Lunch Duty

This year I have 55 looooooong minutes of lunch duty. Because I have nothing better to do with my time - you know, like teach children to read. Anyway, I'm in the cafeteria during kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade lunches.



Yesterday they had pears for lunch. Sounds like a safe fruit, right? WRONG! Very few even knew what a pear was, much less how to eat it! One of my kiddos from last year, who happens to be in kindergarten again this year, was going at the pear with his spork like it had hurt him. There were pieces of pear flying all around - across the table, over kids heads, and on the floor. I went to talk to him about how to eat a pear. He looks up at me. There is pear in his eyelashes! I about cracked up!! I told him how to eat a pear - just like an apple, and he smiled. And then I realized he didn't have any front teeth. I had to stick around to see what he did. He did try to bite it using the side of his mouth. Poor guy got frustrated and told his teacher he couldn't eat this thing. She suggests he eat his other food. He was too determined! Back to gnawing on it he went! He also apparently didn't like the skin and would spit that part out on his tray. I'm not sure how much he ate that day. . .



Today was a crazy day in the cafeteria. After repeatedly telling one stubborn child to sit down, stop yelling, and turn around he decided to yell at me. He told me he wasn't turned around and yelling. Yeah, must have been my imagination, I'm sure. I moved him to the end of the table for arguing with me. So then he throws his tray on the floor and storms out of the cafeteria yelling something about hating me. I'm not real sure where he thought he was going, but lucky for him he ran into the principal.



When I got done with that child, I came back to the cafeteria. One of my 2nd graders was looking for me. I'd been teasing her yesterday about stealing star crunch snack, so she brought me one today. I told her I couldn't take her food and she said that she brought 2 - one for me and one for her! Aww, I needed that! How sweet! She made my day!

I'm back!

So I'm finally back at school. Teachers and staff came today and Monday students will come. We'll see how many make it back and how many new ones we get that are displaced. I found out that 3 teachers lost windows in their classrooms. Guess who was one of the lucky ones? Came in to find papers blown around, some warped books, and water damaged notebooks. Oh - and sand in pocket charts and other random places! It could have been much worse, so I'm very thankful! I should be cleaning though! I took a couple of pictures - my desk cracked me up! I had been so proud of how neat it was!

One of my favorite books are curled up now! I have several books that look like this!

Now let's just hope we have a normal rest of the year. The kids have missed 14 days already! We should be getting ready for 6 week report cards, but have only had 10 days of school!

Hurricanes - Ugh!

Hey everyone! I've been gone for about a week now. I went with my mom to visit my grandma in Nebraska since she isn't doing well. The day after I left, my city was evacuated for hurricane Ike. We're still not allowed to go home. So I'm staying at my mom's with my husband, my 2 cats, my 2 dogs, my friend, her cat, and my mom's 2 dogs! I don't have much time to myself!! I've heard our house is fine, just lots of debris to clean up. My husband is actually driving there now to empty out the fridge and come back. They said we should have power by October 6th I think it was. We have sewer back. Our water has to be boiled and it also has a large salt content in it because of the storm surge. School is cancelled indefinitely. I haven't heard how my campus is yet, but there are disaster recovery teams checking them out now. We've already missed 2 days for Gustav. As of Friday, we'll have missed 9 days of school and only gone 10 days! What a crazy start to the year!

I'm 7!

The other morning I was in the cafeteria as the kids came in for breakfast. One little girl came in all excited and said, "Mrs. Z! I'm 7 today!!"
"Oh, is it your birthday?!" I asked.
"No." I got a look like what are you thinking?! And she was gone.

Back to School Meme

Saw this on But Wait! There's More's blog and decided to steal it!

Back to School Numbers Meme
Back To School MemeCompleted in Reference to (Self or Child): Self
1. Number of years teaching or your eldest child has been in school (k through college) ? 8.5
2. Amount approximately spent on Back to School Items so far including clothes? $100.00 on school stuff and I plead the 5th on clothes!
3. Number of Days until school starts in your area (+ or - if it’s started)? 1 - actually more like 17 hours!

4. Approximate distance school is from your house? 7.45 miles
5. Amount of time it will take you or your child to get to school from your house by car or bus? 15-20 minutes depending on traffic and trains - trains could put me over!
6. The actual or approximate number of students in the class you teach or your oldest child’s class? about 45 throughout the day
7. The number of classes in your grade or your oldest child’s grade level? I work with 4 grades, so I'm not sure - maybe 240 or so?

8. The price to buy a full student lunch at school? $1.50 last year, but they haven't updated it on the website for this year!
9. Number of schools in your district? 35

10. Early dismissal days already built into the calendar? 2, but the last day is one too and it isn't listed

11. Price paid for the most expensive back to school item so far? $7 for Sharpie pens
12. Time school day ends? 3:25 for students
According to the rules, I now need to tag as many sites as my lowest number. So I'd like to tag this teacher: John Deer Mom!

back to school

So it's that time of year again. We've had a week of getting ready for school to start. We had one great training on writing. Two days of pointless inservice. And two days to get our rooms ready. This is going to be an interesting year on my campus. Our district is building new schools and combining some schools. My campus is combining with "M" school on their old property. So this year M school is on our backyard in portable city. Over 500 students, grades PK-5. I'm glad I'm not out there. We're operating as separate campuses until we actually move into the new building. We do have to share our gym and let pk and k eat in our cafeteria. We have lots of lost parents and many more workers wandering our halls looking for M. Not sure how you didn't notice all the portables!

I plugged in my fridge Wednesday and went to a meeting. Came back and smelled some sort of electrical burn scent. Discovered my fridge wasn't working. I was smart enough to test the plug and discover I had a whole wall of outlets not working. The teacher next door doesn't have power in one outlet on our shared wall. I looked outside and saw all sorts of wires sticking out of the roof. That doesn't look safe at all! I'm guessing they tapped into our power to run some portables outside my room and overloaded it. That's my expert electrical analysis! So for now I have plugged a few extension cords into each other and ran them all around my room just so I can have my fridge! Doesn't that look nice? It's a cell phone pic - sorry about the quality!

I do have one major complaint this year. I have lunch duty. For 55 minutes. That means I lose all that instruction time! And there were already 8 people on duty at the same time with me for about 100 kids. That hour will cost me 4 groups - 16 kids. I pack my schedule and don't have any time for this! Wouldn't my time be better spent trying to get kids to read?! Those 16 kids I'm cutting are losing out on their small group time that is focused on their weaknesses. It just frustrates me. I guess that I'll save time writing lesson plans and prepping for them - whoop-ti-do.

Teachers and Guns?

I found this article below today on yahoo. I was pretty shocked.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas school district will let teachers bring guns to class this fall, the district's superintendent said on Friday, in what experts said appeared to be a first in the United States. The board of the small rural Harrold Independent School District unanimously approved the plan and parents have not objected, said the district's superintendent, David Thweatt.School experts backed Thweatt's claim that Harrold, a system of about 110 students 150 miles northwest of Fort Worth, may be the first to let teachers bring guns to the classroom.Thweatt said it is a matter of safety."We have a lock-down situation, we have cameras, but the question we had to answer is, 'What if somebody gets in? What are we going to do?" he said. "It's just common sense."Teachers who wish to bring guns will have to be certified to carry a concealed handgun in Texas and get crisis training and permission from school officials, he said.Recent school shootings in the United States have prompted some calls for school officials to allow students and teachers to carry legally concealed weapons into classrooms.The U.S. Congress once barred guns at schools nationwide, but the U.S. Supreme Court struck the law down, although state and local communities could adopt their own laws. Texas bars guns at schools without the school's permission.(Reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; writing by Bruce Nichols in Houston, editing by Vicki Allen)

Personally, I would never do this. There are way too many things that could go wrong here. What if a student gets ahold of your gun and hurts or kills someone? Even if they were just curious about it and took it to look at, something could easily go wrong. Not to mention if a student was mad at someone and took it. I don't want that responsibility. I have a hard enough time keeping up with my keys - no way I want to hold onto a gun all day. There is no way I trust some of the other teachers with guns either! That is a very scary thought! I'm also very sad that this is even an issue in our schools. I realize things happen in schools, but I like to think my kiddos and I are safe when we're at school.