I Earned My Paycheck Today

Ever have one of those days where you just wanted to go home and crawl under the bed? This was one of those days for me. We started out with homeroom where we were supposed to give out new schedules and practice PSAT tests. Well..... our new registrar was supposed to send out the PSAT tests via helpers on Friday to each class. I was at lunch and they didn't deliver mine. Did I get upset? Nope. I just took a deep breath and chalked it up to the total SNAFU that education can be at times. The next surprise was that the homerooms were shuffled around and half of my homeroom consisted of new students. Unfortunately only the teachers knew about this so the students all went to their old homerooms. Thus I did not have schedules for half of my class. I sent them to the guidance office and they sent them right back to me with the statement that all of the new homerooms had been posted in an earlier email and I should tell the students which homeroom they had. I looked at my old emails and sure enough the registrar had sent an email stating that an attachment listed all of the new homerooms. One little problem. He did not put the attachment with the email. I checked all of my other emails and never found it, though another teacher did say that he had seen the list in a later email. The other teachers did not find it either. Back to guidance went the 50% who were no longer in my homeroom.

My blood pressure at this point was through the roof though on the outside I was calm. What could cap this wonderful morning? How about a student outside in the hallway drinking a Barnie's large coffee drink? They are not supposed to bring food or drink upstairs and he was standing directly under a sign stating this in the hall. I could have taken him straight to the dean but instead I asked him to please take it outside to finish it. I went back into class briefly. When I came back out he was again standing in the hallway with his drink. He saw me and placed his coffee into a friend's open locker. My class was coming in and I had no time to waste on this poor excuse for a human being so I walked over and took the drink. As I walked to my door he yelled out "Where is my $5 for the drink?" I responded "You wish!" and poured the drink down the drain.

All in all, a lovely day! I did actually get in a bit of teaching after this but boy am I happy to leave that madhouse and get back home. Fortunately most days are not quite this chaotic but an educator has to roll with the punches. Most people would have A) screamed at the registrar for not showing a modicum of foresight and intelligence that would have kept the homeroom from being a total fiasco, B) asked the guidance staff if they were really taught how to help students, and C) called the parents of the student with the coffee to ensure that both parents were on birth control and were not ever planning on spawning another creature like that kid.

It's probably a good thing that I'm an experienced educator and could handle things differently. As I sit here at the end of this long day, though, choices A, B, and C sure do sound tempting!

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