Attack of the Human Eraser

Today was a day! 

And now, on my couch with my foot on the coffee table and the cat curled up next to me, I will share bits and pieces. 

The heat was supposed to be fixed yesterday, but it was not, so I spent the night on the couch, curled up in front of the space heater. Yes, I realize I could plug the space heater in in the bedroom, but there is not an elevated space really close to the bed to put the space heater on. In the living room, I can clear off the coffee table and put it on that. This way, the hot air blows right on me. You aren’t judging my intelligence as much anymore, are you? Nonetheless, I woke up with a frozen nose.

I started the day out with some instant flavored coffee, an apple, and some chocolate covered Ritz crackers. I really enjoy those chocolate covered Ritz crackers. The first time I had them was when I bought them out of curiosity last year for a New Year’s party I was helping to host. They were amazing, but I didn’t get nearly as many as I would have liked. It turns out they are a seasonal items, for reasons I cannot even fathom. When I saw them at Hyvee, even though I was supposed to be buying only items for my fifth graders’ volcano project, I tossed them in the cart. Now I regret only having bought one box.

Anyway, I went to school where something really weird happened with some important confidential documents. I can’t discuss it here, but trust me, it was weird, confusing, and pretty funny. 

The day plugged along pretty well, I suppose. ALL of my fourth graders in my second fourth grade class were late, which was weird. I had to make phone calls to get them to come down to me. The first ones there were 8 minutes late, which, when you only have 30 minutes, is a significant chunk of time! Then, to prove a point, I wasted more of our time doing math on the board with them to show them how much time they waste when they are late and discussing how important it is that they are on time. It was kind of fun because I teach 4^th grade not in my classroom, but in my colleague’s classroom, and she has many colorful markers, and I got to use them.

During my last class of the day, things got a little crazy. They were not as crazy as they have been, but that is because I got my students with higher language levels started 15 minutes earlier than the other students. This means that these students got a lot done today! YAY! 

But when my second group of overlapping students showed up, things started going a little crazy. I have this fairly new student that we’ll call Mike (please note that my student is not actually named Mike. I have no students named Mike.). Mike has been quite a handful. When Mike is off task, it is impossible for anyone else to be on task. He does this magic trick where you turn to write ONE WORD on the board and you turn around and everything in his corner of the room is topsy-turvey. Sometimes I can’t even get mad because I am so impressed by his made chaos skillz. 

At one point, Mike was up out of his desk, rubbing his body on the board and singing/screaming. He was erasing things on the board that the other students needed to see in order to complete their assignment. This of course prompted all kinds of other chaos with students tugging on my arm to complain, students yelling at Mike to tell him to stop, students just taking a cue that it was time for a free-for-all. And Mike was so noisy by himself, I could hardly get a word in edgewise! Mike ended up taking a break with me in the hall, but I was at a loss for a couple of seconds there. What would you have done if your student was an extremely noisy human eraser?

In other news, some of you may remember my past attempts at becoming a Dirty Dancer. Well, what you might not know is that that disc came with a special bonus disc! Tonight I started work on the “Dancing with the Stars: Latin Cardio Workout”. I did the warm-up and the cha-cha, so I got a full 15 minutes of exercise in there. Unlike the Dirty Dancing work-out video, the dancing with the stars people assume that I am a far-from-sexy, clumsy, not-terribly-bright person. I think I may have more luck with this disc!

Cha-cha-cha!