Some people really need to scrub

We had our usual monthly teacher meeting, but this meeting was particularly interesting because the coordinator is usually the one who does all the talking, but not this time.

One of the points the principal hit was personal hygiene. He said "Teachers, how can we ask our students to have good hygiene when we don't even have it ourselves. Please take the time to comb your hair before coming to work, I've seen some teachers' hair that look like dreadlocks, and I recommend that some of you use mouthwash too".

How embarrassing for our principal to have to say that in a teacher meeting, and gross to know that some teachers actually arrive like that to work.

I'm not surprised though.

Welcome to the looney bin

It hasn't been a rosy new year. Just one month into the new year and there has been problems nonstop.

Emotions are running high, bad decisions have been made, and there's no turning back. Is Regret for the weak? You can't undo some thing that has been said or done. What's done is done. Even if you apologize you already said something that can change everything. I learned that the hard way.

I'm the type of person who just had to apologize for even the simplest thing. Yes, very annoying, but now that I look back, I had no reason to apologize, to feel sorry, regret, or shame for the things I did or said because I'm a good person. I've always been a good and honest person. I let myself think I wasn't.

Lately, the environment I'm in has not been peachy. I really have no more tolerance. I'm losing grip. I feel no remorse whatsoever for the things I've been saying lately because they come from the heart, and only speak the truth. Well, it's not entirely true, I do feel a bit of remorse, but it just seems to roll off my shoulders faster.

It's not all bad news, I just finished 3rd semester of uni with a g.p.a of 9.8, not bad, huh? I had to overcome fatigue, stress, and battle two real wicked witches of the west. I basically would waste my afternoons at school doing nothing. They would just make us read, brainstorm, and that would be the entire class. In a way, it did benefit me, because I'd had time to grade during class, but that's not the point. I skipped class a lot during this semester because I just had so much going on, and even with all the drama going on I was able to sustain my grades.

The Yearbook

Flipping through yearbooks provides a fascinating glimpse of the times, the fads, the interests, society. A yearbook can hold good and bad memories. Yearbooks take us back in time to remember the class clowns, the jocks, the nerds, all the clubs that our high school had because back then and now we are put into some kind of category.

This week the kids are taking their yearbook picture, and of course, they are all really excited about it. I went into the girls bathroom, and it was about to burst. They were all combing their hair, and talking about how ugly they all came out in last year's yearbook, and how hopefully this year they come out better.

Now as a grown up you come to realize that worrying about how your yearbook picture will come out is the least of your worries.

It's hilarious to go back, and look at your picture, and think my god! What the....

And as the famous columnist Faulkner Kosalko humorously put it, “Yearbooks make almost anyone from any generation say quietly to themselves, ‘What in the world was I thinking?’”

The Head Honcho Strikes...

Rumor; A piece of unverified information of uncertain origin usually spread by word of mouth.

Rumors had us a bit neurotic before winter vacation. Rumors that someone from our department would be getting fired.

The last day before winter vacation started we all exhaled as if we had been holding our breath for weeks. We though in our mind we're safe, no one got fired.

We are just in week one of 2012, and we come back to work with a huge surprise! Not a good surprise I might add, and yes indeed someone had been fired, and another one had been demoted. Thankfully, it was no one from our department, but still quite shocking.

The person who got fired was new, young, and unexperienced, but don't we all start out like that?

We are just half way through the school year, I didn't expect anyone to be laid off. I think it is awful they didn't give this person the chance to finish off the year.

I know of a lot of others that shouldn't even be allowed to teach, and are still there like ugly, sticky fungus.

It's a very difficult institution to work in; parents, children, co-workers, paperwork, it is all so difficult.

Needless to say, people are shaking now.

The new head honcho has a fierce glare, he stares at you like if he can see right through your soul.

Who knows, maybe he can.

I caught him staring at me during yesterday's meeting while he introduced the new teacher. I stared right back. We stared at each other for a few seconds which seemed like very long minutes. I wouldn't look away, and he wouldn't either. He finally looked away when someone asked a question.

Doesn't he know I have staring contests with my kids? He can't beat me.

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