Reduced for Quick Sale

Saw this at Safeway the other day. Despite the great deal I didn't buy any.

Thought of the Week

Being Principal

For homework my students had to write a story using their vocabularly words. The prompt was, "If I was principal..." One of my students wrote the story below. Somehow the principal, vice principal, a few other teachers and I all ended up janitors.

If I Were The Principal

by Deja Terrel

I paced my office trying to think about what to do with the pretentious janitor sitting in my newly imported suede office chair. Trying to keep order at Einstein Middle School, my school, has been getting harder and harder over the past few days since I became principal.

“So, Mr. Burrill, today you threw 2 students in trash cans, and as you know I can’t just let you infringe upon students’ space,” I paced to my desk and picked up the janitor’s file along with 3 others. “So you, Mr. Kerze, Ms. Leas, and Ms. Ruggerio have been repeatedly breaching contract, I keep trying to portray a healthy environment for kids to hang out free of homework, but you’re ruining it!”

The janitor looked at me. Just stared, and his 7 janitor friends Leas, Kerze, McKenna, Osteen, Pannu, Kirkland, and Ruggerio walked in nonchalantly, as if they ran the place. Janitor Kirkland walked over to my desk and dug his hand into my copious life-supply jar of M&M’s in such an inadequate way I wanted to throw him out. My body guards must have been proponents of my thought because as soon as his hand touched the jar three 7th graders stepped out of the corner.

“Boys calm down,” I said.

“You didn’t expect this did you!” said Mr. Burrill. “Although I did marvel at the idea of Mr. Kerze being a janitor it’s not right!”

“Well played Burrill, well played,” I said. “But there is no correlation between you and I, I’m Principal, you’re a janitor, I’m popular, you’re…”

“Well Burrill’s popular to us!” shouted Leas from the back of the room. “It would behoove you to give us our jobs back or this will get ugly.”

“ENOUGH!” I shouted. “No one is getting a job back, but I’m very adept at forgetting the past, see I don’t even remember how you guys got here, now get out!”

I had had enough. They were being so mean. I gave them a job when I didn’t even have a unanimous decision to, but 3/4th of the school wanted to throw them out. I waited for the rest of the janitors to exit and went to my desk. I was ready to make a very important announcement. Me performance as principal was better than mediocre, but it was time for my reign to come to an end. I knew I couldn’t stop this from happening, because after all you can’t stop the inevitable.

“Students of Albert Einstein Middle School this is your principal Déjà Terrell making an announcement. I will be resigning from my job, but before I do I want all of the students to trash the school. I’ve always thought art was the best way to express yourself, so today you’re going to be articulate, and express yourself all over school. You all have permission to get everything from eggs from the cafeteria, to paint from the janitor’s room, or as I’d like to say Burrill, Leas, Kerze, Pannu, Kirkland, Osteen, McKenna and Ruggerio’s former room. They’ll be appointed as teachers and principals again. I hope you all have a fantastic day. Goodbye,” I turned off the intercom, and slowly swirled out of my chair. I grabbed my briefcase and left the school on my Barbie bike.

Boobs

Question 1

I've recently been working through some problems at work. That process included doing things like investigating long-term medical leaves, fantasizing about all the things I could be doing with my time if I wasn't working, and contacting my old boss. She was my principal for a couple years, she is now very high-up in a nearby district, and I know she has a lot of respect for me as educator.

I told her I had a few questions for her, but wanted to ask her off the record so I requested a personal e-mail address. I sent her an e-mail titled "Question 1."

The e-mail:

My first question for you:

I recognize that I have some attributes that make me a very good educator. I also know that I am cocky and stubborn. Do you think I am difficult to work with?

--Kevin

She wrote back:

And your second question? :)

Sign

I didn't end up buying this sign for my house, because I didn't want to offend anyone. (Some of my friends don't play poker at all.)

Thought of the Week

I want to look back and be able to smile at my past. And know that I did all the wrong things for all the right reasons.
--Indigo Broderick

Returning to Baseline

I was struggling to to find the time, energy, and material to maintain my column on a weekly basis. So last month I decided to switch to monthly. Now, I feel like it has been way too long since I have posted. So I came up with a new solution.

I have intentionally tried to keep my blog from being typical. Although it is fine if you use your blog to update your life and post pictures of your kids being cute and talk about your vacation schedule. That is not the purpose of my blog. I wanted to maintain that it is meant to be for entertainment not personal information.

However, I am going to now revert to something more typical of most blogs. I'm going to post whenever the heck I have something to post about. Not weekly. Not monthly. But sporadically. I'll give this a shot for a while and see how it works. I'll keep you updated. The goals of the blog will be the same, but the frequency of posts will be a mystery. I'm returning to baseline.

I was told that variable intervals was the best form of reinforcement to increase desired behavior. So there you go. You'll hear back from me next... when you do.