Wednesday, March 26, 2008
OUT OF THE BUILDING AT 4PM!!!
Today was a very nice day. A very nice day. Kind of like a trip day kind of nice day.

Today did not start out nice, in fact I was in a bit of a mood. This week started with a continuation of my poor sleep routines. Last night, I was planning to leave about 4 or 4:30, but after a couple of conversations and copies on the faculty copier, it was 6:30PM. The subway was in its slow-mo routines. Then, I rode the MN train home with a lady who had 5 kids with her. Three of the kids called her "mommy". The kid in the carriage didn't speak. One kid was waving a chicken bone asking his mother for a trash can. A 3 or 4 year old had nail polish, and was playing with it. Even a threat from mom to "punch the kid in the head" didn't deter her from opening the nail polish. I got home and repeated the evening routine I've repeated for the last few weeks. Eat. Sleep. Stress.

This morning, I waited until about 5:30AM before I finally started planning out what I was going to be teaching in a couple of hours. I finished about 6:10AM. By the time I finished my "morning" routine, it was 7:00AM, so I knew I would miss my regular train. That mean another taxis ride. Strange, last week sometime, I got in a taxis that managed to pick me up right in front of the MN train station and caught almost all (yep, almost all) of the lights from the Bronx to Manhattan. I think the taxis missed about 3 lights for the entire trip. It was a beautiful ride. Strange part? Great ride, but bad day. Today the taxi ride was not great (okay, but not great. The guy was a bit slow - catching a lot of lights. Today the work day was nice. The first 45 minutes, I was in a bad mood, and my usuals were in the usual form. After the literacy block, my luck changed. AP2 made an announcement that all of the girls -- that included my girls (Cackler, Giggles, Princess, & Drama Queen) had to report to the auditorium (for what I found out later would be an all-day thing). The purpose was for the girls to do some empowering activities during the day. I thought the idea was a nice one, but a bit poorly executed. Anyway, I lost my girls (for the day), and gain the boys from Ms. Down the Hall (who was absent). Ms. DTH was absent, but there was a sub in her room. The girls were gone, and the lesson plan I had stressed about early this morning, I did not do anything, so that meant that everything would be done tomorrow. So, no stressing tonight! I think a bit of clarification is needed. I was happy about having my disruptive girls out of the room not all girls. I know I would have had a good day if only the top 4 trouble-makers left and the other girls remained. Anyway, it was a good day with no unnecessary drama, cackling, name calling, or arguing.

Today, I was really determined to be out of the building by 4PM. I was ready at 4PM, but then I told Ms. Across the Hall. I ended up waiting about 5 or 10 minutes for her. I enjoyed the walk to the train. The problem was that if I missed the 4:39 MN train, then I would have had to wait until the next 5:16 MN train. Luckily for me, I made the 4:39 train. I was home at 4:59PM!!! Nice! It was a very nice feeling to be home at a reasonable hour. The sun was shining, and temperature was nice also. After eating my Weight Watcher's lasagna meal, I sat down to type up the "blurb" that was asked for. Admin decided a few months ago to start a school newsletter, and recently the secretary (the editor and chief) decided to highlight one grade per issue. This time, it is 3rd grade's turn. I thought it would be nice to put a bit more into the newsletter than the 2 or 3 lines per class inserted into text boxes that was the usual. I was even willing to do it, but I really couldn't get the secretary to understand. I think she thought that I was trying to take a shortcut from the submission by pairing up with another teacher. She told me she wanted to have individual entries. So, before doing this blog entry, I wrote up my newsletter submission. I will attach my submission to this blog entry. I apologizes for my writing skills not being what they should be.*

*The end result was provided once again that I had wasted my time. I think the secretary's computer skills are limited to inserting text into text boxes. All of my formatting (seen in the above picture) was lost.

Well, I think that is about it. I need to get offline now and hopefully get ready for an early bath and bedtime.

Completion Date - Wednesday, March 26, 2008 9:01PM
Post Date - Thursday, May 15, 2008 1:03AM