End of March / First Week of April

Teacher's Note: I don’t know what to call this week. It has three March days and two April days. I’ve decided to call it the first week of April because all of my meetings are on a regular schedule, and according to my second-week-of-the-month meetings, which all happen next week, this is the first week of April. If you don’t like it, blame the meetings.

Monday
Back to school… It’s like we never left. Literally. This afternoon, a bunch of us teachers were all standing around in the hallway talking to each other about how we still feel like we need a vacation. That’s not a good sign…


Tuesday
I really like the last couple weeks of the quarter. It’s fun when the kids start kicking things into high gear and getting all their make-up work done. I feel motivated to get all of my grading caught up and entered into the gradebook, and the kids check the posted grades on the wall for anything they might be missing… but it’s not so late that any of us feel overly stressed about report cards. Next week we’ll panic. For now, everyone is suddenly industrious, assignments are turned in, work sessions happen quietly, and the aura of academia is almost palpable in the classroom.


Wednesday
I don’t even REMEMBER Wednesday. When’s spring break again? (Bad sign... again.)


Thursday
There is a round-about in front of my school. Back when we lived 5 blocks from the school, I thought the round-about was kind of obnoxious because I approached it as a driver. Or, I was frustrated by the lack of sidewalk because I approached it as a dog-walker. Now I’m just amused by it. I’ve heard about round-abouts in England that cause drivers (and pedestrians and cyclists) incredible consternation, but this one seems fairly harmless. Then again, there isn’t much traffic on a suburban side street in Troutdale.

Anyway, I think the round-about is funny. It has rocks and grasses and regular grass and tiny little “wanna-be” birch trees and round-about signs with graffiti on them. Every year, the PTSA organization gets together and plants tulip bulbs in the parking strip flower beds on the outside edges of the street that goes around the round-about. Right now, most of them are blooming, so the round-about is surrounded by a border of red tulips. It’s quite cheerful. Here's a picture of the round-about. I’ll try to take some pictures of the tulips next week.




Friday
Okay, I'm a weirdo. We had library check-out today. I took my kids down to the library, and they settled in to read or chat or search for books. In a random, unguarded moment while no one needed my help to find a book, I was caught acting strange by a couple of my students. (Shocking, I know…) I happened to be walking in a funny way across the library carpet, and these girls started laughing at me. I decided that it would be less complicated to act like it was an accident and like I didn’t know why it had happened. So I laughed at myself along with them and talked about how I’d spaced out there for a second.

The truth is much more embarrassing than that. The truth is, I was imagining what the library would be like if the floor were an ice rink. While I pictured students scooting tables and chairs along the ice, I imagined myself gliding – ice skating, even – on the ice floor, and apparently I took a few fake ice-skating glides while I was lost in this alternate reality. Of all the moments for my students to decide to watch me…