Our festivities got cut short today. New Ulm called off school early because of the storm, so they went home at 12:45. Nicollet never did call school off, so the rest of us stayed til the end of the day. Some trickled home little by little as parents picked them up throughout the afternoon. It's a bummer because I had a guest speaker lined up. This one is a 28 year old student in his first semester at MLC on the pastor track. He had previously been in the air force for six years and spent time in Saudi Arabia as a translator (he's fluent in Arabic). The kids who heard him enjoyed his presentation!
The rest of the afternoon was pretty low key. Our all-school activity was a puzzle contest. Mrs. R got multiple copies of the same puzzle and divided whoever was left into groups. We had five groups of four participating plus some preschoolers working on their own easier puzzles. One group only had three, so I joined them after a while. Normally I'm not a puzzler, but I actually had a lot of fun! My group got third place and finished just in time for the bus.
The Nicollet bus driver must've been in a hurry to get on the road, because she left before all the kids were outside! Three students didn't make it out before she drove off. One of my students began to bawl. Not that many people were on the bus, so we didn't even have anyone on the bus with a phone to call besides the driver. Mr. E tried calling her, but she didn't answer. Thankfully, either someone told her she was missing kids or she realized it; she came back and got our leftovers. Whew!
Now it's time for me to make my way home... I've been putting it off. It's gross out there and I don't think it's going to get worse, so I might as well stay put and get things done in my room. There are lulls every once in a while; I might leave during one of them. Or right after the plow goes by.
In the meantime, I cleaned out one of the baskets on my desk, kind of a catchall for loose papers, notes with ideas for later, things I want to look up, teaching hints. I've accumulated a lot of thoughts after 10.5 years. It's bittersweet looking through them; I've put a lot of time and effort into my profession. Some notes are ideas I never pursued and don't care to anymore; those are easy to discard. Some are things I'm still curious about. I have to decide if they are things future 5-6th grade teachers will find valuable and if so, where to put them so they are easy to find and use. But those are thoughts for another time. Time for me to go home!
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