapped in my office with a boy who had received a suspension before school even started but whose parents or guardians would not be answering any calls all day long to come pick him up. He was atrocious: completely disrepectful toward me and tormenting the kids who came to see me. With the way he talked, I was sure he could beat me up, so I had to tread carefully. By the time I left, I was so annoyed I am sure billows of smoke could be seen steaming out of my ears. Just as I was escaping a little girl who had come to me earlier complaining of a tummyache came running to give me a big ol' hug. No reason for it, but it erased the hours of torture in my office. 

Who let the dog out?

Right after recess I went to a kindergarten class to pick up a couple kids for screening. Everyone was standing outside looking at the teacher holding a terrier puppy that could not have been more than 7 or 8 weeks old. I joined the crowd and asked the teacher if it was show and tell time - should I return later? "Oh no, this isn't show and tell. One of my girls brought her dog to school, it's been in her backpack all morning." I was completely unhelpful as I couldn't contain my giggles. 

Thank YOU!

Today I was greeted with a fat stack of thank you notes from the 6th graders I talked to a couple weeks ago. It kind of offsets the lice chaos that is now happening at all three of my schools.

I may never be right again.

The secretary brought a girl to my office saying her teacher said she had been itching her head. The girl mumbled something that sounded like "I don't like socks." I thought it was odd because I could see her wearing a pair, so I asked her to repeat, and she shouted in my face, "I DON'T LIKE BUGS." Okay... I took one peek in her hair: eggs everywhere, and worse, LIVE bugs everywhere. I thought I was going to lose my breakfast, and I'm sure I'll be having nightmares about it tonight. Of course the girl, a kindergartner, didn't  know her name so it took some sleuthing to track down her emergency card. Once that was out, we discovered her home number and parent cell phone numbers on the card were all disconnected. I went down the list of Grandmoms and finally reached one who said she would pass along the message to the parents.

Meanwhile, I was trapped with a kindergartener who could talk anyone's ear off yet didn't know her first name. I called her sister down for a lice check, and she was equally loaded with bugs, but even only a year older knew to not scratch her head in public. Now I was stuck with two lice-loaded girls in my small office, one of whom wanted to take off her coat and fling it around. She kept picking bugs out of her head and would shriek with delight, "I found a bug!" and bring the treasure to show me. It was like playing keep away trying to keep myself at a reasonable distance from the lice potentially flying off the coat swinging around and the girl's arm when she was shoving the bugs in my face. When I got strict and told them to sit still, the looks on their faces told me they've never been disciplined before.

Best was when I asked the two of them if they had told their mom they had bugs in their hair. There was just no mistaking the extent of the problem, even from a distance, and I was wondering how a parent could miss such a thing. I understood when the older girl answered: "My mommy told us not to tell anyone so we could come to school."