I LIKE my markers!

After a pretty good day with the kids (only TWO instances of banging my head against the wall), I come back to my room to get beaten down with the discovery that one of my markers is missing.

While it might seem kind of petty to be missing something as small as a marker, it just really bugs me that one (or more) of my kids would be stealing from me.

Because of the size of my classroom, I have the kids line up against the whiteboard when it's time for dismissal. The ledge on the whiteboard has about 5 markers on it, and I use those markers throughout the day.

Last week, I came in one morning to find a black marker missing, and the thought of theft occurred to me, but I chalked the missing marker up to old age and failing memory (I AM turning 36 this weekend, after all). But today, to come back and find another marker missing -- a marker that I was actually holding in my hand at 2:55 -- makes me get much more suspicious of my afternoon class.

Sure, the possibility is there that I put it down someplace without thinking and that I'll find it tomorrow. But I looked pretty hard for it and found nothing.

Tomorrow morning, I'll have to ask the class who has been taking my markers. I fully expect to get the same response that I get when I ask what numbers were in a word problem. Blank stares, dead silence.


In more "beat down" news -- today we had a fire drill at 2:30. For the SECOND. CONSECUTIVE. DAY.

I understand that quotas must be met and we might have missed one month's required drill. But 2 in 2 days??? PLUS, we had a tornado drill scheduled for last week, and that didn't happen, so I expect that one to happen any time now.

In fact, I was expecting it so much that yesterday, when the alarm went off, I thought it WAS the tornado drill, and I had 3 kids out in the hallway, on their knees, with their hands over their heads, before another teacher reminded me that the signal had been for a fire drill and NOT a tornado drill.

My kids might have burned, but at least they wouldn't be harmed by falling debris...