Let's just say I ended the day with retail therapy!

Last night, I had a dream that I ran out of stickers for my graded papers. I know, crazy, right? I hardly ever dream of school, but I did last night and I was stressed over STICKERS! Really, I think I was just stressed with preparing grades for report cards and preparing for today's field trip.

Field trips always stress me out. I think I feel overwhelmed with taking the children out somewhere new, what if I lose one and what if they get hurt? It is funny how the children are so excited about the field trip, and I'm desperately trying to be excited for them, but deep down I'm a nervous wreck.

To help with some of the anxiety of the field trip, I stayed late on Thursday making sure everything I needed was put together, so I wasn't going crazy looking for them in the morning. I picked the outfit I was going to wear for today and had it ready on the edge of my bed. I had everything ready to make for an easy morning. I woke up this morning, got ready to go and headed out the door.

On my ride to school, I PASSED one of my students in their vehicle. (Passed is capitalized for a reason, this is important information that will come in handy, later.) I was thrown off guard, when Joseph's little sister started yelling, "HI, MS. J" and waving her arms to get my attention. I have heard my name called in a store, across a parking lot, and at a church, never have I heard my name while driving from another car.

I get to school and had a fight with the copy machine, unfortunately the copy machine won. The children enter the classroom at 8:00 and I warn them that I know they are excited about the field trip, but I'm stressed because I am worried about something happening and that we are not leaving until we finish our two tests and quiz. The children begin taking their normal Friday tests. We finish up in enough time to use the bathrooms before leaving.

I line the children up by their chaperone and count them twice before heading out to the bus. We get outside and the chaperones inform us, that the bus is not here. I reply, "He is probably running a few minutes late and will be here soon." Five minutes pass, there is not a bus in sight. Ten minutes, I call the student who is my teacher's aide, "Please ask Mrs. A if she can call the bus driver because he is not here." Mrs. A, is the third grade teacher who was also attending the field trip with us.

Mrs. A meets me outside and says, "The bus driver did not know he was driving us today."

Pause. Truly at a moment like this you are speechless, you kind of do the head shake with open mouth, meaning what are we going to do.

I bring my students back to class and we send for the principal of the school, who is currently in Mass with the other classes. Mrs. A and I begin tossing around the idea of carpooling over for the field trip. Mr. G comes down to our crazy mess, and agrees to let us carpool to the field trip. We sit the children in the hallway to match them with parents to carpool over and Mrs. A and I realize that we may be driving for this field trip.

"I can drive, but I have to stop for gas." I told her.

"J-E-S-T-I-N-E!" yells Mrs. A, her hands come flying up, so at this point I know she is stressed.

"I DIDN'T REALIZE WE WERE GOING TO HAVE TO DRIVE," I yelled back.

Mrs. A and I were not mad at each other, but just frustrated with the situation. We start placing children with parents for carpool and I have two student left. I go in my room to get my keys and cannot find them anywhere. Stressed beyond belief, I have two fourth graders helping, looking in their desks? One of the parents walks in the classroom and says they will put the back seats of their van up, so we can ride with him. We get in the van, I call the place we are visiting and let them know we are on our way, at this point I'm ready for my nap.

We arrive to our location and our greeted outdoors, the woman asks if we are ready to begin. My response was, "I don't know if all my students are here, I need to count them." All the children made it safely there and we begin out field trip. The children and chaperones start without me. Upon entering the building, I was told that someone called our field trip and asked to pay for the entire trip and the place we were visiting needed to know if that was okay. We were renting a bus from a local Catholic High School, who felt bad that the driver they hired for us, did not come, which was so sweet of them to do. Unsure of what the policy was, I ask Mrs. A. who also didn't know, so I called the school. Mr. G said that was fine, so thank you to the person who paid our classes, the children had a wonderful time.

I was now free to join my class for the rest of the field trip. After we were finished we went outside and had lunch in the pavilion. I must say I am addicted to www.weather.com, but that certainly did not prepare us for how chilly it would be outside. We had another location that we were to visit, but at this point, we decided just to arrive back to school early. Many of the parents did not know where the other place was, and we would be spending a lot of time outdoors in the cold.

While driving back, Joseph says, "Mr. S, I think you should have let Ms. J. drive."

Mr. S. asks, "Why is that?"

"Well, she could probably get us back to school a lot faster, she passed my mom on our way to school this morning."

So, if that wasn't embarrassing enough. We end up stopping at a traffic light, where Raphael says, "Ms. J. that man in the truck next to us is looking at you."

"He is not looking at me."

All the children go, "Yes, he is, look."

I look and the man is not looking at me. "See, he is not looking at me."

"Now he is," says one of the boys.

"Do you think that man is attractive?" asks Raphael.

At this point, I needed to be out of the van. This was going downhill and downhill fast.

We arrived back to school early and had a movie day with the children. The parents really came together helping to make hot chocolate and provide the children with endless sweets. The children in the end had an awesome day. They loved the field trip and the afternoon movie. We may have had a rough start, but in the end the children had a blast, saying it was their favorite day of school so far.

Jacob and Esau

First of all, I apologize for taking a break from posting. Life has been rather busy, especially school. The class and I have spent the past week seeing how many things we can cram into one day. The realization that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming soon has definitely occurred to me, as we are now getting to the point in the year where we get to see how many activities we get to add to our day. This is partly my fault with overbooking myself to do many things in one day. For example, Monday I scheduled myself for a belated Mole Day celebration, conference, Spelling Bee club, and an after school meeting, which actually was over shortly after I arrived.

Today we began studying Jacob and Esau, this is one of my favorite chapters to cover in Religion. To begin our new chapter, I began by talking to the students about their own families and the order of the children in their families. I decided to pick one child and have them name all the children in their family. I then told the children that many years ago, that the oldest son would inherit the families belongings and so we talked about who would inherit the family's wealth. We then also talked about a family that had all daughters and the rule of marriage, typically the oldest daughter needed to get married before the younger daughters, which we would concentrate more about later in the week.

My students could not believe it, why would parents give everything to just one child? We then discussed how this is not a typical custom for many families today. I used the example of my family, where my parents hope is to split everything evenly between my siblings and I.

Agnes then asks, "What did they do in the case of twin boys?"

"That is a great question, Agnes. We are going to read about that right now."

We begin reading our religion book, where the students learn that Jacob and Esau are in fact twin boys. Esau being the oldest and Jacob the youngest. We go on to read how Esau is willing to give away his birthright to Jacob over food. We end up stopping at this point for the children to go to music class.

"Ms. J. in third grade Mrs. A. used to read to us and she always stopped at the good parts and now you are making us stop at the good part, too." Celine tells me.

"I'm sorry, but we have to go to music, but we will read more later today besides this will give us something to look forward to."

"I really want to know what happens next." says Joseph. "Can we read ahead?"

"No, let us all find out together, then it will be a surprise."

Like most Tuesdays, after music class the pastor of the church comes to visit our class. I was so happy because often times the priest will ask the children what we are studying in class and usually only a hand or two go up to answer his question. As a teacher, you sit there and say to yourself, I know I am teaching them something. Today, many hands go up as the children were very excited with the story of Jacob and Esau.

Cronius raises his hand and asks, "Father I do not understand, why would Esau just give up his birthright for food?"

Father responds back saying, "Well, we do not know how long Esau was out hunting, maybe he didn't eat for a week, he could have been very hungry."

Father begins talking more with the children about Jacob and Esau and begins to go beyond what we have studied about the two brothers. He ends our lesson with a closing prayer. It does not take him long to leave our classroom before Ralph says, "Ms. J. you told us we could not read ahead because you wanted us to be surprised, but Father just told us something that is going to happen."

"I'm sure Father didn't realize we haven't gotten that far in our studies and everyone was so eager to find out what happened next. Now you know."

"Well, I'm just saying, it isn't a surprise anymore."

"Trust me there is more to the story that Father hasn't told you, yet."

"Like?"

"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise."

Sometimes I do not understand children, they are so eager to know something, but get upset if you ruin the surprise by telling them information too soon. On the other hand, I am eager for tomorrow's lesson myself, where we will study about Jacob being the one tricked.

Oh dear, the things students say in class.

Today one of my children came in late. She had to get a cavity filled and the poor thing, her mouth was swollen coming into lunch. Unsure if she was even chewing correctly, she decided to save her lunch for later because she thought that her food was falling out of her mouth, which it wasn't. As the day moved on and the medicine was wearing off; her mouth began to hurt. Unsure of what to do, we tried a few things, but it really didn't work. I finally told her I didn't know how to help her, so another student responds, "Well, I know something."

"Okay," at this point I need some advice, and I was somehow willing to hear a fourth grader's idea. Maybe this probably wasn't the best choice.

"Well, once I hurt my mouth and so my parents gave me a little bit of alcohol to make it better."

"I cannot give her alcohol."

The child responds back hearing what the other child said, "WHAT???"

I quickly lined the class up to go to special and took the child to the office for a fresh new set of ideas, this time from adults.

On a side note to add to the comments of children thinking I'm old, I was also asked if games were invented yet when I was a kid.

Ms. J better watch out!

Today we began lining up to go to lunch and thankfully today I remembered to actually bring a lunch. Today like most days that I bring a lunch, I brought in a frozen dinner. The nice thing about frozen dinners is that you do not have to prepare anything in the morning, so I enjoy just grabbing one out of the freezer and heading out the door. I went to my bag and grabbed my lunch as the children were lining up and was like usual followed by Cronius. Cronius always follows me when we line up, he usually has many things he wants to share. However today, Cronius says, "Ms. J. you better stay away from Mr. G and Mr. P!"

"Why is that?" I ask.

"Well you see, there is a commercial with a woman getting ready to eat a frozen dinner and she is attacked by a man who wants her food."

"Oh, I haven't seen that commercial."

"Yes, well you are a woman and Mr. G. and Mr. P. are men and they might attack you for your lunch."

"Well, I will stay away from them while I'm eating my lunch then, I definitely do not want to be attacked."

Has anyone actually seen this commercial?

Ms. J's Newspaper Club

Last year, I sat in the eighth grade graduation listening to one of the eighth grader's speak on their experience at the school. They mentioned every grade and something that was special about each grade. He said fourth grade was the year of clubs. I thought, I have a club, the spelling bee club, but the kids aren't really much into making their own clubs. This year, clubs are all the rage. There is the Cronius Club, the Percy Jackson Club, and poor Agnes has tried making the Agnes Club, but it wasn't very successful.

Every morning, we add any prayer petitions to our morning prayer. The other morning, Cronius mentions the miners who were caught in the mine. I do not have cable, and had not heard any news on this happening, so I said, "oh, dear, I did not hear about that, I hope they will be alright." The children went into more detail about what was happening. We had morning prayer and then we started our day, but little did I know, the children made plans to start a new club the Ms. J. Newspaper Club.

During recess the children used this time to begin making a newspaper for me. The newspaper is too precious not to post.

Ms. J. is afraid of ALL bugs

So, today we returned back to class from recess, of course it is my recess week, and hardly any children talk to me outside, but the minute we walk in they have a million things to tell me. Raphael noticed that there was a dead moth in the marker holder of the board (I have no idea what you call that). I step back and the children ask me why, I said I am afraid of bugs.

Raphael then decides to pick it up and toss it in my direction. I scream and majority of my class laughs. Celine takes the time to come and rub my back and try to comfort me and says that her sister is afraid of bugs, too. The class then asks why I am afraid of bugs. I said I do not know why, I just am, bugs and most things that are dead.

Cronius then says, "How can you be afraid of God's creatures?"

I said, "I guess the same way people are afraid of heights, water, and clowns."

"Are you afraid of all bugs?" Celine asked.

"Yes," I respond back.

"What about lady bugs?"

"Yes."

"What about butterflies?"

"I like them from a distance, but not too close to me."

Later in the day, I took the time to talk to Raphael. I told him despite me being afraid of bugs or not the fact that he tossed a bug at a teacher is not very nice, in the future I would greatly appreciate it if he doesn't toss bugs at me because I am very afraid of them. Raphael felt badly for what he had done, so at the end of the day he gave me a card to apologize.

Ms. J is a ninja!

Roughly half my class plays on the same soccer league and team. I try to show support to my students and their extra curricular activities by going to some of their games and programs. This past Saturday, I went to watch one of two games that my students were playing. The kids played a great game and the final score ended in a 0-0 match.

Thanks to Christopher Columbus, we had a three day weekend from school, which is always awesome. When my students walked in today, Ralph walks up to me and asks, "Ms. J. why were you dressed up as a ninja at the soccer game?"

Having no idea what he was talking about, I say, "What do you mean?"

"Well, you were wearing all black, you looked like a ninja."

"Oh!" I replied back.

For the record I would like to say, I was not wearing all black. I wore a pair of blue jeans and a black shirt, my shoes were not even black. I actually thought I was doing a pretty good job, I even wore my hair down when I typically mostly wear it up. Maybe one black shirt is a little much, but I love that shirt, so I will choose to be a ninja.

I have finally learned how to knit

After years of attempting to try and teach myself how to knit, I have finally become successful, thanks to the wonderful videos knitters have posted on youtube. I made my first item which was an infant sized hat. It wasn't perfect, but I was happy because it was the first thing I ever made. I managed to finish it this morning while I was in morning care. So, today I asked the class, whose mom was having a baby? Adrian announced this the other day, so he raised his hand and I said okay I will give this to your mom as a gift and that I would try to make another item to go with. Adrian was very excited and says, "Oh, good because my mom doesn't have any hats for the baby."

At the end of the day one of the children was looking at the hat, commenting on how little it was and cute. When up walks another child, who grabs the hat and sticks it on his head. Needless to say the hat is now stretched out and too big to fit an infant. Adrian walks up shortly after to see what happened, I tell him it will be alright that I will make the baby a new hat. Adrian replies back, "Well, do you think you could make a pink one, it is a girl."

For the record the original hat was a very light color of mint green, I thought it could go either way, but maybe I'm wrong.

Never Underestimate Ms. J.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I help a couple mornings each week with morning care. What usually happens is I go to school and I will have a few minutes to print up my morning work assignment for the children and pass it out before going to the parish hall to help with morning care. When I get to morning care Mr. D. is usually waiting for me to arrive in the off chance that a child arrives before 7am, which has happened before. Mr. D. is so nice, he will usually spend the first couple minutes just talking to me as I wait for the first child to arrive.

This morning I decided to tell Mr. D. about my trip to Walmart. On Sunday I went to Walmart and was approached by a guy who told me he had been following me around because he thought I was attractive. He then asked for my phone number, so that we could go out for a while, then he would ask me to move in, and later get married. Yeah, I know SCARY! Mr. D. tells me that I should get some pepper spray. I was like that is not a bad idea. Mr. D. is a very caring man, so he also tells me things I should do to my house to help keep me safe at home. So, he then tells me that I should get my dad to buy me a rifle or shot gun for my house. He said you should never underestimate a woman holding a gun.

At that moment one of my students walks in with his father. The father goes to sign in and tells me, "don't worry Ms. J. I'm just signing Raphael in for the day and I have no complaints."

Angel Encounters

I'm trying to get better about keeping some notes on the day for things to write about in this blog. Last Friday I had a couple things that happened, in the end I felt that the hairy chest comment by far was the funniest. When the children came in today, one of the children noticed in small handwriting that there a list of things that happened on the board from Friday, and asked about why those things were written on the board. My class knows that I write a blog and so someone quickly says, I think they were ideas to write in the blog.

The child scanned the list and then asked why the word angels was written on the board. I said that while half the class was in library, the children that were in class with me started talking about angel encounters. Ralph then says, "Well I don't get why that would be funny?"

Ralph wasn't in the room at the time, so I say, "Well, Raphael made a comment about angel encounters. He told Ms. J. that he has met an angel before and her name was Ms. J.."

When he originally said this I laughed and thought someone is trying to get some extra credit points.

Celine heard about what Raphael said and instantly says, "Raphael you are sucking up to Ms. J.."

Raphael is quick to answer back, "No, I'm not."

Celine along with the rest of the class, "Yes, you are."

I knew at this moment that this this was a story that didn't deserve to be left off the blog.

Native Americans

Today we began a new unit in social studies on Native Americans and I read the class a book on how the Native Americans took great care of the earth and pleaded with American's to do the same. In the book, it shows male Native Americans not wearing a shirt. Celine was the first to mention this and up until this point I did not even notice. I respond back saying that they didn't have much clothing to wear that is why. Celine then brings up the point that the women have tops to their outfits. Hmm, puzzled I just say oh, let's continue with the story. After the next page Celine says it is probably so they could tell the difference because all the Native Americans had long hair, so they had to be able to tell who was a boy and who was a girl. I praise Celine for such a great answer.

After the book is finished, Cosmas then asks if we could maybe put on a play about Native Americans. I said I would have to think about that, thinking that that probably will not work we are getting ready to start practicing for our Christmas program. He tries to help me agree to the issue by saying that the boys would just wear t-shirts, that they didn't have to go shirtless. Regina then responds back asking why they would wear t-shirts, when the Native Americans didn't wear t-shirts. I respond back to Regina saying that we attend a Catholic school and we practice modesty, so it would not be appropriate for the boys not to wear a shirt. Raphael then hears this and mentions that when he goes to the pool, he doesn't wear a shirt. I respond back saying that the pool is different, but we are a school and all children must wear shirts. Agnes then tries to agree with me on the issue and said, "besides we do not want to see your chest hair." Who would have thought a fourth grader with chest hair?