HM Checks Out

Today was my actual last day of work. We had graduation practice, jumped through various hoops, turned in assorted forms, and got the heck out of Newmentia.

Lucky for me, only five visitors dropped in. That's what eats up my work time...visitors. I had all my forms ready, in a folder marked Check Out, because I am just that organized. I was trying to put some syllabus information on my teacher webpage, a webpage which refuses to accept a pasting from my copied document. It might have something to do with the school using Word 1997-2003. Yeah. We're only, like, 13 years behind the times, by cracky! I'm surprised I didn't have to chisel it onto a cave wall.

The good news is, I got 2/3 of my syllabi onto my teacher webpage. BY FREAKIN' RE-TYPING IT ONTO THE ACTUAL WEBPAGE. If I had only tried that tactic sooner, I would have saved myself an hour. The borrowed time came from the allotment for cleaning out my file cabinet and built-in cabinets. I only threw out one trash bag full. Then I swept the dirt under the rug, as in I stuffed posters and workbooks and number pad and keyboard and SmartPad and VCR and DVD player into the cabinets that usually hold only my teacher editions and hands-on paraphernalia .

And furthermore, I took an ample length of masking tape and wove it through the cabinet handles and stuck it to itself. Not that it's a Yale lock or anything, but it will keep those pesky seniors from yanking open my overstuffed cabinets when they appropriate my room as a staging area for graduation on Friday night. Oh, sure, five or six of them might whip out their knives and slash my makeshift security measure. But they might not. And it will keep them from opening the doors to hang their hangers for their robes, hangers which they abandon after tassel-turning for me to deal with the first day I return to my classroom. I could start a new trend of hangering people, like that forking phenomenon.

My cabinets are shamefully overstuffed. They need cabinet liposuction. Or a shelf bypass. They should be made to attend Overstuffers Anonymous. Perhaps they could work at it on their own, and discard 30 items per day. They could whip themselves into shape in no time.

The librarian told me that I was missing 3 or 4 books from my crate. That is the crate of library books she gives each teacher for reading time, which is 30 minutes every Friday. First of all, whoever thought that letting those things sit out and not keep a record of who's reading them would work? Not me. I can't even get back my textbooks that are assigned by number. Kids don't care. They will carry a fine for four years, and if they're going to be banned from walking at graduation, they'll pay it. Not before. Same way with their lunch fees of several hundred dollars. So setting out a crate of library books, no strings attached, is just a recipe for larceny. Apparently the librarian never stood in the hall and observed student behavior on those days when we were without water, but still had school. She never saw students load up on the bottled water that was placed on a table by the office. They see things setting out and think, "HEY! FREEBIE! GOTTA GET ME SOME!"

The mystery remains as to where those books could be. More on that tomorrow.