Everybody Run!

Breath! Ignore the large wasps,
balls of paper being thrown around,
and regularly repeated profanity. Focus! 

There’s a lot of gallows humor involved in being a teacher at a school like ours. While the trailer park teachers went for our ritual Friday-survival congratulatory roulette beers this week, we started talking about how to make sure our pregnant students still get the work they need. One teacher asked what would happen if they went into labor in our trailers, and suddenly we were off on a riot of hilariosity that only other teachers will find funny. Or understand.

-You’d probably get marked up from “developing” to “proficient” in classroom leadership.

-If you deliver it and teach the baby to read within a day, you’ll get marked “accomplished.”
 -“Distinguished” is saved for if you also teach the baby to tap dance.  

-I’d think mere delivery would be enough.

-Yeah, but you have to show data that proves your delivery was consistent.

-And that you’ve involved all your students in the process. Stations, perhaps?

-What about differentiation? Deliver this baby in an ADHD-friendly, SIOP-friendly, learning-style differentiated manner, or it doesn’t count!

-Nope, that’s not proficient unless you put some cross-curricular planning in. Maybe if you invite the health class to watch?

-Remember to show evidence of delivery!

-Probably if we showed up to the front office with our hands all bloody, they’d take it as evidence.

-Yeah, but they’d want to know if you called security, first, before they did anything about it.

-And whether you shared your newfound knowledge with your peers.

-That’s it. If my girl gives birth this month, you’re my first call.

Speaking of data and of the miracle of life, I’m going to keep a journal of everything I kill in my trailer and submit it humorously at my summative evaluation. First on the list: a wasp and a half.

You see, Friday a wasp got into my classroom, and in a fit of half-panic, half-humor, half-it's-Friday-Fun-Day, half-fractions-are-clearly-beyond-me, I laughed, "everybody run!" So they did (most of them already had, to be perfectly honest). I did too. That wasp scared me.

My kids are good at this.

A super-tough teacher from across the hall came in, slammed it on the floor with his clipboard, and told me to step on it. I did, gingerly. And when the second wasp buzzed in, I was ready. I leaped onto the desk, slammed it to the floor with Our Human Legacy: World History Through Time, and squished it with my shoe. Everyone cheered, and a student carried it triumphantly to the bin.

Oh, Friday fun day. Oh, for another week in the bag and spring break around the corner!