Rubber Chickens, Mr. Bones & the New Normal

I suppose you could blame it on the rubber chicken.

Or perhaps the sparkly tiara.

Or maybe even the pink fuzzy magic wand with its awesome magic wand sound.

Perhaps it was any of those things or maybe it was all of those things…But surely it was something that must have desensitized my students to my wackiness, and my wacky hall-monitoring, rubber-chicken, hand puppet-loving compadre Rhonda.

You see, my friend Rhonda borrowed a skeleton from the science department to teach some health-related something. (There's those darn tootin' things again.)

Well, she couldn't very well leave Mr. Slim Jim Bones in the classroom because experience has taught her that if one were to leave Mr. Slim Jim Bones alone in the classroom, well, bad things happen. Things like Mr. Slim Jim Bones would be missing some bones. Or worse, his bones would be detached and re-attached in places they most certainly don't belong.

So instead of leaving him unsupervised, Missy Rhonda wheels Mr. Slim Jim Bones out into the hall to assist with our hall monitoring. And there we stood with Mr. Slim Jim Bones with his left, bony arm around Missy Rhonda while I held Mr. Slim Jim's right hand.

We stood at our hall monitoring post before first period… and, well, the children walked right on by. Not a peep.

Between first and second period, I upped the ante a bit and donned my tiara since Mr. Slim Jim Bones was wearing a pink fuzzy one. All the children walked right on by. Not a peep except for one boy who said "awesome!"

When passing period was over, I went into my second period class with my sparkly tiara, and no one said a word. I was slightly disheartened.

When the bell for third period rang, all the children walked by apparently oblivious to Mr. Slim Jim Bones except one girl who merely pointed at us and smiled.

Fourth period… Not a peep. Not even one.

Fifth period? Nothing. Nadda, Zilch.

And so it pretty much went the rest of the day.

I finally turned to Rhonda and my other hall monitoring buddies and asked, "What part of this looks remotely like normal behavior to you?"

It took about three days, a pair of 3-D glasses and a pink 3-day for the Cure bracelet before the children acknowledged Mr. Slim Jim Bones.

Jeepers Creepers, how are we supposed to capture kid's hearts if it's this tough capturing their attention?

Training, Bug Out Bob & Chicken Chuckers

This past week was somewhat of a blur. That’s what happens when you don’t have a weekend because you’re running around Austin at the state journalism convention with a rubber chicken. Not having a weekend throws my entire work week off.

I guess that’s OK though since not much happened last week except for training to administer the upcoming state’s TAKS test. This will probably make my superduper nice principal and all those superduper nice counselors cringe, but I must say I did a silent, inner dance of joy when the power point presentation didn't work at our little morning training session.

No worries, though. I’ve  seen the power point thingy like a gajillion times and am fairly certain I can recite all the key parts backwards, forwards and even while doing the hokey pokey and turning myself around.

Early in the week, I did unveil all the new toys I purchased at Toy Joy in Austin–-the Fraggle Rock puppet, the new Chinese yo-yos and my new stress reliever, Bug Out Bob. 

When I was showing off Bug Out Bob, someone in class said I was immature. (Really?)

It’s a good thing I’m not overly sensitive. I almost got out my Chicken Chucker and fired off a round of rubber chickens, but I decided to save that idea for another day. (And if you don’t have your very own Chicken Chucker, might I suggest you run out speedy quick and get one.)

So now the weekend has crept up on me, but thankfully I am home with my three dogs, some green tea and some gingersnaps.

Oh and as an added bonus, no teenagers in sight to call me “immature.” 

Hand Raising, Geometric Shapes & Squiggly Feelings

Raise your hands if you survived the first week of school.

Raise your hands if your feet hurt after the first week of school.

Raise your hands if you’re ready for summer to roll around.

Did your hand pop up all three times? I know mine did. So while I should be working on my lesson plans for the week, some yearbook page designs and those darn tootin’ purchase orders that sadly I meant to complete sometime over the summer but never did, I’ve decided instead to do what any self-respecting Squiggle would do.

Rebel.

Oh my, I guess I forgot to tell you about the whole Circle, Square, Triangle, Squiggle thing. Almost sounds like a bad game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” doesn’t it? The Squiggle thing was all a part of this teacher in-service motivational thing that touched upon Psycho-Geometrics. At any rate, we discovered how our personalities fit a specific shape with special attributes. Squiggles apparently have high energy (so why am I so-o-o-o-o-o tired?), possess a sense of humor (that explains my rubber chicken and hand puppets) and exhibit a certain level of creative intelligence (well folks, just read this ole bloggeroo).

Squiggles also tend to like to challenge the status quo and rebel. Apparently, Squiggles have difficulty completing tasks like those pesky purchase orders.

For the first week of school, I decided to do the same little test with my newspaper and yearbook staffs as part of our “getting to know you” exercises.

About 98 percent professed to be Squiggles.

Jeez Louise, now do you see why I’m ready for summer to roll back around?

NYC, Missing Out & The Rubber Chicken

As promised, here is the much ballyhooed accounting of our little excursion to the Big Apple. You know it’s bad when, in all honesty, I have to report that the Rubber Chicken had a better time than I did. I spent at least 24 hours puking my guts out. Now before you get all excited and think it had something to do with St. Patrick’s Day, think again. Jeez Louise, remember the nine children? Remember I’m 52 years old? Remember we were there for a high school journalism convention for crying out loud.

No, apparently it either had something to do with some virus I picked up or that Linguine Vongole I ate. Either way I didn’t feel better until after I puked all night long, crawled into a cab and then threw up again in front of the nice little doctor’s office by Central Park, got a shot, drank some Gatorade and slept another 12 hours.

In the meantime, everyone else got to go to the Wall Street Journal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Central Park. Oh, and let’s not forget the three course dinner at the 21 Club and the orchestra section seats for the Mary Poppins Broadway show. Or let’s not forget the shopping or running willy-nilly through Times Square.

No siree, missy. I got to do none of that. Nope. Instead, I got to do things like see the Naked Cowboy on Times Square. Yeah, now that was some kind of fun.

So you can see how the Chicken enjoyed his little visit more than I did. Not only did he get to do all those fun-filled things. Hails bails, he even got to have his picture made with the pilot on our return flight home. Not that I’m complaining, but all I ever get on my airplane rides is a smile or two and an occasional packet of pseudo Chex mix. Yeah, that’s how I roll.

I didn’t even get to attend the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s awards ceremony to watch the kids collect their first ever national award—a Silver Crown. Nor did I get to teach my session on blogging where I intended to not only impart what little wisdom I possess, but I also intended to do a little bit of shameless blog self-promotion. I even made my own cute little business cards. Yep about 100 of them.

And yep, I still have 100 of them.

Probably the biggest disappointment, though, was that I didn’t get to spend much time with my little DIs (darling inspirations), so I don’t have much fun-filled fodder to report. I mean there were the regular things like getting on the wrong subway, someone falling down while trying to slide into the elevator, someone else accidentally opening the door to the airplane bathroom while someone was in there. You know, the regular stuff that occurs when traveling with teens. Still, I do have a few things to report.

Richie’s Top 5 Noteworthy Incidents
From Our NYC Trip

Incident #1…At the Museum of Modern Art…
Staffer… “Where’s the Mona Lisa”
Me… “In Paris”
Staffer… “Oh…I thought van Gogh did it.
Me… “Let’s institute the 10 second rule.”
Staffer… “Huh?”
Me… “Don’t say anything else without counting to 10 first, OK?”

Incident #2…Also about the Museum of Modern Art…
My newspaper editor…“Did you see the lint on the floor? How is that art? I could get my dog to chew something up and hack it back up on my carpet and call that art.”

Incident #3… Walking around the streets of New York…
One of the sports editors every time he came across a ventilation grate would stomp and yell, “Wake up Ninja Turtles!”

Incident #4… Waiting to board the plane…
Me…Why aren’t you boarding?
Staffer…“Oh, are they boarding?”
Me… “Yes. That’s why everyone is getting on. Jeez.”
Staffer…“I guess we’re on the short plane.”
I guess if Obama can make politically incorrect statements about special education so can the DIs.”

Incident #5… After my daughter chaperoned the DIs…
My daughter (who is the final stages of completing her student teaching in elementary education–she just loves teaching those little ones–and who thankfully stepped in to watch my big kiddos while I hovered near death in my fancy schmancy Times Square hotel room) returned from an outing with the children and said, “Mom, I don’t know how you do it. I could never teach high school.”

Hmmm, interesting. I’m not quite sure how I do it either.

My blogging absence

Fans of this blog may have noticed the absence of recent posts. Part of this was due to spring break and my New York City trip. And, yes, we will post photos of the Rubber Chicken in New York as well as bring you up to speed on some of the funfilled things that occurred including conversations at the Museum of Modern Art that went something like this…

staffer… “Richie, how come some of that stuff is in here? Did you see those photographs?"

me…“Yes, dear.”

staffer… “Why are they in the museum? I took better photographs for your photography class than that but you gave me a bad grade…”

me… “Yes dear… I’m just mean…”

But all of that funfilled extravaganza will have to wait. On my way back from NYC, I received word that my father–a true patriot and family man–had lost his battle with cancer. Even though expected, knowing never dulls the ache of the loss. I have much more to say about this and will post more later. I can’t tell you how much I have appreciated the thoughts and prayers of friends who knew. May God bless all of you.

Teens, Trips & the Rubber Chicken

Ah, it’s the week before Spring Break. Normally, this would be the time that we throw the final pages of our 304-page yearbook together to meet our final deadline and lock in our ship date.

Instead, I will be traveling with nine newspaper kids–let’s count them one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine–to New York City to attend the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s spring convention and collect our school’s first ever national award for its newspaper.

Pretty exciting stuff.

Pretty scary stuff.

Teenagers and trips.

Just the mere thought can make a teacher call the pension office and ask how much it will cost to buy additional years in order to qualify for retirement by tomorrow. When you say “teenagers and trips,” you might as well include the word “terror.” Just like Dorothy wandering through the forest in the Wizard of Oz chanting, “Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my,” substitute an old, fat, bitter teacher blubbering, “teenagers, trips and terror, oh my.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, some of my best memories have involved trips with my students. However, trips are where everything can suddenly spin out of control, things can and will go wrong, and when the dust settles, there you are, the last person standing, and all fingers are pointing at you—and not in a good way either.

You might as well walk out of a bathroom with toilet paper stuck to your shoe. Whatever happens, you will get the blame even though you had about as much ability to intervene as you do at stopping Mount St. Helens from spewing again.

Horror stories across the nation abound. I’ve known teachers who tape the outside of doors to see who busts curfew (Isn’t that sort of like closing the barn doors after all the cows/horses/whatever have run off?). I’m not sure how that all helps.

Veteran teachers check into hotels with specific orders to the hotel staff: “Turn off the phones. Turn off the adult movie channels. Don’t provide room service.” Still, disaster strikes.

We lecture our students. I tell mine: “No sex, drugs, and only a little bit of rock‘n’ roll is permissible. No talking to strangers. No going anywhere with strangers, and just remember, don’t do anything you wouldn’t want God or your Mama to see. That’s the test. If you wouldn’t want God or your Mama to see it, don’t do it.”

Despite the chill down my spine, I think I’m almost ready for the thrill of this trip.

We’ve already decided to bring the rubber chicken. (He’s never been before.) We also decided to photograph our rubber chicken like the elementary kids do with their flat Stanleys.

So you’re probably wondering about those yearbook pages, my page proofs, the new batches of photography projects to grade, and all that important paper work exponentially reproducing on my desk.

Well, as they say in New York, “furgetaboutit.”

I’m leaving the work and taking the chicken. You'll find us on top of the Empire State Building.

You know, I think this little excursion is going to be fun after all.

Mood Swings, Dodgeball & Gift Giving

Even if you don’t teach, you know the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas can be crazy. Please excuse the paraphrasing, but these are, indeed, times that can try our souls.

Lately, I’ve been using my Desktop Dodgeball Kids to track and signify my mood of the minute, not my mood of the day. Yes, that’s right, I said minute. And lately, I’ve been posting this one:




so I probably ought not to delve into the shenanigans of the week.

OK, so I know shenanigans isn’t really the most accurate word to use here, but I love that word. I love the way it sounds, the way it flows, the way it encompasses so many things. And, that of course, got me to thinking (and we all know what happens when that happens).

But I got to thinking that perhaps now would be a good time to write about some things that I love like my little dodgeball kids which were a gift from my BFF Jennifer.

Well that gift-giving thing got me to thinking about teacher gifts (after all it is the Christmas season), so I thought perhaps I should share a few ideas for gifts that should top everyone’s holiday list this year. Now, I’d like to say that my book should be at the top of everyone’s gift giving list, but since I am still several months away from publication, you’ll just have to wait for the memo on that one and save a few bucks for later. (Don’t you just love shameless self-promotion?). So here’s my list sans my book (And don’t you just love the fact that my four years of college French has finally come in handy?)

Richie’s Top Five Holiday Gift Giving Ideas

#5…Anyone who’s anybody in the EduSphere has to know Mr. Teacher. In fact, he recently hosted the 200th Carnival of Education. If you went to his site for the carnival, you probably noticed the book he has for sale, “Learn Me Good.” I’ve read the book and it’s a quick and funny read. But if reading isn’t your thing, you can always snap up one of his hilarious t-shirts here for any teacher in your life. From “Darth Grader” to “I teach therefore I am… poor” t-shirts, I giggled just reading the choices.

#4…The Desktop Dodgeball Kids mentioned earlier. My BFF Jennifer originally gave them to me to relieve deadline stress. “I know you can’t hit the children,” she said, “but you can whack these little guys with this nifty little ball. It’ll make you feel better.” She was right, of course, about whacking children and the dodgeball kids. But like I said before, these little guys are also nifty to track and illustrate mood shifts. Don’t you just love multi-purpose toys?

#3…A tiara. How you managed to exist without one for this long I will never know. Even if you aren’t a girly girl (because I certainly am not), you need one. Life just seems exponentially better with one. I keep one at the ready in the classroom for kids to wear when they need a pick-me-up or it’s their birthday or because sometimes you just need a tiara. So buy one for yourself and for another teacher in your life. I keep mine handy for when I need to remind the kiddos that I am Queen of my classroom or if I’m having a bad hair day. And, then of course, there are just those days when I need to feel better, and a tiara, as well as a handful of Emergency Chocolate, does the trick.

Which, of course, brings us to Gift Idea #2…

#2…Emergency Chocolate. Who doesn’t adore chocolate? You can never have enough. I still like my personalized Dove Chocolate messages from last year. Remember for a mere $59.99, you can get 50 Dove chocolates with your own “four unique” messages. I think, though, I might substitute “Hails Bails!” and “Don’t Be A Big Fat Stupidhead!” for two of my messages from last year.

And, drum roll pah-leese…Richie’s Number 1 gift idea…A rubber chicken, of course! Jeez Louise, I can’t believe you haven’t purchased a rubber chicken for the teacher in your life. What in the Sam Hill are you waiting for? If you are new to my blog, you’ll need to go here and perhaps here to read all the reasons why no teacher should live another minute without his or her very own rubber chicken. You’ll have to trust me on this one.

And besides, see how perfectly a rubber chicken fits into a Christmas stocking. It just doesn’t get much better than that.

Maladjusted hamsters, face creams & rubber chickens

Call me crazy, but life needs just a tad bit more humor to it.

We spend much of our time scurrying like maladjusted hamsters in a cage–serious and intent on whatever task presents itself. I have the lines on my face to prove it, and trust me, no amount of Elizabeth Arden magic face cream at $150 a pop is ever going to fix that. Perhaps a trip to one of those fancy, schmancy nip and tuck doctors would do the trick, but hey, I’m a public school teacher, so that stands about as much of a chance of happening as stopping kids from gawking at a full-fledged brawl in the hall.

So enter the chicken. Yep, the yellow, rubber chicken.

Probably about eight years ago, I discovered (without the benefit of an educational grant or the Bill Gates foundation) that kids learn more if you humor them a bit. I wish I could say I conducted a scientific study, extrapolated this, surveyed a little bit of that, did the hokey, pokey and…

But I didn’t. (Ok, maybe the hokey, pokey once or twice, but we can always save that story for another day.) Instead, I was presenting something insightful–probably a lecture about photo composition–and needed to point at something on the screen. I grabbed the first thing handy which just happened to be a rubber chicken (a recent acquisition from a high school journalism workshop).

“No, she didn’t,” someone said from the back of the room.

I looked up. Smiles everywhere.

The next day the class remembered everything. It hit me then that throughout our lives we remember best those moments either wrapped around laughter and fun or those touched with sadness and pain.

Given the choice, shouldn’t we package those lessons–those "teachable moments" as we call them in educational jargon–in humor?

I vote humor.

***

In case you were wondering (and I know you were), in addition to being a rather excellent pointer, here are some other uses for a rubber chicken (all tried, true and tested by my students)…

•As a blinker…Ever travel with kids in rush hour traffic and no one will let the school’s humongous van into the next lane? Well, roll down that window and stick the rubber chicken out. Cars will part as if Moses himself was there. (Not sure if it’s because the other driver’s are laughing so hard, or they’re giving wide berth to that crazy driver.)

•As a scare tactic… Our rubber chicken also squawks. Give the chicken a squeeze to scare panhandlers and other undesirables away from the kids when you’re on school trips. Trust me, it works.

•As a clearance detector… If you’re spatially impaired and if driving through underground garages makes you wonder if that rental vehicle with the luggage rack will make the clearance without shaving off the top, well then, stick the rubber chicken out the sunroof or window. If the chicken whacks its head on the ceiling, you probably ought to turn around.