Thursday, September 8 was a very unusual day.

The first unusual occurrence was today there were 2 school assemblies. I can’t remember another school day in history that had 2 school assemblies in them. It seems like a weird scheduling oversight, but I digress.

School assemblies stress out my students. First, they don’t happen near frequent enough for them to be routine, and anything out of routine throws off my students. But 2 in one day, and they were beside themselves upset. But I find it extremely important, and in fact, place a high priority on having my class join school wide events such as school assemblies. Making sure my students are included and an integrated part of the school community is important, not only for my students, but for the whole school community. But with that comes a really, really rough day. My students are out of their comfort zone, and therefore act out like no other day. Hence, myself and my staff are at home popping ibuprofen and icing!

Next comes the extremely rare occurrence…visits by admin to my classroom.   My school site is almost the farthest away from the district office as you can get in my city. My classroom is almost the farthest you can get from the front office. I have never actually used any official measuring device to clock the distance, but my guesstimation has me the farthest you can get by sheer observational data…no one ever comes to visit…unless they need something!

So today I had both the principal of my school, and my assistant director of my department visit my classroom. And not together. And not to discuss the same topics. And not to ask the same things of me. Seeing both of these individuals, in the same day, at different times, not in at a training, is equivalent of seeing Big Foot in the wild, with his wife, and children! The visits also left me a little dizzy.

So to reward myself for surviving both school assemblies, and both visits from admin, I am taking the night off from prep work and report writing, and enjoying an extra glass of wine! Tomorrow is Friday anyway, so what could go wrong?!