2003-11-22 - 9:43 p.m.
Ok, so I didn’t get right on that continuation, but I had good reason. I was sick, and I’ve had a very strange head injury.
Here’s the deal with the continuation. Field trip: oh my. The docent at the museum was an older lady of eastern European descent and, apparently, without much experience. She was so incredibly boring. Except when she was talking about nudity. I thought that she would skip over some paintings with naughty bits but no! She actually pointed out breasts! “You see here, the curve that is supposed to be a breast….” Holy crap! Luckily, she was so monotonous, I think most of kids tuned her out. I had my little clipboard and I told them I would call the parents of anyone whose name appeared on my paper for being inappropriate. My kids were super good. I also started a paper link chain in the front of the room. Every time they do something good as a class, I add a link. I added three on field trip day. Yay! But, back to this docent… goodness. She had the kids crowd around tiny paintings instead of sticking with the large ones everyone could see. She blabbed about extraneous crap. She started talking about imagery as metaphors for placentas and after-birth. Ok, yeah. My kids are in the fourth grade. I can just imagine them going home.
“What did you do in school today?”
“Oh, went to the museum. What’s after-birth, mommy?”
eww.
My aide is really nice though. She offered to take me out to the bars with her and her friends. I called to ask what I should wear and she said, “oh, you know, casual elegant.” I have nothing in my apartment that resembles that description. I wore a pale yellow fitted T-shirt and a corduroy skirt. Skirts are fancy, right? I was getting dressed thinking, “I’m going to be the only one not in sleek black clothes…”
I was right.
I met them at the really nice mall in town. She drove up in her car with her friends in tow. Her Infiniti. With leather interior. I was the only one not wearing sleek black clothes paired with spike heeled leather boots. I was also the only non-blonde. Here’s what a horrible person I am; if I had seen this flock of blonde, elegant-casual gals keeping step with each other in their expensive boots just walking through the mall, I would have mocked them. As it was, they turned out to be really nice. I am a horrible person. We went out to dinner because, apparently, they were all “starving.” So, in blonde model-speak, “starving” means “ I’ll eat two or three pita triangles and declare that I’m stuffed.” Aside from that one instance of girly-girldom that I often avoid, it was a nice evening. The girls were actually complaining about their love lives. Man, if even the hot blonde chicks are getting treated like dirt by guys, I have no hope. I’ll just get my cats right now.
The next Friday, I went over to the aide’s house and we watched some movies. She’s very into fashion. She took out a pair of shoes top show me, and it was a total production. I admit, I leave my nice pair of shoes in their box to keep them nice, but she even had a little sleeping bag for the shoes inside the box. And she had several items that were kept this way. She has clothes by designers too expensive for me to even have ever heard of. Then, we watched the Disney Channel until I was sleepy and went home. My life is super exciting.
Lately, I’ve been pretty sick. My voice went in and out all week, which is no good for a teacher. I was pretty happy when Friday rolled around because I was looking forward to sleeping this weekend. It was a pretty good day, for the most part. One of my really low guys was putting an extra special effort into doing well on his spelling test this week. He only got 3 right out of 20 last week and none right the week before. He only missed one. I almost cried. He was so proud; he was walking around all puffed up for the rest of the day! It was such a priceless look. It was like, “I’m smart.” It was fantastic.
At the end of the day, they started a new type of reader response called a RAFT. They choose a role, audience, format, and topic. Since our literature pieces were on underwater exploration this week, that was the topic. I let work in pairs to create a presentation including three facts from the book. I had kids choosing to be TV announcers interviewing marine biologist, rappers rapping about the JASON undersea probes, even an underwater baseball team talking about the negative impact of trash and visitors to the coral reef. How awesome is that?
It was all going well until the very end of the day. They were packing up to go home and I was straightening up. I pulled on the overhead projector screen’s cord to wind it back up to it’s casing while bending down to get some papers off the floor. Suddenly, my head felt really cold and I heard a big crash. I looked around and saw the space where the metal overhead screen case should be above my board. Then my arm felt sore, then my knee, then my head started to really sting. I told my kids to keep packing up and ran to the teacher across the hall. I must have already looked horrible because he said, “oh my god! WHAT HAPPENED?” I tried to tell him, but my head hurt so much I couldn’t speak. I motioned for him to watch my kids and made a beeline for the infirmary. The aide was on the stairs going to make copies in the office, so she walked me down. The ladies in the office got me some ice and I laid down on the nurse’s cot/bench. I got whacked in the head by own overhead screen. What the hell? Who does this happen to? The principal, who loves me so much already, came in to check on me. I, of course, was a big crying baby. It went something like this:
Him “Are you ok?”
Me “Ugngnanga.”
I’m such a dork. I forgot my phone for one day at my house. The one day I needed people’s numbers. It was a nightmare. So much stupid paperwork. I got the run-around from the doctors. My Principal and AP had to drive my car to the ER while my aide drove me. Then, I stayed at one of my mom’s friend’s houses while another one of her friends picked up my car from the doctor and drove it over to where I was staying. I basically ruined the Friday night plans for half a dozen people and was a big slobbery mess.
My tummy hurts. My neck hurts. I still have a freaking cold. The doctor said I had to watch out for clear discharge from my nose as a sign of concussion. Hello? I’m a total snot-factory!
I’m going to lie down.
