Oh What A Day It Has Been!

Aliens have invaded my classroom. More on that later.

But first we must discuss a few items of greater importance, such as the heating system in my classroom.

Or, rather, the LACK of a heating system in my classroom.

You see, way back on Thursday, October 29th, the heater that is supposed to supply my classroom, the kitchen, and MY CLASSROOM with heat, abruptly ceased all heat-related activities.

I wasn't too worried about it at first. I mean, this is a really old heater that we are talking about, and when it has taken a powder in the past it was always an age-related issue. The poor old thing was just being sort of senile, not malicious. Unlike my sworn enemy, the homicidal overhead screen. Talk about malicious. Dude! That thing wants to kill me. Really.

But since I hadn't received any intelligence updates that led me to believe that the heater had sworn its allegiance to that dastardly screen (although I am beginning to think that my desk chair may have gone over to the dark side), I cowboy-ed up, broke out my deep-winter sweaters, and went about my educational-related business.

And then it got really cold and I resorted to teaching in my bus duty coat and gloves.

But wait. Let me just go back for one minute to the sweater I was wearing in the sweater-related photo from a moment ago. I love everything about that sweater... except for the the very long draw strings that get caught in my desk drawers, on the backs of desks, in doorways, and even in my art supply tool box. Those drawstrings get caught everywhere!

EVERYWHERE!

Deep breath.

Ok.

I'm fine now.

Thanks for listening.

Now, back to the story of my heater less existence.

I told our wonderful head custodian about my classroom's new arctic climate that very Thursday, and he immediately called our sweet, yet overworked maintenance staff who showed up on Friday.

Not the Friday right after that, of course, or even the Friday after that. But last Friday, after about 15 teeth-chattering days, a very nice maintenance man climbed up into the ceiling and then climbed down and told me that the heater was broke.

Even though I told the principal that I wasn't in a huge hurry to have the heater fixed (the kidlets spent the first five minutes in class fascinated by the fact that they could see their breath inside the building, and then only got about ten minutes of real complaining in before they went numb and just sort of spent the next hour or so whimpering quietly to themselves) he had our school custodians and the district maintenance staff round up a bunch of heaters for me.

Those heaters made a world of difference...until I tried to run the overhead projector at the same time and blew out the fuse that powers the back half of my room.

So then I decided that we really didn't need the two heaters in the back. The two in the front of the room would at least take the edge off.

And they did.

Until I tried to turn on the TV to show a School House Rock video and blew out the fuse that powers the front half of my room.

Which brings us to the alien invasion I mentioned earlier. Every flat surface of my classroom is currently covered in alien descriptions and art work that resulted from a descriptive writing activity that we did last week.

The activity is usually one of my favorites because I get maximum effort out of the kidlets with minimum annoyances (mostly in the form of unfamiliar herds of kidlets touring my classroom before and after school to comment on their friends' efforts).

And I enjoyed the activity this year too... right up until the kidlets pointed out that ancient heating units surrounded by walls covered in highly flammable aliens was probably NOT something the fire marshal, or the school's insurance carrier, would approve of.

Of course, their concern only lasted until the heaters were turned off long enough for the cold to creep back in. Then, suddenly, the thought of being surrounded by white-hot flames became a lot less terrifying and a bit more appealing. But I didn't turn the heaters back on. Instead, like so many great adventurers before me, I adapted to my new environment.

And now if I can just get everyone else in the district to adapt to being able to read emails that I attempted to type while wearing puppet gloves, life will be good.

At least until the overhead screen strikes again...