Happy New (School) Year!

Back to School 2015 from Mindy Haws on Vimeo.

The End (of Summer) is Near

fall 2014 bulletin board from Mindy Haws on Vimeo.

Santa Bats

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but shortly after I moved into my current classroom way back in 2008 (or was it 2009....), the room became known as The Bat Cave.

It might have been because the room  is hidden away in a secret location. Or it might have been because it is sort of dark with a lower ceiling. Or it might just have been that I was being a bit goofy  (I know, it's hard to imagine, but I do get a bit goofy on occasion)on the way back from the computer lab and hollered out, "Kidlets... To The Bat Cave!".

But WHY the room is called The Bat Cave isn't really important right now.

Right now, all you need to know is that the room is in fact know, in certain circles, as The Bat Cave. Got it? Good. Then let's move on...

About two years ago, a teachers who doesn't feel the need to hang on to every piece of paper that crosses her path, was going to toss out some old Halloween decorations. These doomed decorations happened to include a bunch of construction paper and clothes pin bats and, having heard my room referred to by its nickname a time or two, decided to pass them along to me.

I instantly fell in love the dorky little things (kind of a pattern in my life) and had them nest in my ceiling during Halloween week.

Last year I took them down as soon as November arrived, but this year has been a little bit busier. By the time I got around to thinking about taking them down, I just couldn't do it. The little guys had grown on me. So I left them up, which was cool with the kidlets...until they returned from Thanksgiving.

Having Halloweenish decorations up during the Christmas season apparently offended their sense of propriety (Yes, the children whose main source of humor is bodily functions and who sometimes accidentally put their t-shirts on backwards, have a very strong sense of propriety). For almost two weeks, I listened to them voice their dismay at having Halloween decorations up in December.

So, because I am the sort of teacher who cares deeply about her student's opinions, I came back to school last Saturday and fixed the problem.

 The kidlets were pleased with the bats' new holiday wardrobe, until they noticed that not all of the bats were wearing Santa hats.

I thought about telling them the truth... that I have, like, 20 bats hanging from the ceiling and neither I nor my student aides wanted to take the time to make that many tiny hats. But then they would have felt bad for the bats that didn't have hats, which would have led about half the class to volunteer make more hats instead of working on their study guides. Then, if I were to tell them "no", three or four of them would wait until the lights were turned off during a Smart Board activity and would have tried to make the hats anyway, utilizing the same under-the-desk-dexterity that allows them to text messages longer and more complex than the Magna Carta during class on their cell phones when they are supposed to be taking notes. That would have led to me catching them, which would have led to an awkward conversation about bat hats with our assistant principal, so I decided to go another route.

Instead, I explained to them that the bats without hats choose not to celebrate Christmas. I told the kidlets that the hat-less bats celebrate Kwanzaa instead, which ended up bringing the subject to a successful close for everyone involved...

...Except for the librarians who had to deal with kids standing in line at lunch to use a computer so they could Google "Kwanzaa".

The Never Ending Saga of the New Heater Continues... Wherein the students get rained-on and inhale pieces of dead insects

So the very nice heater-fixing men have been hard at work trying to get the new heater running. Besides trying to make sure that I don't lose any fingers or toes to frostbite this winter, the very nice heater-fixing men have also been helpful in other ways.

For example, my English kidlets are currently working on prepositional phrases and the heater guys have provided some wonderful examples. The heater guys walk through the classroom. They climb up the ladder. They crawl inside the ceiling. They walk on the roof. And they occasionally shout interjections at the heater... which is fine because some impromptu reviews of interjections never hurt anybody.

There were a couple of interesting events added to the new-heater-time-line this week.

On Tuesday, my third hour creative writing kidlets were working on their poetry quest when one rather chatty little girl raised her hand. The following is a transcript of our brief, yet damp, exchange. The kidlet's name has been changed in that it has been rendered slightly less weird.

Chatty Kidlet: Umm, Miss Haws? Is it raining?

Me: Yes, Taniquianna. Now please focus on your quest.

Chatty Kidlet: But, Miss, it's raining.

Me: I know that Taniquianna. You will probably have inside lunch today, but that isn't your problem right now. Right now your problem is your poetry quest.

Chatty Kidlet: But Miss Haws... It's raining INSIDE!

And sure enough, it was! Poor Taniquianna, her poetry quest, and the three empty desks around her were, in fact, being rained on. Apparently, when the crane removed the old heater, it also removed part of weather-proofing.

The part of the weather-proofing directly above Taniquianna's desk.

 But don't worry about her. Taniquiana got a free hall pass to collect paper towels from the bathroom, and then she got to move to a dry seat that was next to the people she most enjoys chatting with. No harm done.

The second heater-related event happened at the beginning of fifth hour on Thursday. Just as the kids were sitting down, a cloud of dirt, dust, and insect remains fell from the ceiling vent and filled the room.

It might have been because they had a fire drill the day before. Or it could have been the earth quake drill we also had that week. Or it might have been the story on Channel One News that morning about the foiled NYC terror plot. But no matter what the reason, the kidlet's reaction to the cloud that filled the classroom was complete and total panic. It was hilarious.

I figured that the very nice heater-fixing men must have given the blowers a test run, so I wasn't worried. I let the kids take a walk to the drinking fountains to clear their pipes while the dust settled. They had started to settled down, when another teacher came walking through the hallway and noticed that my room and the lunch room were both engulfed in a smoke-like haze. That teacher, knowing that the previous junior high had actually burnt down during a school day, ran to alert the principal. Seeing the teacher panic reignited the kidlet's panic which made for a rather unproductive class period.

The very nice heater-fixing men were very apologetic, but I told them not to worry about it. The look on the kidlet's faces as the mushroom cloud descended upon them was hilarious. The memory of it brings a smile to my face and warms the corners of my heart.

And that should be enough to keep me going until the heater is up and running and able to warm the rest of me.

On The Bright Side...

So... remember how the heater in charge of heating my classroom hasn't worked for, like, the last five years?

Well, five years minus the week it was working last year. But I don't really count that week because, while it was giving off heat, the heater was also giving off semi-noxious fumes.

Please don't confuse those semi-noxious fumes with the obnoxious fumes that waft off of the 8th grade boys. Those fumes are a subject for a completely different post.

This post is about the ongoing saga of my heat-less classroom. Or at least, it was when I started it...

Anyway, when the school year began I had already resigned myself to the idea of spending yet another winter teaching while wearing multiple layers of clothing, gloves, a scarf, and wrapped in a blanket while a chorus of buzzing space heaters drowned out the sound of 30 sets of almost-completely-permanent-grown-up teeth chattering uncontrollably.

Then, one magical morning in September, my principal appeared in my room bearing glad tidings of great joy... my classroom (and the other areas in my immediate vicinity) would be getting a brand-spanking-new heater! That would actually heat things! Without poisoning me or the kidlets! It was like Christmas morning! With heat! And no semi-noxious fumes!

Of course, the ginormous non-poisonous heating heater needed to replace the old one... on the roof of the school right above my classroom. That meant that a crane would be involved. And THAT meant that I was going to have to vacate my classroom for a day so as to ensure that none of the kidlets were in danger of being squished in any giant crane/old roof related accidents.

 

And so, for one day in September, I hauled all of my teaching stuff to a room on the other side of the building where I taught the very confused kidlets.

 

Well, before the teaching could start I had to wait for the kidlets to find the room, and then explain to them why I wasn't in my room. Then  it took a little longer to assure them that I would eventually be returning to my real room, before showing them where the pencil sharpener was and explaining why I couldn't bring my smart board with me. But then some teaching happened.

 

 When school ended, I started wheeling my stuff back to my original room, only to be told that the new heater didn't fit the connections into the building from the old heater. The very nice maintenance guys then explained that eventually, when they figured out how to connect the new heater to the old hook-ups, I would have to vacate my room yet again.

 

And a week or so later, I did vacate the room, but only when the giant crane with kidlet-crushing potential was actually in use, which happened to coincide perfectly with my kidless prep time. It was quick and painless.

 

I didn't see or hear from the maintenance guys for almost a month afterwords. Then, just as I started redecorating my room with a nice Octoberish-theme, I found out the crane and a small army of maintenance guys, electricians, and heating guys would be invading my classroom yet again.

 

So Monday morning, I once again moved five classes (four subjects) worth of stuff out of my room, through the lunch room, out of the commons, down the hall, and into room 148.

Where I found a cheerful note from my very kind, new-heater-facilitating principal.

But then Monday in room 148 turned into Monday and Tuesday in room 148.

When I found out that Monday and Tuesday in 148 was in danger of turning into Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in 148, I politely explained to the maintenance guys that Wednesday in 148 was not an option because a sub was taking my classes that day. "You see," I explained, "the kidlet wig out when they have class in a different room. The kidlets also freak out when they have a sub. Therefore, having a sub in a different would cause a wig-out-freak-out of massive proportions precluding any learning of any kind from happening that day."

Then the maintenance guys repeated that my room was probably going to be off limits again on Wednesday.

Then I told them that I would cry, which resulted in them telling me that they could probably work around the kids on Wednesday after all.

So the kidlets will only have to have half of a freak out tomorrow with the sub, and they can do that freaking out in the comfort of our usual classroom.

On the bright side, there is a good chance that, sometime in the next two weeks, the new heating, poison-less-heater will be ready to do some heating. My little sojourn in the 140's hallway also provided me with a renewed appreciation for my classroom... and some great material for example poems for our rhyme scheme lesson.

Also, with all of the constrution work going on in the room, it gave Iron Man a chance to try out a new, safety-oriented look. The maintence guys thought Iron Man's hard hat was pretty entertaining...

... Although they thought Anita, our sentence dissection nurse, was just disturbing.

 

But, thanks to those disturbed maintenance guys, my room will eventually have heating capabilities this winter. Which means that the temperature in the classroom will be high enough to allow me to open the back door a crack every now and then to let out some of the obnoxious fumes emanating from the 8th grade boys.

Bright side indeed!

Everyone Needs Their Own Spot

Everyone needs a place to belong, their own special spot where they fit.

Some people's spot may be on the back of a tiger, surrounded by cousins, or propped up by Grandpa.

 

K-Rae will be finding her own spot in kindergarten this week. She was made for school, and will be running the place by the end of the week.

 

Your spot might be a seat in the middle of the river, with the wind blowing through your hair and the water flowing over your toes.

 

Your spot might be in the back of a very fast boat, choice hits from the 80's pouring out of its speakers, surrounded by friends who are family.

 

There are many places that I love:

my cute little home,

my parent's living room,

any and all libraries...

 

But my spot,

 the place I fit best,

is a little room in the corner of the junior high, where the desk was a mess two hours in to the first day of the school year.

 

As much as I enjoy my summers (and GOODNESS do I enjoy them!), my classroom is my spot in the world. And this year, thanks to a suggestion by my visiting teachers, my spot it spotted!

 

This is where I am at my best, my comfort zone, my sphere of influence, my laboratory, my kingdom, my stage.

 

Its not a perfect place.

 

It is sometimes too hot, and often too cold.

It can be full of loud chatting when it should be lost in quiet thought.

Just as often, it can be totally silent when confident answers should be offered up at high volumes.

This year, thanks to budget cuts, it is bursting at the seams with far too many kidlets, with shelves that are far to empty of books and supplies.

It houses angst when the idiots in Boise stick their noses in where they don't belong.

It radiates joy when that D has clawed it's way up to a B.

It's where I guzzle ice water, eat cold cereal for lunch, hand out mints before tests, and sing grammar songs at the tops of my lungs.

It is also where I sit with legs crossed, wishing I hadn't guzzled so much water.

It is the spot where kids give me equal amounts of standing ovations and dirty looks.

It is my territory, my habitat, my element, my dominion, and my neighborhood.

 

It is my spot.

 

But the middle of the river at sunset is a close second.