Man, what a couple of days

I hate it when I don't blog every day. Then, there are so many things I want to talk about, I forget them, I don't want to bore everyone, etc.

Some of you might have seen Amy's blog about the contest she was in charge of in Wichita. That's the one I used to go to with my Derby kids. At my new school, we go to Emporia for regionals. Except that yesterday, we didn't go to Emporia for regionals. Our bus trip got canceled due to inclement weather conditions on the road between here and Emporia. I cannot even begin to describe the hellish day I had yesterday because of the stupid weather.

Those of you who are avid readers of the ChittumFiles will remember that EVERY SNOW DAY WE'VE HAD THIS YEAR HAS FALLEN ON A BIG DAY FOR JOURNALISM - whether it's yearbook deadline, newspaper late night, newspaper deadline, etc. Well, this was the whopper of all weather related journalism snafus. School wasn't canceled, but we didn't get to go on the trip.

I had so many kids who had spent a lot of time preparing for this contest - they were studying the AP Stylebook, doing practice writing prompts, studying our writing textbooks. Many of them were so excited to be going and to have the chance to compete for some individual recognition. Luckily, we are able to submit electronic copies of the carry-in contests, so at least some students will get to compete, but even that raised the stress level yesterday. We were told to send PDFs of all the entries, so I gathered the troops and instructed them to furiously PDF the files. We thought we'd have to have them there while they were judging the on-sites. We e-mailed everything. We stopped, took some deep breaths.

Guess what? I suppose 100 e-mails with attachments will clog an inbox. Now we have until 5 p.m. Monday to get them sent to a new address. I wanted to do it today, but by golly, I actually have to do this little thing, called TEACHING, during the day. So, I think I'll just go up this weekend and get them sent. At least then, it'll be quiet, and I'll be able to keep track of what I'm doing and be sane.

I couldn't write about this yesterday. I don't think I would have been able to keep it together. I think the worst part is that I got NO sleep Wednesday night, because I knew I had to be at the bus at 6:30, so I kept waking up thinking I had overslept and missed the bus. Tired and stressed, in a room full of pissed-off, stressed kids is not a good combo - it takes a lot out of you. I was about as tense as Cameron in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." And I didn't even get a diamond out of the deal - couldn't get my hands on a lump of coal...

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Someone sent me a link to this trailer today. It's for a documentary called "Two Million Minutes." I will have to see if I can find the entire movie. The trailer brings up interesting points, but of course, once in the trailer, they make a comment about "the American education system." I don't want to see it if half the movie is bashing teachers and schools. Has anyone else seen or heard of it?

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Tonight is our Relay For Life at school. We're headed back at 7 p.m. The kids were all pretty jazzed about it today, so I'm anxious to see how it goes.