Shaggy Ear Covers

Silence is golden. I'm sorry, what? That's a big, fat, hairy lie! Silence could kill you. Silence, when enforced upon one teacher and 20 kids for an entire day could freakin' kill you. Or at least maim your sense of sanity indefinitely. My task today was to keep 20 young'uns completely quiet from 8:30-3:30. They were allowed to eat lunch. That was our reprieve. Our principal told us that under no circumstances was any direct instruction to take place. No one's ever told me that before. I didn't know what to do with myself. So I planned SuperSilent Stations.
Here's a few things that happened during our Massive Read-in/SuperSilent Stations! escapade.

1. FreakyWeird Kid made lantern paperchains for 4 hours. And brought them to me repeatedly until I told him they were a fire hazard.
2. The Superflously Hormoned (185 lb) One came to school breathing like a foghorn and without a bath. I am 90% certain that she is some form of biohazard. I'm not sure how to alert the authorities.
3. All of the children brought blankets for the Read-in. And pillows. Welcome to Mrs.R's LiceFest 2005. Have a seat! Don't touch your head.
4. I put my magnetic poetry set on the board. Two of my gifted boys spent two and a half hours crafting the longest sentence in the world. I love gifted kids. They're so bizarre.
5. Except for my gifted to the point of insanity/laden with ADHD kid who drove car-candy bars all over his desk yesterday during the Test. Though I told him that the computer network had crashed, he was locked in and couldn't part from the computer screen. So I left him there. Mysteriously, the network was fixed about 30 minutes later. I think he did it.
6. Oh yeah, on the one day I could email people all day, the network crashed. Just thought I should mention that one again.
7. I cleaned out all of my drawers, cabinets, and filing trays. I wrote lesson plans, graded papers, and filed things. Then I ran out of things to do. It was 10:30.
8. I stared at my kids for about an hour. I came to the conclusion that this long hair fad on boys must end soon. All of my boys basically have mullets. Pointed in the back mullets. And shaggy ear covers. Heinous, that in-between stage. Ugh.
9. My spoiled rotten child who believes herself a princess in real life (she wears a tiara most days) got flowers from her dad for her birthday. In a pot. With two balloons attached. She swooned and made an elaborate charade of reading the card aloud, but leaving off who it was from. She told me later that she likes Stifler, and the act was to make him jealous. Because fourth graders should really be doing stuff like that.
10. To top my day off, I used poor judgment and packed some leftover-since-Saturday refried beans in my lunch. Beans that sat in the car Saturday night for a good amount of time after dinner. Severe lapse in judgment. I was extremely uncomfortable for the rest of the day. I came home to quite the non-eupeptic state. I'm recovering now.

We finished the day by cleaning up the pit of despair that had become my room. My colleague and I actually argued over who got to type up the lesson plans I had written because we were both so bored. I left when the kids left and slept for an hour on the couch. Good times. Tomorrow we're allowed to teach again!