Hello?

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

So many of you have written asking where I have been. It's nice to be missed.

Where have I been?

Right here, just without much to say. Most of my material comes from my students and I have not been around them in quite a while.

Why?

I had a great student teacher who took over for several weeks, leaving me to plug away on my laptop in the teachers' lounge (where I completely shattered the bond between another teacher and her own daughter by proving to her that her practically perfect teenager did indeed have a Facebook page DESPITE her mother's admonition that she NEVER get one. OMG! She's normal!)

Then we went on Winter Break. School starts up again on Monday, so I should be ripe with material by 2:20 that afternoon!

On a happy note, annoying and forever ailing Travis moved over Christmas vacation!! His mother was The Screamer who got my year off to a rip-roaring start because of my "stupid, friggin' homework policy." They bought their first house in a town many, many miles away from our school. So many miles away that there is little chance he or his equally obsessive twin will drop by for a visit.

It was the single greatest Christmas present a student every unknowingly gave me.

On their last day, their mother made a big deal about complimenting both me and the teacher of the twin on our exceptional teaching skills. She raved about how accommodating we are and how our caring hearts made a huge difference in the lives of her sons. She wished that we could just move right along with them and continue teaching her kids. She topped it all off with a great big hug for both of us.

Is anyone else ready to puke, or is it just me?

In typical Travis fashion, he spent every moment at school talking about how he would be moving soon, how many schools he'd been to (that would be 3, in case you were wondering), how he would have to make new friends all over again (which is weird because he moved back to the neighborhood he came from and would be attending the school we went to last year), and forever reminding us of the countdown to his last day.

A few weeks before his departure, I was teaching about ecosystems. I posed an open-ended question to the kids and asked them to take 30 seconds to discuss it with the kid sitting next to them. Sitting right in front of me, Travis turns to his partner and says, "So…are you going to miss me when I'm gone?"

That was not the open-ended question I had posed.

In the nanoseconds before I could lean over and ask him to get back on topic his partner says, "Not really."

Ahhh, natural selection in action!

On a very sad note, my sweet, sweet seeing-double student who wore his brother's glasses to school has also moved. Right after we arranged for him to get free glasses, his parents' home was foreclosed on and they had to move. Every teacher on my fourth grade team will miss his infectious smile terribly.

Unfortunately, he is not the only student who left due to foreclosure. I also lost a little girl to the economy on the same day. She was a sweetie too.

It looks as if the economy is catching up to my little school's neighborhood in a bad way. I'm curious to see who I still have left in my class on Monday.

Well, thanks again for all your messages, both in comment form and via email.

I promise to be more diligent!