You Sure You Don't Wish To Switch Schools?

It's been a week.

The rule of the time space continuum always seems to tilt to the right..and then slide back to the left after you return from Christmas (oops, excuse me) Winter Break. This year was no exception. Our Social Worker at our school thinks that things started to explode on the day of my fourth Annual Staff Christmas Party. I think that was just a warm up for what has been happening since Christmas. You know, like a pre-game warm up. Or like the Before Sales you get to go to if you are a "preferred customer" before the real sales start. Of course, I would know nothing about being a preferred customer.

But it seems I've been a preferred customer school wise. You know the saying. "If anything can happen, it will happen...and Laura Moore, it's going to happen to you in particular. Oh, and the others that work with you too. " Look it up..I'm sure it's in a wise saying book somewhere.

Well, if it's not, it should be.

This week was tons of fun in particular. I would like to mention for those of you who may be interested (and don't tell me that you are not) that one of my major jobs within the job I have is to evaluate, protect, and defend the teachers on my staff. The protect and defend is really not written in my job description, but I do that anywho.   We are supposed to formally evaluate teachers at least once a year...twice a year if they are new to the school or to their grade level, and do walkthroughs weekly.

There are forces abounding in the time space continuum that are devising an evil plan to make this job an impossible one to accomplish. Really.

If you look at my nice, tidy, color coded (of course) outlook planning calendar for the week, you will see how I have blocked out times to go into classroom and observe. It's one of the best things I do, because it makes my little administrator heart happy to see good teachers doing stellar things with children in the classroom.  And that was one of my major plans to get accomplished this week.

Silly me.

I would tell you all of the nutsy things that happened this week, but I don't think they have that many pages available in this blog. I will say that due to the incident that happened on the day of the Staff Christmas party, a few of us were served with subpoenas this week. It seems as if we have to appear in court, and speak about a case that is too horrific to think about, and still upsets me to this day. I am afraid that I will not look like the witnessers do on the stand on television, and will stand up and declare to the defendants, "You are a Stupid Poopy Diaper Head!"  Robert was called that as we were watching a child fill up his shoes with water (plus his socks) and trying to jump off the counter as if it was a trapeze. We both have decided that this phrase is appropriate for many people that we know.

We also had a child this week that came to our counselor, scared to go home, because his step-father had been drinking, and the step-father and mother got into a fight. After reassuring this child that we would keep him safe, we had the pleasure to speak to a policeman whose only concern was why this child was in our school, since he was not in "our district". I don't get angry often, but I had to stand up and walk out of the room so I wouldn't end up in the papers for choking a police officer.  We did keep him safe, however. This was not due to the police officer, I might add.

However, the highlight of the week was when a child from our behavior program decided to become Bruce Jenner and take off from the school, and off school property. This of course was at the end of the day when everyone is going everywhere, when everyone that is helpful in a situtation such as this is occupied with other situations..as in getting children safely on buses, ducking from cars that can run them over as they supervise crosswalk, you know...usual stuff.

I had the distinct pleasure in this situation in being the first one on the scene to assist. Well, try to help to assist. After we determined that our student was off the school property, we had the secretaries call 911, I headed across the field, Robert stayed with the buses to make sure that more confusion and delay didn't occur there.

Somehow (I didn't ask, and really didn't want to know) the child in question, his teacher, and one of our other teachers who runs the same sort of behavior program (although it isn't called that, it should be called that) were out in the undeveloped subdivision beside our field. The highly agitated student had two long sticks that could at best be called weapons, which he was swinging briskly at both of my teachers. Now before I continue this story, I must add the fact that our behavior teacher got across the field and to him in 3.5 seconds...wearing high heels and nice pants. She does play soccer, which in her job is very helpful. I missed seeing her sprint across the field like...well, like Bruce Jenner, but I understand from our head custodian that it was an amazing thing to see. Keep in mind she is 26, an excellent soccer player, and in very good shape.

Then here I came.

The first obstacle that I faced in trying to assist was the fact that the only way to get to the subdivision field beside our field was to jump off a hill (that was graded at 90 degrees) and covered with goat heads. Now I am not 26, I never played soccer, and I am just a little bit short.

So I jumped...praying that I would not break something, and look fairly dignified while doing so.

 Ashlyn and Erin were too busy evading the sticks to notice that I did not.

It's a good thing that my platoon of angels kept me from serious harm, and I was able to get to the area where the action was going on. The student of course came at me, and I announced in my best principal like voice that it was not a good choice to swing a lethal weapon at me.

This, of course, was not effective.

Fortunately our Social Worker came on the scene (he lifts huge amounts of weights, so I'm sure he got down the hill of doom successfully) and told us that if the student didn't want to pay attention to us, we needed to leave.

So we did.

The four of us walked back toward the hill of doom, with the student yelling behind us (as he followed us back, of course) "Hey, Guys! Look at Me!"

We ignored him, of course.  Attention is a powerful thing. Lack of attention kind of takes away the power.

Erin, Ashlyn, and our Social Worker scaled the hill of doom easily. I, on the other hand, had issues.

I somehow had to get up the hill without landing in the goat heads that were so delightfully covering it. Of course, I couldn't even get my leg on top of it. So I was forced to ask for help in getting up the hill.

How embarrassing.

After my very kind (and tired, I might add) Social Worker grabbed my arm and pulled,  (poor guy) I managed to get up, but not before landing chest first into the goat heads.

No one laughed. I think.

We walked across the field (Well, they walked, I limped because I had goat heads in my socks) and then the police finally showed up.  By this time, the student had followed us across the field, swing the lethal sticks at us again, and then headed back down the goat head hill to grab more weapons. Eventually, the policeman and his mother got him back on the field, and we all got back to the school where I continued fun meetings about students and their problems.

Just a normal week.

Now the best part about the whole thing (well, not the best part, but it was funny) was after I e-mailed a wonderful (yes, I mean wonderful) man that I have been dating. (More about that at another time) I told him the story, and he e-mailed back to me,

"You sure you don't wish to switch schools? Or are all of them like this?"

Why yes, they are.