I guess I vastly overestimated how much time/energy/desire I would have for writing about teaching, after spending every waking hour of every day teaching or thinking about teaching. I turn to this Blog in desperation now. I want to quit. Sometimes I want to die because it seems like the only way to quit, guilt-free. But I don't want to write about all that depressing stuff.

In an effort to think positive, I offer up two adorable anecdotes from the past few days.

1) Ten of my students, along with the rest of the second graders from my school, are in a bus. We are on a field trip, headed back from a musical version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe put on at Lehman College. My students ask me how old I am and I make a math problem out of it..."I was in college for 4 years, I just graduated from college, and I was 18 when I started college." Then we start talking about growing up. They're saying they don't want to grow up...that it doesn't sound like very much fun. "But," I say, "There are lots of cool things about growing up. You get to live on your own and decide what to do with your time. And you get to have your own cat." Y., a bubbly little girl with about 7 pigtails popping out of her head (each held in place by a different color ribbon), decides she agrees. "And you get to be less annoying!" she exclaims.

2) I have started a complaint box in the classroom because, as I tell my students, "I can't deal with the one million little dramas that are happening every second. Don't interrupt me to tell me that he is kicking you under the desk and she is chewing gum and they are calling each other mean names." If the kids are seriously hurt, seriously scared, or seriously unable to learn because of whatever is going on...then they should tell me. Otherwise, they need to decide it's important enough to get up out of their seats and write a formal complaint for the box. This didn't work out exactly as planned...in just one afternoon there were literally around 30 complaints crammed into the box. A lot of them centered around M., a new kid that the others are ganging up on. He is fighting back, apparently, by telling them to shut up a lot and calling them stupid a lot and sometimes kicking them under the table. My personal favorite M. complain, however, came from A.: "Ms. Powell, I have to tell you. M. licked his shoe."