Shannon Costello

I left school feeling pretty good about my stopping point. Mostly I have felt horribly behind this week. However, we have survived the first quarter! A couple of moments stand out from this week…I’ll try to capture them here.

Weirdest Moment

Sometimes I can’t believe what I am saying…or the tone in which I say it. Consider the following conversation, conducted in the hallway, with next to no expression in the voices of either party.

Student A (to Student B): You’re a fat panda-head.
Me (pushing my cart ahead of me): It’s not nice to call people a fat panda-head.
Student A: Yeah. I guess so.

Most Frustrating Moment

Schools are great because large numbers of people are carefully collected and sorted within the walls of the building, people who can be put to all sorts of uses with little apparent regard to whether or not this interferes with the function of the school.

Today I learned that one of my 7th grade classes will be pulled from the classroom to take a tobacco use survey in the cafeteria. The class is a 90-minute class and the survey will take 45 minutes. However, it will take time to get the kids down there and settled, so I have been advised to plan for an hour. The survey will begin 15 minutes into the class and conclude 15 minutes before the end of class. Could it possibly have been better calculated for maximum disruption?

Most Relaxing Moment

I got a hold of a copy of “Messenger” by Lois Lowry, mistakenly believing that it was the sequel to “The Giver”. (There is another book “Gathering Blue” that comes in between.) I prefer to eat lunch at 11:30, immediately after my second class. No one else eats during that time, so I read “Messenger” during that time. It was a nice little book and I passed several very pleasant lunch periods.

Most Exhausting Moment

Um, that would be at around 1:30 tomorrow morning, during the youth lock-in. I think I’m too old for lock-ins.