work notes

Yesterday, the janitor, who is the spitting image of Flavor Flav, and a Vietnam vet with a tragic and colorful back story, rushed up to me with a bucket in one hand and a shovel in the other.

"Hey, look what I got!" he exclaimed excitedly.
I looked into the bucket and saw a headless snake.
"I found it out by the tree behind the classroom. I killed this one, but there's a whole nest of 'em! You know what kind it is?"
"Ummm..no." I answer. "Maybe you can take it to Miss Jones, the biology teacher."
"Ah yeah"
I thought it was kind of sweet how a headless snake could turn a grown man into a 10 year old boy again.

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"Did a lot of people drown?" A student of mine asked yesterday, genuinely concerned.
I was reviewing the Colonial period.
"Huh?" I asked, completely baffled by her question.
"You know," she went on to explain. "When we wasn't part of England no more?"
I think...and then realize what she's thinking.
And with admirable lack of sarcasm on my part (I thought), I explained that when America separated from England there was no geological damage done.
A few other students did snicker at her, and I was slightly reassured that they did.
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Tomorrow is graduation. The past two years have been fairly uneventful, thankfully.
We'll see what tomorrow brings.
I was relating the story to a friend the other day of a few years ago. I was sure I had told it before, but maybe she'd forgotten it. I know I haven't. A few years ago
our principal had made the point of formalizing the event, dressing it up.

As part of this stiffening of etiquette, the faculty had processed in our various caps and gowns before the students. We sat together and the ceremony began with great formality. Despite repeated interruptions by overly enthusiastic relatives, things were going nicely.
Suddenly, however, somewhere in the middle of the P's, all of 10 feet away from me, I hear a tussle. Or should I say, feel a tussle going down.

I glance over to the left and see a 200 pound woman in a light yellow chiffon summer dress being violently wrestled to the ground by two NOPD officers. She and her date, in a navy suit, are cuffed and dragged off screaming through the aisles. They resisted arrest.

On the way down she bit the police officer. They were dragged along the floor for about 50 feet and then out of the auditorium. I think I saw a bit of yellow chiffon snagged on the carpet.

Then the ceremony resumed. We went back to the R's.
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Lastly, sadly, the curse of my homeroom is alive and well. It seems I jumped the gun the other day in crowing that it was dead.

Yes, it seems I have let yet another of my students get pregnant. It's still but a rumor however. Again I feel like a bad daddy. She is, however, from a completely different quadrant of the room this year.
I don't know if that's an improvement...or a sign of it spreading.