I’ve Been Blackmailed

It’s been a rough week.  Homesickness isn’t really something I experience too often, but this week it hit really hard.  I like my job so very much and I’ve made some wonderful friends here, but this week I just craved familiarity.  I miss my Florida life and my friends.  I miss being able to just wake up and walk Charlie in my pj’s without brushing my hair or putting on makeup.  I miss not having to pooper scoop. I miss Netflix.  I miss being able to jump in my car and drive somewhere, anywhere. Although I don’t miss the car payment, insurance, gas and tolls.  I miss being able to call my parents or my sisters just to check in and say hi.  I miss my baby nephew that is only 7 weeks old and I haven’t even met yet!  I miss so many things.

Today I had a fantastic day at work though. That helped a lot. I laughed from start to finish.

It started out with my 4th grade A.D.D. child and his friend. They are terribly difficult to control but after 5 months I have semi-mastered this child with his 5 second attention span. Today we talked about farms and farmers which is extra fun for me since my dad is a farmer. After our lesson we had a few minutes left so they drew me a picture of my dad and his farm.

This is Farmer Joe holding his machete. You also see his farm which is composed of “plants”, a cow, a shark-like animal with legs, and horse/sheep/pig hybrid, and another unidentified animal. 

At the end of class I always make them answer one question before I give them the candy they earned during class.  When I asked, “what is a farmer?”, they both yelled out in unison, “Teacher Amy father is farmer!”  Yay!!!  I was so proud.

A few hours later I was blackmailed by a 15 year old child. This class is a trio of “cool” boys and they caught me off guard so I accidently told them to “shut up.” 

“I didn’t say that, you misheard me.  I said stop it. shut it? shush?” They didn’t buy it.

Not 5 minutes later and one dropped his cell phone on the floor.  “Oh *F-bomb*!”

Oh no!… You can’t say that in my classroom! 

“Teacher, I said, ‘oh beautiful!’”  argh.

You cannot say that in my classroom.  (as I shake uncontrollably from laughter).

“Teacher.  You didn’t say ‘shut up,’ and I didn’t say ‘oh, f-bomb.’ Ok?”

Ugh.  Don’t say it again.

“Teacher, you don’t say ‘shut up’ anymore and I won’t say that anymore.” 

Ugh. Deal.