My co-worker is reading catch-22 and says she is reminded of life at school. Sure, you can have a desk. There is one in room 226 that is not in use. But you need the key to room 226 to get the desk and that person is not here. No, I haven't seen that person in weeks actually. But if you see her, get the key and you can have the desk you need.
This is in fact a real situation. It's a lot like trying to order bookshelves. Sure, we can have them but only if we go to IKEA ourselves to get them. And no one will provide us with a van or transportation but we are welcome to go whenever we like.
Oh yeah, and we already spent the english department budget money before we were told what our budget amounted to. Then again, I got paid to cover a class today but the entire class cut. They never even walked in the hallway. It was as if they knew I would smell them out qne make them come in and work.
Last night, we stayed until about 7 re-arranging the room to try and avoid fatalaties. When we tried to warn our bosses that someone might die because each day the bookshelves were tipping and almost falling over I believe the response was something like "What do you want me to do about it?" Granted, our poor bosses have way too many fish to fry and I do realize that their jobs are as chaotic and surreal as ours but this is a sincere safety concern and we really need some help stabalizing or replacing these teetering deathtraps. If a child dies, we will be blamed and fired undoubtedly. Anyway, there we were using a broom to try and hang posters from just below the ceiling because there was no ladder and if we asked for one we'd never get one. So we stood on a shaky table and prayed that it wouldn't collapse as we attempted to post evergreen reminders to our students about what a verb is and how to write a summary and so on. My collegue appropriated a desk from another floor and worked in earnest with two other students to work a miracle in the room and it does look so much better. It certainly lifted my spirits today. One student even noticed.
Students stayed after school to get caught up today and a few helped me with odds and ends, did some grading for me and I left at about 5 again. These are long days for someone who gets up at 6 and leaves the house before 7.
The only way I can manage to teach my kids about subjects and verbs is to try a sentence involving some devious behavior. Oh well, whatever works. Thank God it's Friday tomorrow because the spotted apple is going to Los Angeles. A sunny goodbye for the weekend.