Tending the Eclectic Kinder-Garden

What wonderful cabinetry.  And I know what’s going behind the doors on the upper level: Books. Dear Daughter and I opened fourteen boxes of them, finding even more surprises left by the last crew of packers that prepared our belongings for the trip from Texas to Oz. Despite some bent corners and torn covers, it was good to see my favorite stories again after taking last year off from teaching.

Kindergarten teachers often teach concepts and skills organized into thematic units. “Autumn,” “Animals,” “Counting,” “Colors,” etc. I organize my books by how I USE them throughout the year. In August, books like Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, Blueberries for Sal, Timothy’s First Day of School, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See, are within easy reach for reading time. So are books about autumn, colors, numbers, and friendships.  My winter holiday books can all be found on the same shelf as my snow themed stories, and fairy tales are grouped together for the spring.

I also group books by author.  Norman Bridwell’s Big Red Dog Clifford keeps company with Marc Brown’s Arthur, and I love featuring Leo Lionni and Patricia Polacco as favorite storytellers too!  It’s my system, books sorted by theme, and also sorted by author, and it works for me.  Come October, I can pull down an entire stack of books featuring Halloween, bats, spiders, growing pumpkins, monsters, fire safety, and silly rhymes, and put them in the hands of my students.  Each November, family stories, Thanksgiving tales, harvest, and Indigenous Peoples pique my kindergartners’ interest.

Do you have sets of books, providing multiple copies so groups of students can read along with you or one another?  Try sorting them into easy-to-grab tubs (mine are on the bottom row of the next set of shelves):

Big Books need to be stored either flat (making it difficult to find exactly the one you’re looking for), in a book display specifically made for oversized stories, or in their curriculum kit box for easy access.

Find a system that works for you and your students- books are treasures!

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Don’t forget to organize your professional library too (mine is full of books and binders):

Tags: books, classroom, kindergarten, organization, tips

Yay! Good for you!

On the first day you can get in to the school (and presumably, your classroom), make sure to take your digital camera, a measuring tape, a notebook and pencil, your lunch, snacks and drinks for the day, and your calendar. If you have supplies, books, and other teaching gear you’d like to drop off, go for it, but don’t plan on opening them!

Here’s why: there are a few things you need to do before you wave your magic wand,*poof*, producing the world’s greatest kindergarten classroom in cloud of glitter.

If this is your first year teaching at an already established school, chances are you’re not the first teacher to use the classroom.  You  might walk into a completely empty room.  You could walk in to find a mish-mash of furniture, equipment, and curriculum materials.  You might find that your classroom has served as the storage or catch-all room for the rest of the school for the past five years.  Or you might walk in to a fully furnished, fully equipped, almost completely developmentally appropriate  teaching space, like I did this week:

ACK!  What?  Before you have a stroke, let me point out a few things.  1) As a teacher new to this district, I’ve gone to school before many of the “regular” teachers have returned from their summer vacations.  The summer cleaning staff is still dusting, washing, repairing, and vacuuming the rooms in preparation for the start of school.   2) Take a looksie at the bookcases along the back walls.  Everything sitting on TOP of the shelves…is MINE.  And those shelves make a full “L” along two walls in the room.  All of the items on the lower shelves were already in the class.  3)  All of the furniture has been moved to the center of the room so that the janitorial staff can clean the carpets around it.  Once several more furniture shifts take place, the carpet will hopefully be shampooed.

Dear Daughter and the Toddler came with me to inventory what was in the room on Day One.  You need to inventory your room as well.  The inventory might be difficult to do because previous teachers will store the classroom’s curriculum materials and supplies, but they won’t organize it or return everything to its original location and condition.  If the last teacher liked to keep half of the language arts books at the reading table and the other components of the curriculum kit at his/her desk, or in small tubs for individual students to use, chances are, you’ll find that “system” still in place when you arrive.  The best thing to do is to open every cabinet, cubby, and drawer.  If you find items that seem to go together or have matching storage boxes, pull them all out and place them together in an easy-to-get-to location.  Here’s a photo of the math, science, and language arts materials and curriculum “kit” items I’ve found so far:

It’s a “rough sort,” meaning I haven’t opened up all of the boxes or checked to see if the workbooks or flashcards, assessment booklets or supplemental activities are in order, much less present.  I still have big books and flip charts to find and add to this pile so that I can reassemble the kits as much as possible.

You can sort your classroom items pretty easily for your inventory: furniture, curriculum kit elements, math manipulatives, language arts materials, puppets, computer equipment, stereo/headphones, toys, workbooks, arts and crafts supplies, classroom/school binders for policies, procedures, a professional library, etc.  Doing a rough sort lets you know what you have, the condition of your classroom furniture and supplies, and points you in the direction for creating your to-do and wish lists.

I sorted paper products:

Then determined what I had for crayons, glue, kleenex, etc.:

A majority of my afternoon was spent sorting math manipulatives and language arts materials.  The blue tubs and the clear containers with white lids are ALL math items:

These two sets of shelves are full of puzzles, and ONLY puzzles (ignore the storage bins up on top, that’s part of my seasonal decor, which I’ll try to get to on Monday):

These clear and yellow bins are all fine/gross motor activities (Legos, building blocks, lincoln logs, etc.):

The bins already available in the classroom come in primary colors and are perfect for storage on the shelves.  Blue will be for math, the yellow is for fine/gross motor, and next week I’ll sort language arts/literacy items into red bins.  Green will house science materials, and orange…who knows?  Dear Daughter will get a treat from Dairy Queen on Monday afternoon after she peels every sticker and label off of the bins in my class.  If you don’t have children to be helpers in your room, consider asking a colleague if s/he has teens for hire who would like to earn their favorite fast food meal for lunch in exchange for doing the little things.

*****

Before you leave for the day, measure your room.  Photograph it as well.  Photograph the ceiling, the insides of cabinetry, the bathrooms, where your windows are located, your furniture, everything.  You’ll want the photos to refer to later, possibly in the wee hours when inspiration comes to you in a dream, waking you!  Take notes too.  How many staple boards or corkboards do you have for display?  How many windows might you have to make or purchase curtains for?  How many electrical outlets do you have and where are they located?  How about computer jacks?  If you have open storage shelves like I do, and you’re considering covering them with curtains to reduce the visual noise (and possible temptation for more impulsive students), measure, measure, measure so you know how much fabric to buy (and purchase plain ‘ol clearance material, okay?).  Make sure to ask your principal or building administrator if you’re ALLOWED to staple items into the walls, hang decor from the ceiling, or affix hook and loop tape to hang curtains before you do it!

*****

Your calendar will help you remember when your new teacher orientation will take place, teacher inservices too, and you can set goals for each day you’re able to spend in your classroom setting up.  You’ll want a day for inventory (and requesting furniture/materials if necessary) and your “rough sort,”  a day for furniture arrangement and the setting up of centers (with materials located where they will be utilized the most), another day for bulletin boards and classroom decor, a day for lesson plans, your parent newsletter, and grade level planning meetings, and another day getting your first week’s activities, materials, stories, and required school safety drill practice planned and prepped in full.  Make sure to ask if your school will host an Open House before school starts, or if you need to prepare for initial observations and assessments of your students before they arrive for their official First Day.

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If you have the time or just feel the urge to lay claim to YOUR classroom before you leave on Day One, you can set up your Essential Three that will help you through the rest of the week:

Welcome to Kindergarten!

Tags: classroom, kindergarten, organization, tips

As organized as I try to be at work and at home, once our family has to relocate, the packers, however nice and polite they may be, seem to think it’s GAME ON.

Boys, I made you all lunch, three days in a row.  Granted, the first day was pizza, but hey, day two was homemade sub sandwiches. We certainly kept the fridge stocked with Gatorade, water and soda so you wouldn’t dehydrate or run out of energy.  We even pushed Otter Pops on you when the temp got unbearable!

So would you mind telling me where my dining room chair pillows are?  How about half of my Somerset magazines (that were all in one spot when you started)? The receiver for our cordless phone?  Because the way things are going, I’m thinking I’m not going to find these things until I open my SCHOOL-SUPPLIES-THAT-HAVEN’T-SEEN-THE-LIGHT-OF-DAY-IN-OVER-A-YEAR that *you* opened and “re-boxed” because of some packer/moving company policy.

Soon-to-be-teaching-colleagues, I’ll apologize right now for any outbursts of exasperation you might hear coming from my new classroom two weeks from now.  It’s not you, and no, I’m not some psycho hose beast.  I’ve just finally found my crochet hooks~ in exactly the furthest location from where they originated in our home.

Darn packers.

*****

My finger and toenails are happy this morning.  After enduring two weeks without a mani-pedi, I gave in, removed what little polish was left on them last night, buffed, filed, and polished with a non-summer color.  MUCH better now.  Yes Bev, you read that right: my nails were in disrepair for two weeks!  Nope, I didn’t go looking for an emergency bottle of polish for the chips and nicks either.  Scary, huh?

*****

With the repairs and modifications we’re having to do to the rental, we’re stuck, shuffling boxes and piles around and around and around as we get each new area designated, arranged, and decorated.  The upstairs is  nearly done, but the only reason why is because the downstairs still looks like a bomb hit it.  My desk is upstairs, along with most of my crafty stash that was stored beneath it in Texas… but it will be clutter free when what I hope will be my crafting area is set up and ready downstairs.

Now if I could only find my three remaining ribbon boxes.

Maybe I should have made the packers extra cookies.  Lesson learned.

Tags: colleagues, family, military life, organization

My family and I will watch The Wizard of Oz, Return to Oz, and Tin Man this weekend because…

Uncle Sam says we are to return to the land of Munchkins, scarecrows, and ruby slippers this summer!

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Please do me a favor and help me in the “oohs and ahhs” department once you see my latest attempt at scrapping (my husband doesn’t quite understand the need for encouragement for this kind of thing). In preparation for moving this summer, I’ve been snipping and clipping my favorite recipes, photos, craft and home decor ideas for my Inspiration Binder. I’ve mentioned before that we have a weight limit for our household goods each time we move, so packing and hauling stacks of magazines isn’t feasible. I just can’t bear to be without all of the beautiful, creative and innovative ideas I come across though, so I sort the clippings by season/holiday or subject (health/diet; home decor; houseplans; fashion; crafts/patterns), pop them into page protectors and add them to my binders. Wouldn’t you know it, I had to buy larger binders because my old ones were stuffed! Here’s what I started with this afternoon:

There were so many pretty papers I wanted to use, so I decided on a nine-patch pattern:

I used ribbon as border around some of the squares, and photo corners, brads, and embroidery floss on others:

Out came the chipboard:

Then tags,text, paper flowers and more ribbon:

And a bitty photo of little ol’ me when I was MUCH younger (don’t worry Mom, it’s a digital copy):

I was only able to finish the front cover before the toddler woke up from his nap, so tomorrow I’ll be adding the spine detail and back cover:

I feel like it’s a bit of a “sampler” of scrapbooking ideas, though I didn’t use stamps or “fancy scissors” yet…not sure if I will…

Tags: crafts, military life, Oz

After reading “Giving Disorganized Boys the Tools for Success,” (NY Times) this is the scene I was greeted with when I checked on my son:

According to author Alan Finder, “organizational tutors” are cropping up all over the place because “boys seem generally to have more difficulty getting organized and multitasking than girls do.” The tutors help boys sort through their messy backpacks, explain and require the use of binders with divider tabs separated by subject, and often spend more time teaching the merits of cleaning out desks, bookbags, and coat or pant pockets than they do on tutoring lessons for school subjects.

In our home, places for things and everything-in-its-place are the norm by necessity 1) because we’re* forgetful klutzes who will stub toes, break nails and use non-kindergarten-vocabulary as we dig through piles trying to find that one receipt or cd, and 2) because we relocate so often that we’re intimately aware of what we own, why we use it, and how often it is used. One can only pack and unpack one’s dishes so many times before it really becomes an activity that can be performed on autopilot. Our son’s room (believe it or not) is actually organized too, into tubs of blocks, tubs of stuffed animals, tubs of cars and trucks, and play areas away from where he sleeps.

Apparently right now it’s just more FUN to dump all the tubs out in the middle of the floor and have a smorgasbord of creative possibilities through which to swim. Never fear, I’ll keep an eye on his backpack (once I find it) and even help him dig through it regularly.

* Okay, so I’m the klutz.

Mission Organization from Scholastic

Organization and Time Management Strategies from Schwab Learning

The holidays are over, and while the rest of the house has enjoyed some New Year’s cleaning, rearranging and redecorating, the piles of magazines and newspapers have managed to overstay their welcome. I’ve been clipping and snipping articles, home decor ideas, recipes, inspirational photos, and craft patterns and am ready to add them to my recipe and miscellaneous idea binders.

The rest of the magazines will be donated, but the binders will accompany the family on our next move this summer. I’ll have all sorts of ideas for home decor (I know, I know, I seem to put a lot of emphasis on having our home look pretty, but hey, it matters when you’ve lived in four different homes in five years, with another move and floorplan in the works!), new favorite recipes, craft and activity ideas for the kids, and *should I be hired to teach*, more organization and curriculum ideas for the classroom.

Until then, I’ll flip through the crochet patterns I’ve accumulated and find a nice spring one to keep me busy,
imagine our new dream home (and keep dreaming),
and enjoy the whimsy that my chosen “keepers” have to offer.

My own teacher tendencies have been on sabbatical while we spend this year in the Bordertown, but I still feel that familiar *tug* when I stumble across the following:

Bulletin board trimmers:

(all available at BK’s Schoolhouse)

Classroom organizers:

(available at Calloway House)

and school-themed quilts:

(Dori Hawks at the Quilter Community)
(Ginger’s Needlework and Quilting)
(at The Quilting Cupboard)

Only-five-more-months, only-five-more-months, only-five-more-months…

Perhaps only other teachers will understand this.

I went back to my classroom today to finish the transition from December/Holidays to January/Snow, and I found myself pleased with:

1) how quickly I had changed all of the colors/decor/books/bulliten boards
and
2) how much I enjoyed making my decor and teaching “props” WORK in this, my third classroom.

My classroom in Fairbanks was long and rectangular, my classroom at White Sands was a DREAM in multi-layers/multi-purpose spaces, and my classroom here in Oz runs along the rectangular type with some fun cabinetry thrown in for good measure. Yet once again, the snowmen, snowflakes, silver stars, mittens and “Chubby Little Snowman” poem all fit perfectly.
I “transition” the room each month to help my students notice the changes that happen around them during the time that passes during the school year. Teachers with more than five or six years’ teaching experience can guess which themes are explored and which materials are used (and yes, all of the required kindergarten skills are integrated, so don’t panic if you don’t see AB patterning, sequencing, D’Nelian penmanship, etc. on the list):

August- Welcome to School (I teach kindergarten, so it’s not “back” to school), apples, autumn…

September- autumn, leaves, colors, shapes, numbers, letters, rhymes…

October- harvest, gardens, Halloween, fire safety, our bodies

November- family, Native Americans, Pilgrims, traditions/cultures, food, being thankful

December- family, sharing, winter holidays, weather, senses

January- the new year, weather, snow, seasonal changes, Martin Luther King Jr. (Kansas history this month?), numbers past 100

February- friendships, Valentines, rhyming words, mail and communication, Groundhog’s Day (weather again!)

March, April- spring, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, animal families, plants, weather, eggs, calendar review

May- May Day, Cinco de Mayo, summer, Mother’s Day, vacation/transportation, “practicing for first grade,” and of course, our end-of-the-year celebration.

Each month has a binder with all of the activites, book lists, reproducible pages, mock-ups, stickers, notepads, etc. that correspond with that month’s themes, seasons, or holidays. This week I just pulled January’s binder off of the shelf, dug through it to my heart’s content, pulled whatever looked appropriate and fun for my students, and planned the month. Okay, so I’m fibbing. I pulled the binder off of the shelf mid-DECEMBER. Insert whatever smiley you enjoy most *here*!

Differences between Alaska, New Mexico and Kansas of course require changes in the materials I use, so I’ll have to find some way of sneaking in an Eskimo art project this month just for fun so I don’t go through withdrawals! Multi-culturalism is “big” in Alaska and New Mexico, so I find it odd that it is barely addressed here in Oz. Could it be that our location, so central in the United States, limits us from as much exposure to such wonderous variety? I did enjoy turning my dramatic play area into a farmhouse in November after the kids enjoyed grossing their parents out in our “Creature Cafe” during October though. Pretending to live on a farm was fun for the students. And then they turned the chairs, piles of plastic food and sacks into “Santa’s sleigh and bag of toys.” Ah, imagination!

Transitioning the room month to month requires more than inspiration- it requires organization too! I have plastic tubs labeled by months for the props/decor, and all of my storybooks are sorted either by theme/season or author so that I can quickly grab a pile and put it into the book cases, shelves, and baskets for students to peruse. I try to start the year with dark blue paper for the bulliten boards, since the blue works well for each month (except October for some reason…BLACK just seems to do the trick), despite the FADE that inevitably occurs. The bulliten board borders are sorted, and other textural items are added to kill the two-dimensional-trap I despise so much. Raffia, glitter garland, mini-lights…are ALL good things. I have cut outs for hanging patterns above my students’ desks that can be used year after year, and with my stash of sentence strip poetry and read-alongs, I can have my students reading new seasonal/theme words and text weekly. With the help of my kinder-colleague, our monthly fine motor skills activities are ordered in advance so that all I have to do is pull the next activity out of my file cabinet or paper-pile each day and voila! Necessary cutting, coloring, tracing, and writing can be done at the beginning of each morning, with very few questions asked while I fly through the required list of paperwork…attendance, lunch count, milk count, etc.

With each move from state to state that I’ve made, I’ve found inspiration in my students, the required curriculum, and my own stash of tricks and fun activities. After over a decade of teaching, I’ve organized my materials, books, and time to accomodate my students’ needs, the requirements of the curriculum, and the various schedules of half-day, extended-day, and full-day kindergarten programs. My only “fixation” has been trying to learn each new school’s….”culture.” The social expectations, the professional requirements, locating the mine fields (and successfully navigating them), and building the relationships required to 1) teach students and 2) stay sane. Three very different states, three very different schools, three very different social scenes.

Satisfaction comes when I can leave my classroom knowing my plans are done, the room is ready, and whatever tidbits are left to do…will KEEP until the next morning. I’m a huge advocate of having a life outside of one’s work. And I will never aspire to be a teacher who lives in her classroom, morning, noon, night, and on each day of every weekend of every month. What would I be teaching my students, their families, and my colleagues if I shortchanged my own life, my children, my marriage, my friendships, my hobbies, my solitude…my SELF?

Satisfaction also comes when Uncle Sam moves us yet once again, and my tubs, binders, books and decor all find their way to their new “home,” no matter the classroom layout.

Second semester is here. Let’s get the party started!

I am a fan of efficiency. I appreciate easy systems or routines that can be used regularly with a lot of success. Why? Because I’m a natural clutz. I’m forgetful, I tend to over-schedule myself, and I have a lot of interests. I have friends, I have family, I have colleagues and co-workers. I have students and I have responsibilities as the spouse of a deployed soldier. I have a cat. For these reasons, I like things to not only have a place, but to be IN their place. Keys on the shelf by the door. Space in my closet for a week’s worth of ironed work clothes. A load of laundry put in the washer in the morning and put in the dryer when I get home from work. A chore list for my daughter. A month’s worth of classroom activities marked on a calendar that is sent home in advance so parents can plan their donations of volunteer time and school materials. A binder of all of the materials and information a sub would need if called at the last minute. A “Star Helper of the Day” who can help pass out papers, distribute lunch cards, and cheerfully help with any other tasks that need to take place at school.

At a previous school district, my systems and routines had to be modified in order to accommodate the “systems” already in place at the school where I taught. The best description of the school’s “systems?” There was a form for the form to request the form you needed. No, I’m not kidding. There was the attendance form. The lunch count form. The fire drill form. The nurse form. The materials request form. The Xerox copying form. The laminating form. The consumables form. The furniture form (which was not the same as the inventory list, which was yet another form). The sub request form. The sub evaluation form. The “missing curriculum materials” form. All of the Special Education forms. The report cards, the cum folder forms (in addition to the cum folder itself), the DIBELS forms, the parent volunteer request forms. The teacher evaluation forms, the student assessment forms. Detention forms. Repair forms. Behavior modification forms. The mileage voucher form. The P.T.A. receipt reimbursement form. The permission to breathe form. You get the picture.

Teachers had limits on their Xerox copying. Why? Because all of the forms had depleted the district’s paper budget. No, I’m not kidding.

Here I am again, the outsider looking “in” on another state, on another district. Thankfully, I haven’t seen a fire drill form, and we have a wonderful Print Shop available to copy activities we need that aren’t already provided by consumable materials. I can plan for a month in advance, send in my order, and a week later, voila! Having a calendar’s worth of activities and a month’s worth of lesson plans done ahead of time usually frees me up to do those “other” things, like spend time with my children. Crochet. See a movie. Talk with friends on the phone. Vacuum.

Usually.

With twelve years of experience, I rarely find myself having to recreate the wheel. I can bend, flex, tweak an activity, and get on with enjoying time with my students who are exploring new concepts. Two months into the school year however, and I find myself killing trees left and right. Why? Because three people who never see or work with my students need copies of their DIBELS scores. Because collegial groups need proof that I’m using graphic organizers, math problem solvers, writing models, and walking into my classroom or looking through my lesson plans doesn’t provide the hard evidence they need to show anyone who might look that we are, indeed, doing a good job with our “Quality Performance Accreditation.” So I’m burning copies of plans, burning copies of journal entries, keeping originals of T-charts, Venn diagrams, SQ3R papers (which aren’t even developmentally appropriate for kindergarten), NOT erasing overhead projection sheets of class surveys, saving morning messages on large chart tablet paper, and even taking Polaroid photos of my milk and school lunch/home lunch charts. To prove that I’m doing… what I’m doing. Yes, every other teacher is having to burn these copies, save this “proof” and a ton of other assessments too. Each quarter.

Let’s see… DIBELS (yellow books this year), DIBELS progress monitoring sheets out the wazoo, the “Optional Kindergarten Outcomes Reading Checklist, Forms, A, B, and C” (pink, has a typo, and is NOT “optional”), the Math Outcomes Checklist (white paper, also NOT “optional”), the reading rubric for the report card, the report card (which is for a half day program, not the full day program), all of the Q.P.A. forms listed above, an additional Q.P.A. lesson plan sheet (lilac in color) turned in each week, the S.F.A. reading and writing rubrics (no, they’re not aligned with the report card, and no, they won’t work for the Q.P.A. requirements). My personal teacher evaluation form (there are three or four of them), and a form for my own Professional Development Plan. Forms to fill out each time I attend an inservice for professional development, one for pay and another for credit towards the Professional Development plan. If I attend training or an inservice I might not have listed on the Professional Development Plan, I have to submit an addendum to the plan. Yes, another form. Voucher forms to get paid for teaching the After-School Program. Copies of my mid-quarters and report cards to three different people (in addition to the ones sent home to parents) for Speech and Language, E.L.L. (English Language Learner Program), and any other I.E.P. documentation. Extra copies of documentation for students with I.E.P.’s, and copies of my monthly class summary sheets indicating who needs help with certain skills.

This situation wouldn’t be a problem if I could use some of the same forms for multiple audiences. And no, I can’t. There is no standard bottom line or form that is a general “catch all” that would apply across the board, across the district, or even across the school population. In this age of “standardization,” nothing is standardized. So time is wasted, redundancies abound, and the only personal system I have to fall back on is my “binder system.” I have a binder for my monthly summary sheets. I have a binder for all report cards, DIBELS reports, and mid-quarter assessments. I have a binder for the Q.P.A. documentation. I pull whatever originals need to be copied from each binder, Xerox them, and then put all of the originals back, sorting the copies into their respective piles hoping they all make it to the intended recipients. Will anyone even really read these? Look through them? Or do they judge by the Inch Test: if the stack of papers is close to an inch thick, we “pass?”

I don’t mind assessing. I don’t mind backing up what I say I’m doing in the classroom. But I’m “assessing” for the sake of providing assessment forms to people in offices who will probably never meet my students. I’m burning copies to “prove” I’m doing my job. I’d rather just DO my job than worry about which committee needs what form to prove what is or isn’t going on in my classroom each day. If I’m teaching, I’m too busy for these forms and hoops anyway, right?

To quote a friend and former colleague of mine, “there you go, THINKING again.”

Burn copies for Mrs. X, Mr. Y, and Ms. Z. But don’t use too much paper out of our paper budget. Provide copies to committees A, B, and C, in the building, and to committees Q, R, and S outside of the building, and no, Committee A doesn’t want the same form that Committee Q wants, and don’t even think about using the same info, rubric or assessments for Committees B and R. You have to keep the green forms year-round but please turn them in at the end of each inservice, and remember, if you don’t get the white form to your building representative (who didn’t even attend the inservice), you don’t get paid.

I miss my children. I miss crocheting. I miss sleep.

But most of all, I miss logical efficiency.