GAH

I'm having one of those days.   You know, the kind when it's sticky in your classroom, and kids keep doing or saying stupid things. When you find that a piece of your classroom wall has been ripped off by some enterprising child and now you will have to spend your prep each day moving tables around so that you 1) have room when the littles are in for music in the morning and 2) don't have tables against the walls when your middle school kids come in, so they can't systematically destroy the wall out of boredom, frustration or inattention (or all three).   It's that kind of day when 7th grader M. walks into your room to smile at you and say "hi," when there are 40 first graders filing in. Meanwhile, his little friends are outside on the ramp to your room, peering in the window, laughing at him, and not noticing that they, too, are blocking the progress of the first graders.   You yell a little at some otherwise nice kids, then feel bad for being such a snot about it. Well, honestly! It's true that they've been testing all morning, but that doesn't mean they can just willy-nilly go wherever they please and disrupt another classes' music time.   Later, you see the first graders off with some relief--one class has had a sub for a week and they are pretty crazy until she gets back. You head up to the office for a much-needed potty break and see some cookies with a student's name on them.   You stop, you back up, and think, "Waitaminutehere..."   Turns out, the name on the cookies is of that student in your 6th period class who has been begging for days to bring cookies for an Earth Day party. You've been telling her, "No. No...and, again, NO" for a week, and yet, there are cookies with her name on them, and she told the secretary that there's an Earth Day party in Ms. C's classroom today.   You smile at the secretaries and say, "She lied." They promise to keep the cookies until after school. If Cookie Girl wants to share them with her friends, she can do it on her own time. But you just know she's going to whine and complain for at least 15 of the 50 minutes she has your class today.   So now it's lunch--and, oh, crap. There's the bell. Twenty-three middle school kids are about to cram into the classroom and you just hope you have enough patience to make it through another 50 minutes of incessant talking and high classroom temperatures before you can finally go home to your air-conditioned apartment with its cuddly cats and the privacy of closed blinds.   In the mean time, you might stop at Old Navy on the way home for a new pair of jeans--you can pull the current pair down over your hips without unbuttoning them.   Things can't be too bad, right?