A list

The literal worst:

We had a debrief with the district's head of security and a police officer about our lockdown/secure situation last week.  I had to fight tears a few times.  It's very emotional thinking about these little lives that I want to protect.  It's very emotional thinking about other teachers in other schools who didn't ask for this, but have laid down their lives to protect little ones.  I hate that we have to have these conversations.  I hate that we had to talk about whether or not you should open the classroom door if someone was knocking and you knew that all your students weren't inside your classroom, but it could potentially be the gunman.

It left me with a huge headache.

The wisdom of Solomon:

I had a student who lost his sunglasses while we were out doing our dance practice.  (Friend, just don't bring your sunglasses when you are 100% ill-equipped to hold onto ANYTHING.) He was upset because they were his brother's glasses.  I said, "Don't worry.  We'll find them."

After the rehearsal was over, I said, "I will give a treat to anyone who can find these missing sunglasses."

The entire group of third graders fanned out over the field.  Pretty quickly, one of the boys emerged with the glasses.  "You found them!" I said.  "Come to my room after school and I will give you a treat."

The boy who lost the glasses asked, "Where were they?"

The finder of the glasses stammered and said, "Well...in my pocket...I wanted to...try them on."

I gave the little thief a treat after school.  He had, after all, come clean.

Let's be honest:

My class had their last library day.  Later during my lunchtime, the librarian was in my classroom, giving me overdue book notices to send home.  She said, "You had a really hard class this year.  You must go home exhausted every day."  I told her yes.  Yes, I do.  She said, "I hope your husband doesn't expect much of you this summer and you can rest."

The bar has been pretty low for awhile now....

I have no words:

A student said, "When I blew my nose, my stomach started hurting.  And also, my snot was orange and pink."