Donate Now Today was the day, and now that it’s over I don’t feel as… extremely… as I thought I would. I thought I’d be elated, depressed, or both, but mostly I’m just exhausted. The kids were only in school for the morning, and the whole afternoon was spent cleaning out classrooms – it was…

Donate Now First of all, I would just like to say that I am offended. Yesterday I posted about a girl saying my hair was so bad it distracted her from learning, and not a single person responded! I expected people to either comfort or mock me, but not complete apathy – does no one…

First, after I posted yesterday I realized that I forgot to mention the funniest part of the whole day. Traivon, an uber-cool, ultra-bad member of the famed “DooDoo” gang, showed up wearing basketball shorts and what looked like women’s stockings underneath. At first I thought he was wearing girl tights, but then I realized that…

Today was field day, which means that we took the kids to Central Park and let them run around all day. It was very relaxing, since all I had to do was sit on a bench and watch the kids go insane with the excitement of being outdoors for four hours. I also got a…

Girl: Guess who I’m dating, Ms. C? Ms. C: I don’t know, who? Girl: My step-brother! Ms. C: (stunned silence) Girl: He looks good! Four more days, and four more delicious after school 25-cent ice cream sandwiches, to go!

First of all, I saw my Subway Buddy again this morning! Today the topic of conversation was mostly things he is afraid of, which ranged from the sad (“9/11″ and “the Twin Towers”) to the bizarre and kind of cute (“dog poop” and “the Statue of Liberty”). He also proudly recited all the stops between…

It has been raining almost all week. Rainy days are the worst because the kids don’t get to go outside for recess, and are consequently crazy (well, crazier than usual). But the real killer is that the rain results in them bringing their umbrellas to school – I think they must actually get excited when…

We suspected Bobby of cutting class with some other nogoodniks due to some attendance irregularities, but after about an hour of intense questioning were finally convinced that we had made a clerical error and he had indeed been in class all week. About ten minutes later, he’s caught passing notes with his neighbor: Bobby: They…

Last week as I was walking to the subway in the morning, I heard a small voice behind me say, “Aren’t you going to wear a sweater?” I turned around to see a little kid, wearing a sweater, and apparently concerned that I wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the weather. As we chatted on the…

Today was another clerical half day to work on the volumes of paperwork that needs to be done before the end of the school year. Not much to report, except that the MIT kids were still on sort of a post-field trip high and had fun enlightening their classmates about their vast knowledge of college.…

The night before the MIT trip, I was too excited/nervous to fall asleep. I kept waking up in the night with alternating thoughts of “Tomorrow is going to be the best day ever, I can’t wait!” and “The bus isn’t going to pick is up and it’s going to rain and I will have made…

It really doesn’t matter at all what my kids did or didn’t do today, because TOMORROW WE ARE GOING TO MIT!!! I am so excited to visit my Alma Mater with my favorite students and colleagues, I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve – I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep…

I was in a great mood today because the seventh grade went to see Night at the Museum 2, but was instantly crushed when I got back and found out that while I was gone 13 teachers had been excessed, including several of my friends. “Excessed” basically means “let go,” not because of incompetence, but…

Handwritten on a folded piece of paper intercepted today during class: Front You’er invited to *Da-Mar’s* live Party Inside Left  Place: 1234 Bronx Ave. Apt. 1A Time: 9:00 pm – ? When: June -13, 2009 6/13/09 Who: you’ll find out Theme: shorts Inside Right there will be *food *Music *game Girls – free Boys –…

Today was a clerical* half day, so every period was only half an hour long. Half an hour is sort of a terrible amount of time to have kids – it’s too long to do nothing, but not long enough to do anything. Solution? Movies! My school has this cool DVD set called The Future…

I was really nervous heading into school today, because I reserved the computer lab for each of my classes to start working on their PowerPoint presentations of their science projects. I had never brought a class to the computer lab before, and was envisioning them bludgeoning each other with keyboards (actually, a few weeks ago…

Today was Gustavo’s day to be taken out to lunch. Without exception, my kids have chosen to go to McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, or Subway – and the latter only if they’re feeling fancy. Gustavo chose to go to an obscure Vietnamese sit-down restaurant several blocks away from the school. Because he knows the owner.…

Today was a professional development day, which means no kids, just teachers. I love PD days, because usually we are broken up into our departments to do stuff – and the science department is me and Ms. L. So we spent most of the day cleaning and organizing our clove-scented lab, which now looks suspiciously…

I feel like at this point in the year the days are starting to blur together, and all that really differentiated today from all the other days is that the lab still is pretty pungent from yesterday’s clove catastrophe. Also, a student asked me why I don’t bother to “get your hair did.” I do…

First of all, good news! My student with the “hole in his ankle” just has a cut on his ankle, not a hole in his uncle as some had feared. Second of all, this was the funniest student interaction I’ve overheard in a while: Student A: Did you see Terminator? Student B: What, with that…

The last question on today’s Do Now was “How was your weekend?” One of my favorite ESL kids responded, “harebale because I have a whole in my ankle.” I didn’t read the Do Nows until all the kids had left for the day, so now I am very curious to find out what he means…