I like my job today.

I realize that my usual M.O. is to bitch and moan about my job and life in general about the things that annoy me. Well, today I'd like to share some of the things that spice it up and make it interesting, to say the least. Excuse the disjointedness, but I'm just picking snippets that stick out to me right now.

Honors 9: We started Shakespeare today, and I am totally excited. The kids are really pumped up and I think (read: I hope) have picked up on my enthusiasm for A Midsummer Night's Dream. I did a bit of vocab with them, told them what a lexicon is and that Shakespeare's was outrageously large, shattered their world with the fact that the man and actor Shakespeare might not be the person who actually wrote the plays and poems, and told them about baudy Shakespearean puns and promised to tell them what they mean if they can be mature; otherwise, the puns would just go right over their heads. This was in response to a few sniggers at the fact that Oberon's use of "testy" meant "ready to fight" as well as a reference to "testicles."

CP 9 (hellians, these ones): We worked on fables today, and the kids actually wrote their own and did a great job. I told them how proud I was of them and that they are smarter than they think they are, and they left in a good mood. One kid had me laughing until I cried in this class today. At one point, I was trying to rein in the posse and get them quiet, and he looked at me and said, "What are you looking at me for? I'm just digging out boogers." Sure enough, he had about a mile of tissue on his desk and was faithfully plucking boogers one by one from his nose. Toward the end of class, he said, "Ms. E! Can I go out in the hall for a minute?!" "Why?" "I gotta fart!" A chorus arose from the back corner with about 4 kids shouting at me, "Ms. E! Pleeeease let him go. His farts are NASTY!" The kid looked at me again and said, "Ms. E, I can't hold it!" At that point, I told him to just go and be quick about it. This is the same kid, who, when I gave him a bathroom pass a week or so ago, was gone for 15 minutes, finally came back to class and said, "I'm sorry I took so long, Ms. E, I'm just constipated." I don't think he's doing this for attention because he does that in other ways. He's just extremely matter-of-fact about everything. Lord have mercy.

CP 12: The seniors were tolerable today. They actually participated in their group work and dutifully took notes. I scared them, I think, about their grades and threatened them with graduation. We'll see if they actually take me up on the offer for extra help. Magic 8 ball says, "outlook not so good," since they've been aware and reminded of this offer every day of this semester.

I'm supposed to go shopping sometime with the department for supplies for my room. It's a carrot the administration is trying to give us for adding a ton of students to our classes 4 weeks into the semester and adding the pressure of test results.

Word of the Day: prestidigitation, meaning "sleight of hand."

I'm reading Sanditon by Jane Austen and "A Lady." It's a continuation of Austen's last unfinished novel. I remain skeptical at this point, but compelled to read it nonetheless. The end.