Yesterday

I walked into my room to find a little mouse stuck to the glue trap.  I have mixed emotions about this.  One on hand, the little bugger and his friends have been terrorizing my room and ate my granola bar stash that I thought I had nicely sealed in a mouse proof box in a metal cabinet.  On the other hand it was so little and scared and you know they have to die a slow and horrible death on those things, which is horrible and makes me feel bad for asking for the traps in the first place.   I had the janitor come pick it up since I had no idea what I was supposed to do (I mean really, I can’t leave it there squeaking away all of class!).

Fourth period I was in my room attempting to get some grading done.  One of my non-homeroom boys, Needy, poked his head in the room to see if anyone was in there.  When he saw me he smiled, danced into the room singing “She’s  a maniac, MANIAC on the floor!” spun around and danced out.

It started snowing lovely, foofy, giant snowflakes while the kids were at lunch.  As they came in for homeroom, one of my boys, Dopey (it’s not mean, but he really is dopey, like of the 7 dwarfs), came up to me, pointed to his snow-covered head and said,”Miss! My hair is all sparkly!”  He has a little bit of a lisp so it was pretty cute.

Overall a good day, and the goofiness of the boys reminds me why I love middle school.

Highlights

I have no time!

Entertaining tidbits from last week:

One of my students from last year seems to be in the hallways near my room all the time this year.  It’s odd since the 8th grade classrooms are all the way at the other end of the building, but whatever, he misses us.  The other day I was talking to him in the hall between classes and he noticed my engagement ring and asked if I got married.  I told him the wedding would be next summer and he was practically jumping up and down telling me how happy he was for me.  It was so sweet and so genuine that I was grinning for hours afterwards. 

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I have one REALLY needy student this year.  You know the type…he almost can’t do anything without showing it to you immediately to see if it’s right, can it be better, what should he do next and on and on and on.  He’s also really scatterbrained and while he really cares about his work and his grades, he can barely follow directions, keep a train of thought, or manage to keep a handout for more than 20 seconds.  He calls out for my attention constantly and I am at the point where I just ignore it if I am in the middle of something else. 

The other day I was mid-lesson when Needy beganto frantically call my name.  This was not unusual so I ignored it.  Now, I could see him out of the corner of my eye, but I was writing on the overhead so it’s not like I was watching him that closely.  After he continued to call for me I reminded him that we don’t call out in class and he should save the question for two minutes until I was done with the chart we were making and see if his question got answered with the rest of the lesson.  About 30 seconds later I hear a shriek and and a very loud THWACK!

I look up, startled, to see Needy standing on his chair, holding a ruler and looking rather proud of himself. 

“Um…” I began.

“Miss!  I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen!” he replied.  “Don’t worry though, I handled it by myself!” He pointed to the now-dead giant roach (some of you call them water bugs, but lets just be straight about this, those are really big f-ing roaches) in front of his desk.

Apparently it crawled out of the radiator and was making its way up the wall so he grabbed his ruler and smashed the heck out of it.  I gave him a sticker and told him his new class job would to be the killer of creepy-crawlies.