a beast of a feast

our class thanksgiving feast is a beast.  to coordinate the needed ingredients, recipes, baking times, preparation and optimal freezing schedule for a feast for 140 students fun and rewarding, but it is a beast. 

this week i have run the full gamut of emotions. 

i spoke too soon when on the prior thursday patted myself on the back for having almost all of our thanksgiving dishes prepared and frozen for our feasts on wednesday/thursday.  monday morning i learned that the freezer that was housing 1/2 of our feast food had failed at some point over the long 3 day weekend.

because of the freezer failure i had to move our feast up by a day.

because we moved the feast up a day i had to teach my freshman how to prepare a turkey for roasting in 10 minutes.

because we moved the feast up a day i had to stay late at school and come early on the day of.

1 broken freezer.

2 broken ovens.

1 stolen pie.

1 raw turkey.

2 broken garbage disposals.

stolen pomegranates.

stolen juice.

expletive outbursts.

rude students.

wonderful students.

retribution.

staff meeting.

plaid table cloths.

family style

"do we hafta pray?"

hard working, volunteering, gracious students.

unkind, rude, expectant students

parent meeting (while i smelled like a turkey.)

4 hours of grading

parent phone call

15+ loads of towels & aprons

students refusing to work/clean/eat.

"we be feastin."

4 hours updating grades.

gave make up recipes

arrived hours early.  stayed hours late. 

30 freshman prepped 5 20-lb turkeys in 10 minutes.

shopped luckys, smart & final, walmart, safeway and costco

$900 worth of groceries, for a complete, home cooked, thanksgiving feast for 140 high school students

leftovers shipped all over campus in cute cardboard to-go boxes.

6 deep cleaned kitchens.  from top, 2 bottom.

i was greeted by the smiling faces of 8 students who arrived early to help prep for the feast, both before and after school.  i had to deal with expletive ridden outbursts and stolen items.  this week was a successful, fun, exhauasting, awful, frustrating, worth it, not worth it, disappointing, excellent week.  

i'm finding that my day, my hours and even my minutes are full of contradictions.  and it is what it is, and i make no apologies about that. 

but, man oh man.  what. a. ride. 

quotes of the day

dear student:  (quietly) ummm...hi mr. booth!  i mean petty.

and

dear student:  we be feastin.

emegency prep and thanksgiving prep, and my love of "my right now."

i returned from my trip "home" and everything in my classroom was intact, and there was no mass act of violence, etc.  hooray! 

many of my students completed their "emergency preparedness projects."  many did not, but many did.  so there.  another hooray!

we began the madness that is known as "thanksgiving preparation."  this is where we cook for 5 days straight, as many things as we can during the given preparation time.  we freeze things, and then we have a nice, large, home made hot meal together as a class for our "thanksgiving." it is utter chaos.  but in a good way.  so far, we have made enough biscuits and mac & cheese for all 150 of my students.  tomorrow we will make the sweet potatoes and green bean casserole.  

today 2 of my students came after school to turn in the emergency preparedness projects that they most definitely did NOT have completed yesterday.  THEY DID HOMEWORK!  FROM MY CLASS!  this is no small feat, because i rarely give homework.  i give them plenty of class time to get their assignments completed, if they work efficiently.  anyhow, this was an "A" day, so i had periods 1, 3 (prep) and 5.  these boys were in my 6th period class, which is my most "active" of classes.  anyhow, they remembered to come!  and they were SO proud of themselves.  and smiley.  its quite a feeling to have somewhat intimidating 17 year old boys smiling about their homework assignments because they are exciting to turn them in.  one was my student that reported to me that he had been shot a few fridays ago.  which by the way, was false.  he actually had a kidney stone, not a bullet, that was causing him pain in his kidney.  go figure.   

i missed a meeting on monday that was 2.5 hours long after school.  oh darn. i attended a 2 hour long meeting yesterday after school.  i just finished a 1.5 hour staff meeting and now i am headed to an advisory committee meeting that will cause me to arrive home around 9 pm tonight.  that part of teaching is not awesome. (although, i do have friday off for veterans day, and i get a week off for thanksgiving, and 2 for christmas.  those parts are awesome.)  

despite my hellish meeting schedule this week, i heard one very large pacific islander boy humming the melody to "i am a child of god" as he was working over a sink and scrubbing yams today.  it made me a little teary and despite the somewhat crazy week last week, it made me love my "right now."

more spirit week goodness. and some lockdowns. yes, plural.

boo.  i just wrote a nice, long entry about the past few days, and i discarded it on accident instead of posting it.  lame-o.

anyhoo, here are the haps:

• the fight that happened on monday had 5 students suspended.  on monday, two of the suspended parties showed up on campus with weapons.  they were suspended again, and then arrested.  two of the battling parties are in my 6th period class--one with weapons, one without.  and even though they are both suspended, i'm worried about what is to happen once they are off suspension.  we decided to switch one of their schedules, so hopefully there won't be an issue.  especially because i'll be in UT visiting my family, and there will be a sub in my room on Monday the possibilities for what could happen are endless.  hopefully the class change will take effect before then.
• day two of spirit week was nerd day.  super fun until i realized that all items of my "nerd costume" (except for the suspenders) were all things that i wear regularly.
• day three of spirit week was where the students and their advisors show up at 3 am and transform their hallway into some beautifully chaotic paper crafting related to the class theme.  i helped the freshman a little bit, and their theme was "the hulk."
• day three was also pajama day, and so after showing up on campus while it was still dark, i welcomed the opportunity to wear a comfy pajama set during class.  it was fantastic.
• day four was class skit/dance day, where you wear your class color, the whole school has shortened classes because of the rally during the last hour of the day.  it was going on without a hitch until about 20 minutes into the class, we kept hearing the buzzing of helicopters over head.  one of my special ed students who sits on the front row was visibly worried about the helicopters.  "i think there is going to be a lock down or something."  "why is that?"  "because of the helicopters."  "no, i think it will be ok."  "no, i think there is going to be a lock down.  there was some stuff going on yesterday with cops."  "oh, really?  what happened?"  "i don't know.  crime or something."  shortly thereafter we received word over the loud speaker that we were to go into a lock down.  we just had a drill on lock down procedures last week, and this week we were talking about all sorts of emergency preparedness concepts, so it was quite fitting.  i'm pleased to report that my 5th period rocks my world, and they were able to assist me in getting both rooms locked down, doors locked, windows blocked within about 30 seconds.   all i said was, "lock the doors.  i need help."  and they were ON it.  it was great.  anyhow, the helicopters continued, and we remained on lock/shelter in place for about an hour and a half.  which wouldn't have been too terrible if we had any idea what was going on, but we didn't.  i wasn't able to find any info online about our situation either, which was unsettling and frustrating.  it turns out there was a 17 yr old detention center escapee who was armed running about the neighborhood.  this resulted in 4 school and all neighborhood homes going into lockdown until the cops could get ahold of him.  george texted me just as everything was ending and  sent me a number of texts telling me what was going on, what he heard on the news and just told me to get out of there ASAP.  by the time the lockdown was over, the school was in chaos, and so the rally was cancelled until today.
• today we were on rally schedule again.  one of my "fighters" returned.  he was the one that is getting transferred out of my class.  he seemed a bit subdued.  everything was going smoothly.  the skits were great, but i realized i needed to sneak away and make a few copies to prepare for my substitute on monday, so that i could rush home immediately after the bell, pack and rush back to the airport to make my 8pm flight.  i heard the rally ending, and then i heard another fight.  oh geez.  really people?  get a grip.  but, it was a fight.  one bad enough that even after the bell rang we were sent into a lockdown because there were nonstudents coming onto campus to participate.  awesome. i learned later that this was in an effort to clear the campus and lock it from intruders.  stressful nonetheless. 
• i left the lesson plan for my substitute taped to my computer.  while i am VERY glad for a break from all this madness, i am MORE glad that it is being traded for a weekend with my sisters & parents.  i just hope a riot,etc, doesn't break out in my absence...what would that poor substitute do?!!!