buried by paper, sick kids, and a video

so today . . . i went back to school after being out sick for three days.

i found myself buried under papers--papers the kids had completed while i was gone, homework folders from last week, evaluations that needed to be completed this week, the attendance sheets, lesson plans to finish up . . . buried. i was seriously wishing i was still home in bed. but i made it to lunch and when i got back from my lunch break, i met ms. jessica in the parking lot. she covers my classroom for lunch time on mondays.

"you always miss all the fun," she said.

"fun" is teacher code for a mess. it is sarcasm. it is one of the reasons i teach kindergarten instead of preschool. there is a lot less "fun" in kindergarten. my students can make it to the bathroom in time. they recognize that sick feeling that means they are about to lose their lunch. they rarely spill. but for some reason, this year we have had a little more "fun" than usual. fortunately for me, it always happens when i am either at lunch, gone for the day, or home sick myself. today it happened while i was at lunch--projectile vomit. it seems that one of the little girls wasn't eating her lunch and wasn't really acting like herself. so ms. jessica sent her to the office where they found that she had a temperature of 101! her mother came to take her home, and on their way down the hall, it happened. and she wasn't even being sent home for throwing up--she was being sent home for having a temperature of 101! the throwing up was just an added bonus.

after the "fun" as they were leaving, her mom said, "well, she did throw up last night . . . "

SEE?!?!?! no wonder i can't get well! i'm surrounded by children harboring germs!!

i came back from lunch and tackled the paper monster that was taking over every available horizontal surface, while the kids played. when i could finally see the desk top again, we cleaned up their toys, and i took a video with my phone (minus one very sick little girl.) they decided to sing their favorite song--the song that feels like needles poking behind my eyes, because they sing it ALL THE TIME!!

but they like it. and they had fun. the good news is, there is sound! (well, maybe that is good news--it is a chipmunk song!) the bad news is, you are seeing the first take, because we only had a few minutes to spare today. actually, it is the second take. the recording didn't start the first time, so when i tried to stop it, it started recording instead. don't laugh--i know that has happened to every single one of you at least once! thankfully the performance could be repeated for the benefit of digitizing it for posterity.

the video is about a minute and a half long. nothing exciting happens at the end--they just get sillier and sillier. and you have my mother to thank for the chance to see the whole video, unedited. because it seems that i can only email 17 seconds of video, which means i would have had to edit. or i could have posted the whole thing on youtube and then linked to it, but i didn't really want to do that either. and then my mom (who has the same phone as i do) said, "try connecting it to your computer with the usb cord."

oh. there's an idea . . .

so here it is--part of my class singing a chipmunk christmas song . . .



they would have gone on all day if i hadn't stopped them. and if you are going to leave a comment about the kids, be nice or i won't post it!

mostly i wanted you to see that the new video update to my phone really works! i think it is amazing--although i did notice that the sound wasn't synced very well . . .

. . . but i'll bet the next update will fix that!