Donate Now Top three acts from the talent show today: 3. My identical twin girls from last year doing “All The Single Ladies,” in perfect unison the way that only identical twins can be. 2. Two fourth grade boys doing stand-up about our school who were as funny (“my teacher says she never punishes kids…

Donate Now I was in a terrible mood today, since I had a coverage with my least favorite class (the one with Sidewinder) that gave me seven teaching periods in a row. I guess Sidewinder’s dad and his lizard have split again, as Sidewinder ripped the heating grate out of the wall, screamed at another…

(Actually, this all happened yesterday, but I was too excited about Fossil Man to write about it then.) I was lined up with a class in the hallway on the way to lunch, as was pretty much every other seventh and eighth grade teacher, when the fire alarm went off. This was pretty unusual, because…

I just wish it was longer.

In addition to what I’m sure is a whole host of neurochemical issues, I think part of Sidewinder’s insanity stems from the complete void of male role models in his life. Every man in his family is either in jail or AWOL, and I really think that he simply does not know how a man…

That’s what I’ve decided to name my polar-bears-are-extinct-because-they-hump-ice, I-want-to-dress-up-like-Godzilla-and-terrorize-Asia, probably genuinely insane student. Today while we were playing my patented rock cycle card game, he shouted, “Miss, why can’t we play Rock Crusher instead?!” When I asked him what “Rock Crusher” is, he said “You know, you get a bunch of rocks, then you get…

First Lady of New York Michelle Paige Paterson, that is. I didn’t even know states had first ladies, so I learned something new today! Anyways, she came to our school with a news crew to promote her Healthy Steps to Albany program. Basically, NYC public schools can sign up for a six week eat-healthy-food-and-exercise-more contest,…

Well, I guess I jinxed myself yesterday when I wrote about getting the first half of the day off due to midterms, because today I got assigned to a group of QRA students – Questions Read Aloud. Administering tests to QRA kids is kind of a pain, because unlike regular proctoring – where you can…

This week we are trying something new in the middle school: midterm exams. Each teacher of the four major subject areas (math, language arts, social studies and science) made up a cumulative midterm, and we are administering them one a day this week under state testing conditions – meaning the kids are locked down in…

One of the first graders has what is probably the coolest sweatshirt in the history of the world – it has spiderman on it, and when you press his chest all these little LEDs light up so Spidey’s web kind of tinkles. The kid spent all day running around having all his classmates slap his…

I really was not looking forward to going back to work today given that I still feel under the weather, and I almost lost it when I walked into the classroom and saw that my clipboard – which I use to keep my meticulous records and am very, very OCD about – was not in…

Since I woke up still missing my voice and feeling pretty cruddy, I decided to stay home to drink tea and not talk all day. Hopefully this strategy works and I can return to school with full yelling capabilities tomorrow!

I woke up this morning completely unable to speak – the combination of having a cold for a few days and talking all day yesterday made me lose my voice in its entirety. I didn’t feel too bad, fortunately, so I still went into school. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the day went…

1. Krystofer won’t stop whining that he’s hot. Like 99% of students whining about being overheated, he is still wearing his giant winter coat from outside. I suggest that he take his coat off if he’s hot, he replies “No miss, I can’t! Then everyone will see my Bill Cosby sweater!” He then unzips his…

First of all, Clark has officially been withdrawn from our school. No one seems to know what happened to him, except that he hasn’t shown up for three days and today he was no longer on the class roster. I hope his new school is more firmly Dad-proofed than ours was. Second of all, the…

I recently gave an assignment where my kids put their names on the front of a paper, but their answers were on the back of it. While grading the nameless backs, I realized that it has reached the point in the year where I can identify about 90% of my kids’ handwriting just by looking…

We’re in our unit on rocks and minerals, which I always hate because there are a lot of quasi-dirty words associated with mineral classification – e.g. “cleavage” and “streak.” This year the kids have really latched onto “hardness” as the most hilarious mineral property, I guess because of penises? It’s kind of funny that they…

There’s been a lot of drama in first grade recently due to Clark, a child with the most intense separation anxiety I’ve ever encountered. At first he would just be a little weepy about missing his dad, and spend the first few minutes of the day crying at his table seat before calming down and…

Since the school building is unoccupied over the winter break, they turn the heat off for those eleven days. When we got back in today the building was freezing, and although they turned on the heat this morning it was still pretty nippy by the end of the day. At lunch Ms. L and I…