Is it just me?

Last night was the concert for the 4th and 5th grade girls' honors choir. They performed right after the high school choir concert. My girls were dressed to the nines, hair done up just so, looking pretty, and sounding (I thought) better than the high school choir which preceded them. So the concert would have been lovely, save for one thing: audience members behaving badly.

First, there was the mom sitting behind me who stood up and danced...yup, that's right danced during the concert. And we're not talking a little swaying, arms at your side kind of dancing. We're talking raise the roof, arm flinging, get your groove on dancing. Which she felt the need to explain to me. "I'm not crazy, I'm just tryin to embarrass my kid. Ya only get so many chances to do that, gotta take 'em all!"

Then there were the uncontrolled children. Don't get me wrong, I know three and four year olds can't be expected to sit through an hour long concert. But the kid on the bleachers next to me stomping up and down the stairs and jumping down a few rows, then doing it all again. He wasn't the only one. I counted at least 15 of them; yelling, jumping, running around.

Yet worse than the little children were the big children who should have known better. The high school choir, once dismissed from the stage, filtered slowly into the back of the gym and had a little party. Friends who had come to watch them sing got up out of the audience and went back to join them.

I was floored. Where I grew up, concerts weren't like that. Or at least I don't remember them being like that. If you had kids who were noisy, or needed to burn off some energy, they were taken out in the hallway where they could run and be as noisy as they wanted without disrupting anyone. When I was in choir and another group was singing during a concert, we either went back to the music room to wait, or we had seats in the audience which we had to stay in. Maybe I grew up in an exceptional community, but it makes me sad to think that these types of events are not highly regarded in my present community. They are treated like your average sporting event, rather than an expression of art and culture. Both events are important, but the behavior at each one should reflect the nature of the event. I endure them for the sake of my kids who are invovled in them, but it is most definitely not an enjoyable experience.

Where the boys are

They're in my classroom....and they're cracking me up.

I had my hair highlighted last night, and while I expected my partner teacher (a woman) to notice and comment, I didn't expect the reaction I got from my class.

While the student teacher greeted them at the door, I sat at my desk grading papers. I saw one of my boys start walking toward me and then stop and look, and then get a really odd look on his face, as though I was sitting there with a pet monkey on my lap.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Your hair! You dyed it!" he said, like I had just told him I ate worm chowder for breakfast.

"You noticed, E. I'm so impressed! You get bonus points today."

The conversational buzz which followed in my room was pretty amusing...it began with E telling a few people, "She dyed her hair!", contained several frightened sounding "AH!"s in the middle, and ended with the boy who had been actually doing his morning work instead of listening to the conversation saying, "Highlights? Highlights of what?" and the girl who sits next to him saying, "In her hair, N! Duh!"

Add in E. coming back to my desk a few minutes later to ask a question, hiding behind his notebook as though he can't face me, and the morning is off to a smile-cracking start! :o) Maybe there's hope for this group yet...

Oh, the thrills!

It's possible that teaching is the only profession in which you are guaranteed to get at least one Valentine's Day gift. Scratch that - teaching elementary is the only profession in which you are certain to get at least one gift.

Some of my favorite gifts today:
- the sugar! I've received no fewer than two mini-boxes of bonbons, two Reese's peanut butter cups, one cookie, eight Hershey's kisses, one packet of Skittles, three heart shaped suckers, and two Pixie sticks. Screw dieting. (at least for today!)
- An electric guitar shaped, leapord skin print valentine's card. I think it may be the absolute coolest card I've ever received
- Two very sweet cards from former students (sent in with their younger sister).
- an awkward encounter with a coworker. It was a little piece of Valentine's Day fun to watch her try to climb her way out of the hole she'd dug for herself. Sees me carrying flowers (sent to one of my students) down the hallway. Prances over and starts in, "Oh! Look at those! Oh, you lucky young bride, I mean, er, young person, uh, teacher, with, um....significant other person, er......"
- but the very best: A flaming golf ball tattoo. Seriously. I think I may wear it to dinner tonight, it's that cool.

hearts and chocolates and cupids, oh my!

To the elementary school teacher, the only thing separating Valentine's Day from Halloween are the costumes. Granted, given a choice between Halloween and Valentine's Day, the cursed heart-filled day wins hands down, but they do have a common denominator: sugar!

As I finished the oh-so-demanding five minute chore of scribbling "To Bobby, From Miss L." on twenty-five insipid, bland and largely meaningless children's Valentine's cards, it brought back memories of my own elementary Valentine's years. I remember spending a whole lot of time and energy finding the exact, perfect (insipid, bland and meaningless) card for each classmate. You had to make sure that no one that you didn't like might read your (insipid, bland and meaningless) card and think maybe you were in love with them. And you also had to make sure that the guy you actually did like would be able to read between the lines of your (insipid, bland and meaningless) card and realize that he was totally meant to be with you.

I'm sure some of my little girls will go home tonight and do much the same thing that I did. And nothing I could tell them would make a difference. If I thought it would make a difference, I would tell them, "Look, I've spent the last seven years working with fifth grade boys, and they don't care one bit what your card says. To them, the value of your card can be summed up in one question: 'Is there candy?' So just sign your name and move on to the next one. Spend time writing to your best girlfriends; tell them how great they are, cause they'll actually read it and appreciate it. Fifth grade boys just don't." But I suppose, in our present culture, that isn't really the focus of Valentine's day; instead of being about anyone in our lives whom we love and enjoy, it has to be about the person we're in love with.

As one who has always been single on Valentine's day, I often vow, after another sad, lonely Valentine's Day that I won't let that happen again. I decide not to focus on the diamond commercials, the plethora of flower arrangements that show up in my coworkers' rooms, or even my own single state and focus instead on the great friendships God's given me. Some years, I actually pull it off; I write out meaningful cards for longtime friends, or bake cookies for friends in town who mean a great deal to me. But more often than not, I spend it on the couch with a bowl of ice cream, tearing up during the diamond commercials and wondering if my turn will ever come.
And I wish, at this point in my ramblings, that I had something deep and spiritually meaningful to say, but the truth is, I don't; it's all been said. "Focus on _______ (God, friends, other singles, etc.) instead of your love life or lack thereof." Blame it on our culture, where you can still smell the pine scented candles of Christmas while the displays of heart shaped candies and chocolates are going up, but more often than not, this holiday only serves to remind me of what I don't have, rather than what I do have. So, fellow singles, let's pray for each other; and you marrieds out there, enjoy what God's given you and then when you get a moment, pray for those of us who are still looking and waiting.

Caught passing notes

We've probably all done it at some point in the past...passed notes when the teacher's back was turned. I know I'm guilty. The experience from the other side of the desk is a little different...and a whole lot more entertaining as well.

My partner teacher saw me in the hall at recess and said, "I've got a juicy one! They turned four shades of red when I told them to put it on my desk!" My response? "Oooh! Bring it over and let's read it together!" It was indeed a good one. In the note, which was roughly the size of Arkansas...apparently 5th grade girls have yet to master the art of sneaky note passing, were the plots of several fifth grade girls to sneak off to an unsupervised area of the playground, post lookouts, and kiss their boyfriends. Not so much an original idea; this has been tried before. And so my partner teacher got the delightful job of walking these girls through exactly what happened to the last group of girls who tried this.

But my favorite note story of this year, and most likely of many years to come, happened in the classroom next door to mine while all of us teachers were at a meeting. One of the secretaries interupted our meeting to tell us that Mrs. X's sub needed her back in her classroom n-o-w. Arriving in her classroom, she found that the problem was boys passing notes. The reason she had been summoned was because one boy, when asked to hand the note to the substitute teacher, shoved it in his mouth and ate it. Ate it!

Just in case we didn't already feel like the Queens of Crazyland, I guess...