If you try sometimes, yeah you just might find...

...I got what I need!

A specific child is no longer in my class. This child, who (of course) shall remain nameless, was a hol[ier than thou] terror for six weeks. I wasn't aware that a fifteen-year-old could know everything, including what was best for itself*, but apparently this child does. The child also is fully trained in educational best practices (to a degree far beyond both of mine), and is fit to decide what it will need after the age of 18, a place it has not been but seems to know all about.

And I ask you, why should we read books in English class? Preposterous. Yet, the child seems to have decided that this must be so. I ask you too, why should we take notes in a style confirmed as a best practice by law schools and 30+ years of research? Ridiculous! Let the reform begin!

On a less sarcastic, caustic, and demeaning note, this week may have been a rough one, but it was nothing compared to what it could have been, had this child still been in my class.

That is not to say that I did not love the child. Of course I did. In a way. A small, very difficult-to-see,-detect,-or define way. Am I embittered? Certainly not. Am I relieved? Of course. I could have survived all year with it in my class. I originally typed, "very well could have," but then decided that that was a falsehood. There would have been nothing going on that anyone would have described as "very well."

*I refer to the child as "it" in order to refrain from revealing the gender, not to suggest something about the gender (or the usual lack thereof that comes with the pronoun "it").

Anyway, we took the kids on a field trip this week. They had a wonderful time, and I rode on a school bus, surrounded by germs. The germs germinated, and became a cold or some other contagious plague. At least it was not the flu. *Knock on wood.* I am over it now, since I received the infection on Tuesday. Hopefully this means that my immune system is appropriately fortified against any new strains of whatever, and I won't get sick the rest of the year.

Speaking of sick, I watched "Shutter Island" today. It was recommended by a friend, and was very good. I will now recommend it to you, my non-existent audience.

Valete,
Magistra