Powder Puff is rough.

Those girls take that crap seriously. I saw at least 6 girls cry as a result of the game today. I'm not sure how many of those were injured tears and how many were emotional scars from losing.

Sometimes junior high kids are the best.

Yesterday I took my 6th hour kids to a nearby elementary to do a service project. (Don't worry, I'm not a crazy overachiever, completing service projects is a requirement from the administration.) We played with the adorable 2nd graders at recess and then talked to them about troops that have been deployed and then helped the kids write cards to deployed troops. It was all so adorable that I nearly died.  My 9th graders totally stepped up and took charge. They loved those little kids and by the end of the hour those little kids worshiped my 9th graders. Honestly I got a little teary eyed, partly because I am exhausted from staying late to get ready for parent/teacher conferences tonight, but mostly because I love when junior high kids show me just how awesome they are.

I'm not sure why my classroom always smells like moldy fish sticks.

But it's actually really disturbing.

There is a custodian at my school who is very wise.

Every time I talk to him I feel like I am in an ABC Family movie and he is the slightly crazy man that gives me the inspiration to live my life and go after that thing (probably a man, because it's ABC Family) that I love.  The kids call him Jesus Janitor because he has long hair and a beard.

Here is an actual conversation from a couple days ago:

Me: Hi there.
Jesus Janitor: Hello, how are you?
Me: I'm great, how are you doing?
JJ: Well I think I am good.
Me: That's great.
JJ: The reason I say "I think" is because I don't know.
Me: Ok...
JJ: Because how can we really know, you know?  Everything we know could be different than what everyone else knows.
Me: Yeah, totally.
JJ: Maybe what's good for me isn't what's good for you.  We all need to seek out what is good for us and make that a reality in our individual lives.  I seek to know what is good for me and I pray that I can experience that every day.
Me: Mmkay, yeah! Good luck.
JJ: Thank you, good luck in your journey too.

I'm worried that the guy who teaches across the hall from me is going to quit.

One of the first things he ever said to me was "I haven't interviewed for a job in 20 years.  People just call me because they want me." I guess he was like a school flipper. He would go into poorly performing schools and flip them and make them better. It sounds like a great reality show to me. One of the second things he ever said to me was "The last school I was at started out in the 5th percentile and ended up in the 75th percentile." Congrats sir. Really, that's impressive.

I guess he thought that meant he knew how to be a teacher?  He's struggling. 

Every day he has a new thing to complain to me about (while we stand in the hall between passing periods).  His classes are too huge, his projector doesn't work, there's no air conditioning, there are stupid kids and smart kids in the same class, the grading takes forever, he can't figure out how much lesson will fill up a class period, the internet goes down on the regular, etc. etc. etc. It's exhausting listening to him because I don't know what to say. Those things are realities. That's just how it is.  You roll with it anyway because that's what teachers do. 

I wonder how he lasted as a school flipper for 30 years without realizing that sometimes people mow the lawn while you are trying to give a lesson and you just keep teaching anyway. 

Teenagers say the darnedest things.

Me (noticing the kid has been transfixed by his elbow (not kidding) for 10 minutes): Hey! You okay back there?
MALE student: I'm bleeding. I got blood all over everything. I got blood all over my pants! I GOT MY PERIOD!
Class: *complete chaos and laughter*
Me (laughing on the inside and maybe a little bit on the outside): Get out of here!
Student (on his way out the door): This is my third pair of pants this week, my mom is going to kill me.

Teachers are superheros.

I am a superhero.  My superpower is that I can go great lengths of time without ever peeing.  

At least I have a prep hour this year.  Last year I didn't have a prep hour. I taught a study skills class during my prep because I thought the money might be worth it (lol).  My prep is first hour, so I usually don't have to pee yet, because I went when I woke up at 6am.  I can't pee in between classes because I am supposed to stand in the hall and yell at children who run to class or eat food in the hall.  I can't pee during lunch because I have lunch duty where I stand in the halls and eat my lunch while I yell at children who dared to walk in that hall during lunch time.  I can't pee after school because I have bus duty where I stand out by the buses and yell at children who punch each other or (worse) make out.  I can't pee after bus duty because then I have a million kids in my classroom asking me what their grade is and why they are failing when they're only missing one measly test (lol again).  Those kids finally leave me around 3:30 (or 4 or 4:30) and then I get to go pee and usually it's a dire emergency by that point and also, full disclosure, that is usually the first time I have sat down since I got out of bed that morning and I linger on the toilet for a minute or two longer than I should because my goodness it's nice to sit down every once in a while. Even superheros have to sit down every once in a while. 

I hate parents.

One of my teacher friends has always said that the best school to teach in would be an orphanage.  Parents are the worst.

Usually they don't care enough. I call and email and call and email and send home notes and call and email and never hear back from them. They don't care that their son has been failing my class since the 3rd day of school and he won't graduate from high school. They still let him play video games all weekend.  They are useless to me and I've got administrators breathing down my back asking why I haven't contacted the parents on this "at-risk" kid.

Sometimes they care too much.  They send me angry emails about why I didn't call and tell them that their son was missing that one assignment. I'm sorry lady, I have 107 kids missing that same assignment. I put it into the grade book as missing so you could see that it was missing. I will never have time to contact you every time your lazy son doesn't turn something in.  Then end all their emails with "And PLEASE let me know in the future if he falls behind."  You know what, no! That's your job. Or his job. It really should be his job. I am just very positive that it's not my job.

Why is it always boy students that give me the problems? I never have problems with girls.  Is that a real thing or is it just because I am biased? I'm going to have to do some research on that and then maybe blog about it.

Teachers often complain about big class sizes.

I'm not saying they're in the wrong for complaining or anything, I'm just saying that it could always be worse. For example, when I was student teaching I complained about my one class that had 35 students in it because all the rest of my classes had less than 30 and 35 was just too much to handle.  It really is amazing what a difference 5 extra students makes.

When school started this year I had 33 desks in my classroom.  My smallest class size was 36.  My biggest class size was 42. I asked for more desks.  They said we don't have any. My students sat on the floor for a while. They handled it like champs. I felt cramped and flustered.

Students got sick of sitting on the floor and transferred out of my honors classes and into my regular classes. Then I finally got more desks. They found some dusty desks in a closet somewhere.  I have 40 desks in my classroom now which was great for a while because I had 40 kids in my biggest class. They just transferred two more kids into that class and now two kids sit at my desk every day.  We'll make it work.

I think it speaks a lot about the public education system in this state that we don't even have enough desks to cram into a tiny room and give our students somewhere to sit.

I feel like I'm constantly drowning, but it's okay.

Teaching is a lot like drowning in the middle of a lake when someone throws you 180 babies to save along with yourself and then someone comes along and yells to you "I'll be dropping by for some unexpected observations. Make sure to rock those or you'll get fired."

My first year of teaching I told myself to quit every single day until December. I was sure I was failing the kids and working too hard and killing myself.  All of those things were probably true, but by the time December rolled around I started figuring things out like how to not grade every single piece of work I assign and wait another day to answer that parent email and things like that so I could get home before 10pm.

Do you realize that I could have taken a lot of the same classes in college and graduated with a degree in engineering, rather than education, and be making literally 3 times what I am making right now? I wonder on a regular basis what is wrong with me mentally that makes me stay in this profession. I don't have an answer yet, but I at least know there is something keeping me here.

The drowning thing doesn't go away, at least it hasn't for me yet. It might eventually...but I think it's more likely that we just learn to deal with it. We're okay with that feeling of drowning all of the time. We know how to not drown and grade papers and plan lessons and straighten desks and count calculators and call parents and pass evaluations and fill in for sick teachers and get that one student that assignment they missed and help with lunch duty and scrub the swear word off the desk and make copies and buy more pencils and actually teach--actually make a difference in the lives of real people--all at the same time. It's terrifying and hard, but it's okay. It's worth it too.