Yeah, well, I'm back...for a bit

So I haven't posted in a while because I've been out of town...and then coming back I realize that being out of town means not a lot got done around the house while I was gone.  (At least the cats were fed, but we won't talk about the litter boxes.)  To say I've been a tad busy pretty much sums it up.

And tomorrow I go in to school to set up my classroom - hopefully - it all depends on if the janitors are done with the floors.

To say that summer goes by pretty fast is an understatement.  It goes by horribly fast.  June is pretty much The Month of In Service, then there's Independence Day, then I was able to squeeze in a quick visit to see my mom in San Diego for a week - then back home, and then...school.  It goes by awfully fast.

And of course, after a week of glorious weather while out in California, I come home to humidity and heat.

Blech.

Pass Alongs

There is a tradition down here in My Beloved South that I love.  It's called Passing Along Plants.  (I'll be honest here and say that perhaps other regions of the country do it, but I never experienced it or even heard about it until I moved here.  And if Southern Living says it's a tradition, it's a tradition.)

Basically people here think nothing of giving you a plant to put in your yard.  For many people, gardening is a serious past time and hobby so passing on their love of plants is a natural.  I've had people give me irises, hostas, stonecrop, lamb's ear, and more.  In fact, a lot of the plants in my yard were pass alongs.

And when Mrs. Social Studies mentioned that her garden was a bit too much for her to upkeep and she was going to get rid of some plants, I volunteered to take care of them for her.  I arrived with buckets, shovel and gardening gloves and scored some hostas and a peony.  I have a very shady corner that grows very little and I'm hoping the hostas can survive there.  Plus I wanted a peony.  Always have, and I had a good location for one.

And surprisingly, for someone who's still trying to figure out what grows best where, I've actually passed on a few plants myself.  It's fun.  And it's a neat way of filling up your garden.

The Fortunate One

Happiness is coming back from lunch in the middle of an in-service (one of those delightful 6 hour ones) and not only finding a parking place (yeah!) but one in the shade!  (double yeah!)

A Little Tweaking Here and There

Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Angora and I were at another in-service today.  

Mr. Bluebird, when I got home today, asked me if this was finally the last in-service of the summer (alas, no.)  "It seems like that's all your doing," he commented, and in a way, he's right.  It does seem like it's all I've been doing, and if he thinks it's bad this year, wait until next year when STEM rolls down to 7th grade and I have to spend even more time taking in-services than I do this summer.

When I actually sit down and look at the time that Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Angora, and I have put into our curriculum for the upcoming year - together and on our own - it's quite a bit of time.  And I suppose the thing that surprises most people is that we don't just recycle our lessons or procedures from year to year.  Granted, we do look at our old lessons to see what we did (and how long it took, and the notes we have on them about changes we'd make in the future), but we certainly change things a bit.

And this year it looks like we're changing quite a bit.

We're implementing science notebooks in all our classes this year.  (We tried them in two classes last year for the last semester to work out the kinks.)  

We're going to be revamping all our tests.  We used to give vocabulary tests along with a unit test, but we're eliminating the vocabulary tests.  For one thing, the vocabulary tests were basic recall, a pretty low level of learning.  Now we're going to redo our tests (and that includes looking at and possibly rewriting all the questions as we took a lot of assessment writing in-services this summer) and include several constructed response questions on the tests as well.  The new tests should have better multiple choice questions on them as well as the constructed response where the kids can explain their learning.

We're going to do more center activities, and more inquiry activities.  In short, more labs.  Going to the NSTA conference this last year was a gold mine in terms of finding new things to utilize.  This may pose some challenges in the classroom management and discipline areas, but we've got a plan in place for that.  (Want to goof off during a lab?  Grab your workbook, go next door, and do an alternate assignment.  They'll hate that.)

That's our start.  So, despite the fact that most everyone seems to think that teachers are sitting around drinking margaritas on their back deck or at a far-off beach all summer long, I'm sitting here at my computer working up rubrics, and assignments, and all sorts of things so we can hit the ground running on August 3rd, when school starts up again.

Come to think of it, I could use a margarita after all this work.

Curiosities

Why is it the things I want to grow the least, grows the best in my garden?  If weeds were a cash-crop, I'd be wealthy.

Omen

You know it's going to be a good day when you drop the bagel on the floor and it lands with the peanut butter side up.

Well, I've Caught Up on My Sleep - Finally

My blog tends to be quite boring when I'm not in school because, well, I'm not in school.  School gives me a lot to observe, especially the everyday rituals of that creature known as a seventh grader, and being at home doesn't give me that opportunity.

Not that I haven't been busy.

Let's see...so far, three in services and another one on Friday and another one on Monday.  Got together with Mrs. Eagle, and Mrs. Angora (who will be teaching both 7th and 8th science next year) to sort of map out our nine weeks of lessons along with our new scope and sequence.  Fortunately the powers that be saw the wisdom of moving a few things around so we'll be doing biology at the end of the year and all the physical science stuff at the beginning.  It flows better that way.  And, of course, we looked at what did and didn't work last year and are making a few changes to how we do things.  I'm actually kind of looking forward to some of it.

I've been doing lots of yard work (we grow weeds like nobody's business down here) and have enjoyed my first beets from the garden.  We've had a lot of heat, and a lot of rain, so things are doing pretty well.  Only problem is it's too wet to mow so I may have to borrow some of Mrs. Angora's goats to eat my lawn.

And I've been watching a lot of sports (and knitting) on television - the end of hockey season with the Stanley Cup (thank goodness Boston won, I can't stand the Canucks), and of course the College World Series which is another favorite.  And I've been walking at least an hour a day.  Usually pretty early in the morning before it's so blasted hot, but not always.   But I'm still doing it, even today, when I have a cold.

Yeah, believe it or not.  I'm home for the summer, away from infected kids, and I get a cold.  Lucky me.

But so far, I'm doing some research, I'm getting stuff done, and catching up on my sleep.  So much so that while I was at a Civil War Round Table meeting this past week, I looked over at Mrs. Eagle and said "this is the first time in months that I haven't felt exhausted after 6:00 pm at night."

I wish there was a way to store up sleep.

Another Use for a Dissecting Tray

So although our last day of school (for teachers) was on Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day, Mrs. Eagle, Mrs. Angora and I, along with our assistant principal and former science Teacher, Mrs. Sparrow, showed up on the first of June to go through and organize (and clean out) our science lab.  This was all brought about because of the huge focus we're seeing in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).  It was also brought about because that lab, in the five years we've had it, is a mess.  People don't clean up after themselves, people have dumped things they don't want in there, and there is a lot of stuff in there that we've had for years and years that no longer applies to any curriculum, that we really don't need.  (Like a box, a big box, of science fair certificates - and we haven't had a science fair in six years.  That went to an elementary school.)

So we went through every drawer and every cabinet, labeled and cleaned what we needed to keep, and had piles of stuff to go to the high school, and the elementary schools, and then a huge pile of just plain trash.

And they had some aluminum dissecting trays.  Which got me to thinking...

I'm having trouble with a crow.

For some reason this year Mr. Bluebird decided he wanted me to plant some sweet corn in the garden.  I'm not sure where this came from.  It's been years since I've planted sweet corn mainly because it takes up a lot of space and I can get it a lot cheaper and easier from the local farmer's market or the Amish farmer I buy from every Saturday.  But, whatever, I said okay, we'll plant sweet corn.

So after the huge rains we had - again - in May, I went and planted a square of sweetcorn.  And about a week later, while looking out the bathroom window at my garden early one morning, I saw a big black crow poking holes in the ground where the sweet corn was planted.

Upon further inspectionI discovered that the darn bird had dug up each and every seed I'd planted.  He'd left tell-tale little holes he'd dug.  This was not good.

So, since I had more seeds, I'd planted another batch of corn.

And a few days later, he'd dug them up again.

This was getting ridiculous.  In the meantime, Daddy Bird and I were at Lowe's (we always seem to spend a lot of time there) and saw that they had sweet corn seedlings in among all the tomato and pepper seedlings.  His idea was to plant the seedlings and then pull a joke on Hubby by making him think that the crow didn't really get the corn and it had come up anyway.  I'm all for a little joke here and there so we bought the seedlings and I planted them and we were all ready for our joke which we were going to do while hubby was cooking steaks on the grill.

Except I went out to the yard about an hour before we planned to start cooking and that stupid crow had already gotten into my garden and pulled each and every seedling up and thrown it on the ground!  ARGH!  I quickly replanted the seedlings, we had the joke on hubby (he figured it out because neither one of us can keep a straight face) and in the meantime I found some gardening fabric I had in the shed to put over the corn seedlings to hopefully keep the evil crow away.

But then I saw those aluminum dissecting trays...which, cut up into eighths, and strung on a string across the garden box, might just keep that stupid bird away from my corn.

So far, so good.

Memorial Day

For me, it's not about the cookout, or the day off, or hanging by the lake.

It's about remembering.

I live in a military town so the War on Terror is a daily reality for us.  We've lost a lot of soldiers in our community this year, and those loses have reached out and touched all of us.  And this year, it's even more poignant for me as the person I am remembering the most is one I never met - but I had her son in my fourth period class.

It's tough having a student who loses a parent under your watch.  It's even harder when it's in the line of duty.

I've worried about Clever Boy a lot today.  He doesn't have school to distract him and keep him busy and he lives in a really rural part of our community so it's not like he can just walk next door and find someone to hang out with.   I hope he's finding something to keep him busy (he does love to read) and that he and his Dad can, finally, hopefully, find some common ground and do some Dad and Son things.  But I still worry.

God Bless Clever Boy and his Mom.  Rest in Peace Sgt.

Packing Up to Pack it In

So the last day of school for the kids was on Tuesday the 24th.

The last day for teachers, due to the fact that the kids were forgiven the ungodly number of snow days we had this year but the teachers were not, is Tuesday the 31st.

Which means we have had a lot of time to kill.  Our days usually consisted of about 3 hours of in-services, meetings, workshops or whatever.  Then lunch on our own.  Then the rest of the afternoon was spent packing up our rooms, working with other teachers, and trying to keep from becoming completely bored before we could leave at 2:30.  The 8th grade teachers - every one of which had to change rooms - really needed the time.

Just in case some of you were wondering, the 8th grade teachers had to change rooms for a variety of reasons.  One, since our district is pushing a big huge STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) initiative into the 8th grade this next year, they finally saw the light and realized that science teachers probably need to be in the rooms with running water and sinks, since the social studies teachers who were in those rooms weren't using the running water and sinks.  (No, I still do not have running water and a sink and it will be a cold day in hell before any of us in the old part of the building ever get those, even if we are teaching science.)  The other reason is that we will again have a number of 8th grade teachers who will be picking up two7th grade classes next year, and it makes sense to have these teachers on the end of the 8th grade hallway that's closest to the7th graders.  Last year we had 7th graders running all over the building (and consequently being late all over the time) because their teacher was way down on the end of the 8th grade hallway.  So, truly, it all works out.  Or it should.

Maybe because the admins solicited topics for the in-services, they actually were, for the most part, pretty interesting.  We did a review of our first year of SWPBS (school wide positive behavior support) implementation which was interesting.  Our discipline referrals are way, way, way down this year, but of course the grade with the most problems is 7th.  Let's face it, they just lose their minds that year, regardless of all the positive reinforcement you give them.  As Mr. Enforcer said, it's amazing the amount of stupid boy stuff that he sees out of the seventh graders.  (Sort of like the kid who smuggled his friend onto the school bus in a duffle bag since he didn't have a permission slip from the principal to ride another bus.  Gotta wonder about that one.)

We also had a great in service on what kind of information you can find in a cumulative file.  The Principal is planning on giving us two days of in-service credit at the beginning of the year to work on the files of our 20% of kids who are considered most at risk so we can come up with some interventions - great idea, if you ask me. As luck would have it, my whole team knew exactly what file the Principal was using as soon as it went up on the document reader - even though the names had been blacked out - because it's one we worked with most of the year.  Truly, this poor kid has one of the worst life stories I've ever heard and you could have heard a pin drop as The Principal went through his file and highlighted things that popped out at her that we needed to look at.  Mother had him at 17, father deceased, did okay on state tests until the 5th grade, removed from the home twice, mother has a drug problem and was charged with abuse and neglect, not to mention the fact that she'd lock her kids in their bedrooms while she turned tricks for drug money, she'd lock them in the car, live-in boyfriend was on the lam for some sort of felony conviction, and it went on and on.  (Is there any surprise here that this kid does not do well in school?)

And of course Mrs. Eagle and I spent a lot of time going through our files (and dumping a lot of stuff), going through our unit binders (and dumping and adding stuff) and generally coming up with some ideas for next year.  Although STEM is going to be hit hard and heavy in 8th grade, we're being "encouraged" to attempt more of it on our own next year as well (no big deal as we did a lot of that this year anyway).

So, it's been productive, and unrushed, but we're all about at the end of finding things to keep us busy.  So one more day, which includes our end of the year lunch, and then we're free.

Except I have a science lab in-service on June 1st.  Maybe I can sleep in on the 2nd...

So Long, Farewell!

Today was the last half day of school!

It's fair to say that the seventh grade teachers were probably more excited than the kids.  I'm not sure why we even have a half day as the day, truly, serves no purpose.  We managed to get the report cards printed and issued yesterday (in the hopes that the little darlings would stay home), but they came anyway.  Pretty much the day is spent showing a movie, letting them run around in the gym for a while (the weather has been awful), and hoping they don't annoy the daylights out of us on this last day.

Fortunately for me, all the kids in my home room (with one glaring exception) that gave me hives were gone today - either in alternative school, suspended (for fighting the day before), in school suspension or they didn't come.  That made for a pleasant day - one of the most pleasant we've ever had.  I put on a movie, but most of the kids chose to go through the game club games and spent the morning playing Apples to Apples and Monopoly.  Nicely.  Without causing a fuss.

It was actually quite pleasant.  Which goes to show that when they want to be, they can be well mannered and a lot of fun.

So, we sent them on their way, most to 8th grade, others to other states (we have quite a few of our military kids moving out of the area now that their military parent is back from Afghanistan), and some to who knows where.  But we waved the buses goodbye (my favorite tradition), and wished them all a wonderful summer.

The bittersweet moment for Mrs. Social Studies and I was saying goodbye to two of our boys from last year. These two young men are kids that I would not hesitate to give a home to should they need one.  They are polite, well-mannered, and just delightful.  (They also happen to be best friends practically joined at the hip.)  Neither one was a star student in 7th grade (one is a sped kid) but they flourished in 8th grade.  And they never let a day go by that they didn't stop and give each of us a hug.  I kid you not - they'd be walking down the hall with all their basketball buddies and they'd stop, come visit us (making their friends wait) and off they'd go.  Their friends quickly figured out that this was something they were going to do regardless of how much they teased them, and the teasing ceased and pretty soon these kids were coming by to say hi even though we never had them as students.

I love these two.  And I know they'll be okay.  We had a talk with them a bit today about high school, and what they hoped to accomplish - they have managed to stay clear of the gangs and drugs that so many of our kids fall prey to, and that's a blessing.  (They ascribe this to good role models and the fact that "it's not something Jesus would approve of or do.")  They know they'll be fine because they have people that love and support them, both at home and in school.

I'm looking forward to their graduation in four years.

So to T and T, I love you both, God bless, and I'll miss my daily hug from the two of you.  I'd be glad to call either one of you my son.

Girl Drama - A Theory Behind the Madness?

As you know doubt have read over my past few posts, we've just had an amazing amount of girl drama this year.  We are not alone.  The eighth grade as well as the sixth grade report mass amounts of girl drama as well.  It's almost as if a damn has broke and we're just flooded with girls gossiping, arguing, threatening, fighting and just generally acting like a bunch of horrid little brats.

It really takes the fun out of everything, truth be told.  But there's always hope.  We did have one nice day this week when our main instigator was absent and all the girls were, surprisingly, well mannered and actually kind of nice.  But she came back the next day to stir the pot and life was hell again.

So, I'm on the telephone the other night talking to my cousin who lives in Colorado.  We call about every other week or so and chat and catch up on what's going on and all that sort of thing.  Like me, she doesn't have any kids of her own, but she's the favorite aunt for her sister's three children so she does have some kid experience.  I began to tell her about all the girl drama we were having and she commiserated.  And then she said something that had never, ever occurred to me.

"Did you ever wonder if all this increase in girl drama is a result of too much reality TV?  I mean after all, that's all it is, a bunch of grown women running around fighting with each other and acting horrible."

Oh.  My.  Gosh.  I think she may be on to something here.  I have NEVER watched a reality television show.  EVER.  (They hold absolutely not interest for me.  None at all.  I teach middle school, why would I want to subject myself to the same bad behavior but this time in adults?)   Although I've never seen one of these shows, I've seen enough advertisements for them to realize that they seem to have a bunch of grown ups acting like children.  Badly behaved children.

It's often been said that kids model what they see.  Well, if all our kids are doing is watching sitcoms where people are rude to each other and reality television where they fight and argue with each other all the time, is it any wonder they act like this themselves?

Counting the days...one and a half to go.

The Cursed Class...Part Two

The 8th graders finally - FINALLY - got in their field day.

Granted, it rained most of yesterday so it was (of course) canceled.  Today it was dry, but cold (at least for this time of year).  I don't think the temperature ever reached above 55 and it was cloudy and windy.  But by golly, they got field day in.

So that was the good news.

The bad news is that on field days for the other two grades, we're more or less trapped with our kids all day with no planning or breaks.  So, during first and second period when they usually go to their elective classes such as PE, art, band, and the like, they stay with their homerooms (because the PE, art, and band teachers are all out running field day).  Usually what we end up doing is giving them some fun time - a movie or something easy like that because, after all, these are their fun elective periods.

Today, however, guidance wanted us to give them an on-line career inventory survey to help them do career planning with them as they get into 8th grade and high school.  The good part was that it was all done on line.

The bad part was that it was all done on line.

The Guidance Goober saw to it that we all had the computer labs delivered to our rooms, as well as an individualized instruction sheet for each kid that gave them all the user name, password, and other information (including birthdays as some didn't know their own birthdays last year!) that they needed.

All they had to do was follow the directions and everything would be fine.

Let me say that again. All.  They.  Had.  To.  Do.  Was.  Follow.  The.  Directions.

You know where this is going, don't you?  Just last week we did a Periodic Table of Elements project that involved FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS and many of them were amazed that I'd hand it back to them and tell them to "read number six again and follow the directions."  They assured me they had followed all the directions, but it one glance I could tell if they had or hadn't.  They just want to jump in, and not do anything so borrrrrring as reading directions.

So.  Today they had to go to a website, set up a user account, and answer 60 easy questions about what they liked and did not like to do.  Easy, right?

I had three - three! - kids who took over 45 minutes to set up their user account because they couldn't (wouldn't?) follow the directions on their sheet which told them EXACTLY how to set up their user account and what their user account was called.

I am not kidding here.  Between the account issues with my kids, and then having to listen to them whine about pages loading slowly  - "good gracious, there are 300 seventh graders logging in all at once, give it time!"- it was a solid two periods of aggravation.  I think Mrs. Social Studies next door was ready to toss at least one kid and computer outside and slam the door behind him.

It was definitely a day that called for chocolate.

Counting the minutes.

The Cursed Class

Last year's seventh graders got a raw deal towards the end of last school year.

For those keeping track, last May was The Flood.  Something like 13" of rain fell in one weekend and most of middle Tennessee looked like a lake.  We ended up missing a week of school due to flooding, and we still have businesses that are just now reopening after last year's disaster.

As a result of The Flood, we ended up canceling a lot of events.  We canceled the school play.  We canceled a band concert.  We even canceled our weekend camping trip to the local recreation area.  (Now that, I might add, wasn't solely because of The Flood.  A lot of it had to do with the fact that The Flood caused every snake in the entire region to hike on up to dry land to places they've never been before.  The camping area was overrun with them.  The thought of seventh graders + camping + snakes = chaos didn't appeal to any of us.)

And of course, this was the group of kids who never got in field day due to tornadoes.

So can you guess what's happening to them this year?  Anyone?

Yup, you got it.

Friday was supposed to be field day for the 8th grade.  It rained.  It was cancelled.

It has rained all weekend.

Tomorrow it's going to be in the 50's (cold for this time of year) and raining.

We may run out of school before we run out of bad weather.

Girl Drama

I hate middle school girl drama.

I realize that as a female I was once myself a middle school girl, and although my memories of that era are long ago and quite foggy (probably by choice, middle school is a miserable time), I'm sure I had my share of drama as well.  That doesn't mean I have to like it.  Especially when it's causing so many issues in our classrooms this week.

Remember how good they were for field day?  Well it was a one-time thing, I'm afraid.  Since then we've had fights pop up all over the place, good kids doing the most outrageously stupid things (shooting straightened staples out of click pencils comes to mind), and just general mayhem.

And of course we've had the girl drama.

You gotta like boys.  They get annoyed at someone, they'll duke it out, then shake hands and be best buds afterwards.  It's forgotten.  They move on.  Girls on the other hand will stir the pot over and over and over and over, making threats, telling tales, dragging in other girls and pretty soon you have a team in an uproar.  And Mrs. Eagle's team in an uproar because we're getting "cross-team pollination" between our girls.  Apparently the trash talking starts in their elective classes, where the teams are merged together, then spills over.

It's enough to make me want to pull my hair out.

It got particularly bad on Friday.  Mrs. Social Studies and I had a number of girls request to talk to a guidance counselor about "issues" they were having with other girls.  Unfortunately, guidance was buried in end of the year crap, we were one counselor short, and they had to deal with fall out of actual fights. As far as guidance and the admins were concerned (they'd been mediating all sorts of girl drama that day among other things), if they couldn't get along, and caused trouble, it was a big time write up and it wouldn't be pretty.  So, the girls didn't get called in, and Mrs. Social Studies and I decided to take things in our own hands.  We actually ended up moving kids between our classrooms to separate some of the girls, but felt we needed to take more action.

We yanked a few out in the hallway for some candid discussion, took names, got different sides of the stories, and realized that we had Had It Up To Here with the disruption and the drama.  This is your typical girl drama story:

"Well Girl A is mad at me because she said I stole her boyfriend, but I didn't, he's just a creep, and she told Girl B and Girl B told Girl C and now Girl C and Girl D along with Girl A and Girl B are threatening to jump me and I can't go in your class because Girl A and Girl D are there."

That's just the tip of the iceberg.  Seriously.

By the way, Mrs. Social Studies and I have rooms that are next to each other and have doors that are separated by a mere 14".  When we take kids out in the hall for a chat, and close the doors, it's amazing how well behaved the kids in the rooms are (we can see them through the glass).  Why?  They're desperately trying to hear the conversation.  Cracks me up every time.

So, we called Mr. Math, who has an inclusion teacher during sixth period, and asked if he'd watch our rooms while we went around to the other team classrooms and basically laid it on the line.  We have six days of school left and by golly, they weren't going to make it a living hell for the teachers and other students.  Two of our team classes had subs (who were probably a bit surprised to see the two of us at the door, asking for a minute with the kids), but they seemed really happy to turn the room over to us for a few minutes.  The girls were warned (and so were the boys, we told them the same deal held for them although they've been a lot better behaved than the girls - however, Monday is another day) and as far as everyone is concerned, that was a final warning.

Let's hope it works.  But I'm not placing any bets on it.

Field Day? Without a Hitch? Really?

All the seventh grade teachers had been dreading Field Day this year.  After all, our kids have been absolutely wild since we finished The Very Big Deal Government Mandated Testing.  We had a really nice day during testing week, took them outside to blow off steam, and ended up breaking up fights left and right.  (The upside to that was some of our biggest pains in the rear ended up getting suspended for about ten days which was a nice break for everyone.)

So, to say that we were NOT looking forward to Field Day was an understatement.

And now that it's all said and done (on a lovely day in the low 70's with NO TORNADOES), it turned out to be one of the Best. Field. Days. Ever.

Strange.

These kids, who prior to field day were doing everything in their power to cause drama and stir up fights were actually well behaved.  We had Mrs. Reading's substitute (Mrs. Reading had a baby a few weeks ago) stay inside in a "holding room" where trouble-makers got sent and they could spend the rest of the day reading or doing piles of worksheets.  She had only four customers and these were kids who got sent to her by The Enforcer after doing something stupid at breakfast.

Seriously.  We didn't have to send a single kid in for getting into trouble.  Not.  One.  The Enforcer told me he kept checking the holding room to see how many kids were stacked in there and he was astounded to see that the only kids in there were the ones he'd put in.

What's kind of funny is that after we practically had to threaten kids to sign up for events, we ended up having kids begging to participate (once they saw how fun it was).  We had some new events this year and they were a lot of fun, for both the kids participating and those watching (and some of them were a lot harder than we expected).

So it went off without a hitch.  Which is almost scary considering this group.  We kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never did.

But never fear...we may have had a wonderful field day on Friday, but on Monday they were back to their old tricks and they celebrated by having a knock down drag out fight between a couple of our boys in between 2nd and 3rd period.

Counting the days...just counting the days.

Field Day Fiasco

Field Day for the Seventh grade is this Friday.

As long as it doesn't flood, hail, storm, snow, whatever.  Heavens, last year we spent most of field day in a hallway while tornado warning after tornado warning was issued.  Such fun.  So we shall see if the weather holds and we do indeed have field day. (We have a frost warning tonight, of all things.  In May.)

In any case, many of the Seventh Grade teachers have said all along this year that this bunch of kids really, really don't like each other and really, really don't have any team or school spirit.  They are a cantankerous group.  I've often said that individually, most of the kids are pretty good kids, but put them in groups (or classrooms) and you fell like you're on mile 1,999 of a 2,000 mile car trip with six kids who can't stand each other and who've fought the whole way.

It's been that kind of year.

So on Monday I had The Team talk to their homerooms and get kids signed up for Field Day events.  The idea was that I'd take all the names, do a spread sheet in Excel and then make sure that each kid got to do at least one of the events they wanted to do.  (It actually works out pretty well this way.)  Our kids responded pretty well and we ended up fielding pretty full teams for all the events, including some of the new ones the kids were unfamiliar with.  (For the record, everyone wants volleyball, kickball and tug-of-war).  

Mrs. Eagle's team, however, had a different response.  They pulled all the kids together during seventh period on Tuesday and they couldn't get kids to sign up for anything, even the three most popular events.  They were rude, the didn't want to participate, they wouldn't listen, they didn't care.  According to Mrs. Eagle, all they want to do on field day is run around and talk with their friends.  Participating in the actual events wasn't on their agenda.

So, she went and talked with Coach Cool, who pretty much organizes the whole thing, and told him that we might have a problem.  (The fact that we only have two seventh grade teams this year is making it even more difficult, especially since so many of our kids are cross-teamed.  There's not a lot of team identity or spirit like their used to be.)  Mrs. Eagle pretty much said that unless something dramatic happened, they'd probably end up forfeiting all the events because she couldn't get kids to sign up.

So, The Principal, who we also talked to, suggested that on Field Day, Mrs. Eagle's team dismisses the few kids that did sign up to go to the gym and begin the volleyball tournament, whole the teachers keep the rest of the kids back in class and put them to work on something.  She figured that after about an hour of seat work they may actually want to sign up for kickball.

Coach Cool decided to announce that little gem to the PE classes and lo and behold, we had kids crawling out of the woodwork wanting to sign up for events.  I needed only a few kids to fill a few empty spots, and managed to get those filled without any effort.  Mrs. Eagle said kids were practically running to her room to volunteer to sign up.

So I guess, when the alternative is sitting in a classroom doing worksheets all day, or getting out in the sun and maybe actually participating in a little game of tug-of-war, being outside wins.

 

The Longest Month

I don't know if it's because we lost all our mental health days holidays (due to going over our snow day limit), or if the kids are just more annoying this year, or what, but this is turning out to be the longest 16 1/2 days of my life.

I am not alone.

There probably isn't a staff member on board who isn't just dragging into the building every morning, hoping to make it through the day.  Of course, the nearly constant thunderstorms and tornado sirens aren't doing us any good when it comes to getting a good night's sleep.  But still, we're just dragging.

And even coffee isn't helping.

Southern Spring

I am sick of bad weather.

We are coming up on the anniversary of our 1,000 year (or 500 year) flood (it depends on who's talking what year it is), and the city is asking for volunteers to fill sandbags because - SURPRISE! - we're experiencing flooding again.

Within the past week, we've had numerous tornado warnings, storm damage, awful amounts of rain, hail, you name it.  Everyone is cranky and irritated (kids and staff included) because we're spending nights in basements, closets and anywhere deemed safe while the tornadoes are popping around, dealing without power, and having to hang out with insurance adjusters as they assess damage.

Let's see...last week we sent kids home early due to power problems throughout the county.

Monday night we had rotten storms again - more power outages - and even more damage than we had last week.  School was cancelled.  (Smart call).  We only lost power at home for 8 hours and I consider myself lucky.  Some people still don't have power.   One neighbor lost a tree, another lost most of his expensive, not even a year old, vinyl fence.  Trees everywhere and power lines down.

Last night more tornadoes, more time in the basement (did not lose power - yeah!) and we delayed school for an hour, and let out today an our early due to flooding.  Some teachers didn't make it in (trees in roads, trees through house, flooding, etc.) and a lot of kids stayed home because they were predicting more tornadoes today.

Can we just have some sunshine?

But truly, I'm thanking the Good Lord that it wasn't worse.  We're alive, and unharmed, and although tired, and cranky and a bit soggy, we really got lucky.  Other folks didn't get so lucky (just look at Alabama for example).  My heart goes out to them.

Dodging the Raindrops

Spring in the South can be a bit tricky.

The redbuds are out, the irises are blooming, the trees are leafing out, the grass is greening, and we're all trying to get our vegetable gardens in so we can have some great big huge ripe tomatoes come Independence Day.

However, one of the drawbacks to Spring in the South is Gawd-Awful rotten weather.

We just happen to live in the part of the country where cold fronts and warm fronts tend to bump into each other which means we get a lot - A LOT - of thunderstorms and rain and the occasional tornado.  When I went house-hunting when we first moved here, Hubby wanted one thing - a full, finished basement.  The primary reason was he had somewhere to put his office and our massive book collection but the other reason was "they have too many tornadoes and we'll need some place to go."  The fact that a tornado siren is down at the end of my street was just a bonus.  

Tuesday night they were predicting some really bad weather to come our way and I was hoping it would come through before it got too late.  I can't sleep during severe weather and really didn't want to spend most of the night in the basement.  As luck would have it, I was sound asleep when the tornado siren just about knocked me out of bed at 12:50 in the morning.  Great.  Hubby and I got the feline children in their kennels and got everyone downstairs pronto (we're getting really good at this and so are the cats).  We had just turned on the television to see what was going on when the power went out.   Fortunately we have plenty of flashlights and we pretty much sat in the dark, listening to my old Y2K wind up radio until the all clear sounded.  At that point we tried to go back to sleep but still didn't have any power.  Our power came on around 4:15, so I was one of the lucky ones.

By the time I headed to school around 6:15, it was barely light enough to see that there were a lot of trees down, street signs and stop signs laying flat on the ground, and debris all over the roads.  The traffic lights were out as well, which made it a bit dicey getting to school as some people don't seem to get a clue that when there's no traffic light, every intersection is considered a four way stop.  Surprisingly, when I got to The School, we actually had power.

We were one of the lucky ones.  Apparently power was out all over the county, including at a great many of our schools.  The high school down the road from us was dark, and there probably were only a handful of functioning traffic lights throughout the entire county.  Most of the kids rolled off the buses bleary eyed.  Half the staff didn't have power.  (There were some unusual color combinations and outfits spotted among staff and students, the result of getting dressed in the dark.)  By the time school started I was thanking my lucky stars that I actually had power since it appeared I was one of the fortunate few

As luck would have it, with so many schools without power (and with not good time frame from when they'd get power), the District decided to call it a day and pick everyone up and send everyone home.  Thankfully we won't have to make this day up (we're still making up time from our snow days this winter).  The seventh grade teachers - for once - got the best of this deal as our planning is 1st and 2nd period and they sent the kids home before 3rd.  

The forecast for the upcoming week pretty much indicates thunderstorms for the next five days.  It's Easter Sunday today and it's already rained 1.7" in my yard and still coming down.    I'm starting to worry a bit as we're coming up on the anniversary of  The Flood we had last year that many people are still recovering from.

But they say a flood like that comes along every 500 years....right.