A [ridiculous] day in the life of a fourth grade teacher.

Sometimes I put on red lipstick after my day is over, just to see if i can pull it off yet.

 I blame it on pajama day.

The students told me on Monday that if I wore my pajamas to school I'd be the "cool" teacher. But then when I went home I got all sorts of anxious about well, were the other teachers going to wear pajamas? What if I wore mine and everyone was like, oh boy, there goes Madeline that first year teacher, trying way too hard to be cool!!

So I compromised by wearing a comfy long black sweater (with a zipper down the back!!!!!), black coated leggings, and my slippers. Heaven knows I love those slippers.  (and let the record show, the other teachers dressed down too! i had no reason to fear.)


(Aside: And I need to confess to you all right now.. pretty sure I would take outfit pictures and have official "posts" if I didn't feel so dang self-conscious about asking anyone to photograph me! How self-indulgent is that?! But I love clothes. So there you have it.)


Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes. I blame it on pajama day.

We all showed up in our pajama best, ready for anything! Or so we thought. A few hours into the day, I was standing in front of my calendar, slightly behind my desk, droning on about something or other, when a few of my students got a wide eyed look on their faces. "Mrs. Casey!!" They gasped. "Mrs. Casey!!! THERE IS A SPIDER BEHIND YOU!"

At first I was real professional. I stepped to the right slowly and deliberately before I took a look at the spider. Spider being a loose term. I was face to face with one of THESE. (Oh oh oh! Even just looking that up gave me all sorts of squirmies!) I refuse to post an actual picture of a spider on my blog, because even pictures of spiders make me want to PUKE. They disgust me like nothing else in this life. Oh I was shuddering! The kids were crying out in fear! I didn't know what to do! I kept backing away slowly and I think I even said, "oh no! What should we do!" As if those little 10 year olds were the ones in charge! The boys ran toward the spider! The girls ran to the back of the classroom! And THEN! The SPIDER FELL OFF THE WALL AND ONTO THE FLOOR!

It was pandemonium!!! We ran in circles! We screamed at the top of our lungs! Me and 25 fourth graders! And oh, how I wish I was exaggerating! But no. This is the part of my blog where I tell you that I completely lost control and let my fourth graders and myself have a full on panic attack together. It was a very bonding moment. And then Owen stepped on the spider and we laugh-cried our way back to our seats.

We spent the next 10 minutes talking it out, and the hour after that, silently getting the chills every now and then.

Needless to say, it was a bit of a rough day after that. We couldn't concentrate while it felt like something was crawling on us the whole time! And then there was a fire drill! During math! And then I took away Jonathan's Pokemon cards and he burst into tears! He threw a fit! I ignored him. I just did.

And that is a [ridiculous] day in the life of a fourth grade teacher.

I blame it on pajama day.

p.s. you better believe i asked the principal if we could spray down my classroom with spider spray. oh, you better believe it.