Miss

So I guess I am going to bow to peer pressure and write a blog post.

Like the Teeners, I started school this week. However, unlike Teeners, I did not start school as a student, but as a teacher! That's because I am way smarter than her, and people like her need help from intelligent people like me. (JK Teenie you're smart.)

Anyway, I really started last week because I had new teacher orientation and three professional development days (although one of them was a work day, and I don't really think I developed much on that day.)

In addition to professional development, I had to go get fingerprinted for the seven bazillionth time. I have basically admitted defeat when it comes to this process. It is always expensive and time consuming and somehow way more complicated than it seems like it could possibly be, and I have had to get it done far more than make sense. But whatever. This time was a unique and interesting experience because the police officer who took my fingerprints was extremely admiring of my fingerprints. The first indication of this came when he told me, "You know, your fingerprints are really nice and clear." I asked him if this meant I should never commit a crime and kind of laughing because that's sort of a weird thing to say and I wasn't sure how else to respond. A few minutes later, he said, "Your prints really are nice." And then later, "It's really a pleasure printing you." And then later, "Don't you dare ever let anyone else print you." It was confusing because it felt like he was hitting on me but also it's hard to be flattered when the only compliment you get is about your fingerprints. I was somewhat tempted to shout "I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!" and make him feel as awkward as I felt, but I didn't because he had a gun.

Not nearly as nice as mine.

 Anyway, my seductive fingerprints passed the "Don't be a criminal" test and I have now been a teacher for two days. I'm not going to describe my days in full because we just did basic first couple of days stuff--syllabus, icebreakers, book inventory, etc. However, I will include a short list of some things that have happened, and you can feel free to just imagine the rest.

One funny thing is that everyone thinks that Evan is my boyfriend because in a distinct effort not to share my love life with them, I included no mention of my actual boyfriend--but I did put a picture of Evan on my "important people" slide and EVERY class asked if we were dating, and then acted very suspicious when I said no. Whoops. Guess in the future I will only have female friends.

From now on, nothing but CART. Except maybe then they'll think I'm a lesbian.

Also, I have realized that middle schoolers get excited about really weird things. Today, one of my 7th graders said to me, "Miss, I saw you in the hallway today!" (Also, sometimes some of them legit just call me Miss. What?) This set off a chain reaction of everyone in the entire class saying places that they had seen me. "I saw you walking in from the parking lot!" "I saw you in the 7th grade hallway!" "Hey, I saw her there too!" "I saw you talking to another teacher!" "I saw you looking in the supply closet!" and so on and so forth until finally I had to be like, "Guys, I work here, and sometimes they let me leave my classroom, so you're going to see me around. It's not that exciting and we don't need to talk about it for 5 minutes while you're supposed to be writing in your journals."

A recreation of Miss talking to Mr. Teacher from across the hall. Especially accurate because Miss's face says "I have no idea what's really going on."

I learned we have a school iguana that lives in the lobby.

Not our specific iguana but you get the idea.

Anyway, even though I have only had two real days of school this week and both of them were good, I am happy tomorrow is Friday! I think that once this week is over things will feel more normal, and less like I am an imposter teacher who is going to be thrown out at any moment.