Home Visits and XM Radio

As a part of my job I am required to visit the homes of every child in my classroom. This week is the week I get to enjoy this fun aspect of my job (I hope the sarcasm is coming through). The week of home visits is a hard week on everyone in the classroom family. The kids are excited to have the teachers come to their homes, and there for the two days they are at school are CRAZY. The parents are stressed because the teachers are coming to their homes, and feel they need to clean the whole house, even though we only ever see the living room, the kitchen, and sometimes the children's bedrooms. Without fail every house we enter smell of clean agents. The teachers are stressed because they are trapped in a car with one another for two days straight, looking for and sometimes getting lost trying to find the houses of the families. Because of all this, the music played in the car can either make of break a situation. Thankfully this year, due to my wonderful father, I will not have to listen to the same CD or horrible radio, I get XM radio! You name it and we get to listen to it, and I am hopping this will help the trials and tribulations of our home visits go much smoother.

Norm Boots and Water Boarding

On Sunday I had dinner with my father, Grandmother Flora, Cousin Sean, and Cassidy. During the course of the meal the way I discipline my dog came up. I should say as cute as little Normy is, he has food and Kleenex rage, and becomes a vicious beast when he gets human food or Kleenex. He also has a tendency to bark at any and every thing that comes within 100 feet of our home. In our conversation we discusses how I choose to deal with him. In our house we use a spray bottle as a tool to help him understand that what he is doing is not ok, and to help him back off. My father immediately refereed to this method as water boarding, and called me a terrorist. Harsh, I know. I was then told that my father would remove the dog from my home if I continued to "water board" my dog. He's a bit nutty about the dog, considering he's the only "grandchild" he has. In all this conversing my grandmother pipes in and says "I've seen water boarding on TV it doesn't look that bad." Thanks for the back up grandma! So I leave it up to you, my beautiful public, am I a terrorist or a person trying to deal with a crazy dog?

Day in the life...

I want to start by saying I love my job. I know many people can't say that, but I do. I love the kids I get to see every day, and the fact that when I walk in to my classroom at 9 o'clock every morning 20 chipper little voices yell my name, and tell me how great I look or they like my hair, or just that they love me. Through out my day I am hugged, and loved, and told that I am loved. They are 20 little rye’s of sunshine that make my life so wonderful... With all this said, today I had to clean up poop*! Like literal poop*! I had the sweetest of little boys transferred into my class when we got back from the Christmas break. He is on what we in the education field call an IEP. Basically its special ed. Anywho, this sweet little boy has very little language, and a hard time letting us know when he needs to go to the bathroom. At the end of every day it's me and one other teacher, and usually about 12 kids, and we can't really leave each other alone with the kids. Well my sweet little guy was acting funny, and I'm not gonna lie walk funny, so I took to the bathroom, where he spent 5 minutes going to the bathroom, and then I realized he had shat in his pants. Not only was there poo in his underwear, it was caked on his bottom, and nether region, as well as on the toilet seat. It took me 5 minutes to clean the poor kid up, and when it was done, he looked up at me with his sweet, tear filled eyes (he had a constipation issue), and said "Thanks". Although I spent a good long time cleaning and smelling this kids shit, he truly was thankful for what I did. Its moments like this I love my job.
(*Word has been changed from original post upon request of Craig S. Ogan)