Yucky

I took a job today at the high school where I have been a lot lately.  Unfortunately for me, it was not a math class.  It was drama.  I figured it wouldn't be too bad.  Surely the teacher would have left some helpful lesson plans, drama games, scenes to act out, a movie to watch, etc.

She left nothing.

But I did find something in my quest to find lesson plans on her desk.  I found 2 packages of Ritz crackers next to her keyboard. When I moved the keyboard over to search for plans, I noticed about 20 little tiny black things.  I recognized what those black things were.  Mouse poop.

Sick!

I thought it was first funny that she had crackers sitting right next to where the mice poop was found.  And then I looked up on the wall and found this sign:

I laughed out loud.  Situational irony?

Anyway, I will never come back to this room.  Mouse poop?  I can deal with that.  But 6 classes of drama classes with no plan?  I can't take it.

Colorful cookies

The girls got busy last week and made "Unicorn Poop."  I didn't love the name, so I called them colorful sugar cookies.  I couldn't even eat them.  The colors freaked me out because it looked like playdough.  But apparently, they were delish.

They made sugar cookie dough, colored it 4 colors, and then rolled out snakes from the dough and swirled them all together and then sprinkled them with whatever they could find.  I need to get some neon colors for next time so they look a bit prettier.  Then maybe I will be brave enough to eat one.

Busy tooth fairy

It has been a busy week for Mark.  3 kids, 3 extractions.  I can't stand to see wiggly teeth.  It just makes my tummy all quivery.

Zachary lost his first tooth ever, so he was pretty excited to join the big-kids-club.

Mark took some "before" pictures of Zack.

And then the AFTER!

Math teacher

I have been discovered.

I subbed for a math teacher at a high school.  The teacher went home sick, but before she left she asked, "Wait, you actually know how to teach math?"  What do you know?

Next thing I know, 4 different math teachers at that same high school have requested me to fill in for them.  It is awesome.  Subbing for math when the teacher KNOWS that you can teach a lesson is the best.  I have had too many sub gigs where the day goes on forever because I have to show the same video all day, or the kids have a "work day."  It goes SOOO much faster when all day I am actually teaching.   And because I took that one job, I have at least 10 others on the books at that same school teaching math for different teachers.

I love it when a kid says, "Can you please come back tomorrow?  I never understood this before you explained it."  I also love it when the kids come and see a sub and assume it is a party day, and then they realize we are going ahead with the homework collecting, math lesson, and assigning more homework thing.  "Wait, you actually understand math?"  Yes.  Sorry, kids.  My mom was a math teacher, so I had no choice but to understand math.  And I think it is freaking fun, too.

Solving systems of equations gets me pretty dang excited.  So does finding the sum of the interior angles of a polygon, or proving something is a parallelogram.  I tell the kids that I love math so much that I have graph paper with me 100% of the time.  In my purse, in my backpack, in my desk.  It's true.

It's pretty dang exciting.

Last week I had a math job with 2 open periods in the middle of the day.  The secretary at the school needed a last-minute sub for a choir class for one of my open periods.  I went into the choir room and the teacher told me she would get the kids situated and start them on a study hall.  I told her that would be super boring, and I would rather do choir, if that was OK.  Lucky for me that I can sight read!   It was such a fun class playing songs on the piano I had never heard and running the sections through their parts. It brought back such fun memories of Concert Choir at Skyline.  Bless Mr. Miller...may he rest in peace.