Blessed Are The Geek

gunsandrobots:

How my brother, a fifth grade teacher addressed his class this morning regarding the events at Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday. Couldn’t have been more fitting. Damn proud of him.

I went to see The Hobbit Friday afternoon immediately after leaving work. For those who don’t know, I teach elementary school. I read about what had happened during lunch, but I didn’t know all the details yet. As I locked my classroom and made my way to the theater to meet my girlfriend, I still hadn’t discussed the events with anyone. My mind was racing as I thought about my students, my school, and my actions if I was ever in that unimaginable situation. I was ready to get lost in Middle Earth that day for more reasons than one. When Gandalf said this, I smiled and thought to myself, “Yes.”

That’s the reason I get up and go do what I do everyday. To keep the darkness at bay.

A retired teacher from the school I work at posted this screencap from the Today Show on Facebook. It’s a woman in Kenya dancing in celebration of Obama’s re-election while wearing our elementary school’s field day t-shirt from 1996.

You always hear about the t-shirts, etc. printed up with declaring the losing team as Super Bowl, etc. Champs being shipped to other countries, and you know people are always donating old stuff to various charities. Those donations end up somewhere.

Still, you don’t expect to see them on the Today Show fifteen years later.

GPOY: School picture edition.

Writing an IEP and watching Next Generation. Man, “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is a great episode.

Look what I started reading to my class today!

GPOYW: Today was a pretty lousy day. Seriously. But I did buy a Batman mask to wear to work Friday as part of Spirit Week.

Hey, Tumblr friends! Help me and the many students at my school by saving Box Tops. Message me and I can tell you how to send them to me. We are trying to raise $2000 for our school through Box Tops this year. Each Box Top is worth $0.10 so that means we need 20,000 of them. So, we’re going to need some help.

My tweet from before work this morning. I have a terrible ear ache. I am trying to avoid a doctor’s visit. I had the school nurse look at my ear, and I am following her advice which includes taking two Benadryl each night. One Benadryl knocks me out. That’s why I went to bed at 7:45 last night, and I am about to go to bed now. Despite feeling sub par, the Batman socks helped make this a successful hump day.

This is why my colleagues and I teach…for a better microwave pizza, that we can consume while we do paperwork at our desk during our 20 minute lunch period.

Watching Torchwood: Children of Earth today. And lesson planning.