Apocalypse Now?

9 1/2 Days.    When I taught at the Middle School, there used to be a celebration by teachers of reaching the milestone of "Single Digits" after school at this point in the year.

Really?  How did this happen?  

Yearbooks were distributed yesterday afternoon, making today the first day of the annual begging, pleading, threatening phrase "PUT THE YEARBOOK AWAY OR I WILL TAKE IT!"

At one point, I pointed out that the year isn't over yet, and that by looking back they were forgetting to live in the moment.  You should have seen the eye-rolls as they stuffed their yearbooks in their backpacks.

 A Clean Desk is a Sign of the End of the Year...

Sanity maintenance, oh, okay, and Charlotte Danielson, required that I clean my desk today.  Our annual self-evaluation is due tomorrow, and I needed to cull through all the treasures I've "filed" away during the year so that I could put them all in a lovely notebook to present to my principal to prove my worth as a teacher.

I am not a person who functions well with things shelved nicely behind closed cabinets.  I forget what's there, and am inspired by what I see.  Honestly, I am often shamed into creating neat piles by some of my co-workers and more fastidious students who are overwhelmed by the chaos that is my normal.

That's not to say that the thorough pile-search today was a chore.  Actually it was quite the opposite.  This has been a very rough week for a variety of reasons, too burdensome to delve into here.  So finding happy memories of this year, and gathering them together in one place to prove that I'm effective helped me to convince myself that a single bad week in the course of a year is a pretty darned good year.

The three day weekend is almost here.  Einstein (allegedly) agrees that my desk clutter supports my qualifications to teach the brilliant kids -- even if it's only by association.  I'm not talking home stretch,  and I'm dreading watching my seniors graduate in two weeks.

Nobody has yet to make graduation proof mascara.