Day 2- Tuesday

The day started out beautifully... until 5:30 this morning. The beautiful part was the part where the baby slept through the night. The ugly part, the 5:30 part, occurred when my wife's cell phone decided to audibly alert us that the battery was running low. (Insert parenthetical statement here that I won't actually say because it might jeopardize my marriage.) Oh well. The alarm was going to go off in a half hour anyway, might as well get up.

Since my purpose is to chronicle the highs and lows of the day, I'll start with the lows and work my way up. During my morning briefing with my classroom sub, I told her not to put up with anything from the class. If they were not focused she was to send them up to "The Office" immediately. Since yesterday was a "sink the sub" day, this seemed prudent. She took me seriously. Very seriously. By 10:00 a.m. I had seen 12 kids. Nine of them were from my own class. How do you spell Aye-yi-yi as you bury your face in your hands and pretend to weep? I think the strategy worked, though. The class did much better in the afternoon.

Let's go one notch up from there. For guy who deals with discipline all day, it can actually bring about a warped sort of high when you catch a kid red-handed. I had one of those moments today. Guess who's class the culprit came from? Yup, you guessed it, Mr. "The Office's". We have an online learning site where the kids can log in using their own usernames and access learning materials. The site also features an e-mail component. What the kids don't know is that there is an electronic spy that notifies the administrators anytime profanity is included in an e-mail The spy is fast. Very fast. Within three minutes of one student sending a dirty message, he was sitting in my office. I felt wise. And powerful.

Later, another student from Mr. "The Office's" class was in the library using a computer. He launched a naughty e-mail. The program administrator for the entire district happened to be in our library at the time with her Blackberry in hand. The e-mail arrived in her hands seconds after the naughty boy sent it. Caught again! Life is good!

Now for the best part. The girl fight! No, there were no fists or claws, it was a verbal war, but girls can be mean with their words. To simplify things, let's call them Kitty and Drama. Drama came to me on the verge of tears because Kitty had said mean things. (Yes, Drama. Can you believe it?) To get her back, Drama insulted Kitty, etcetera, ad nauseam. With both girls sitting in my office, I told them that they can make the choice to be nice to each other and that compliments are more productive than insults. Then they each took a turn at complimenting the other and things were going well. It was at this point that I began to feel left out, so I gave them an opportunity to compliment me as well. (Might as well get my own back scratched when I have the chance.) Kitty thought for a moment, then spoke. "Uhhhh, you have nice posture."

Nice posture! That's the best they could come up with? I'm in for a long month.