One of our seventh grade boys has started to blatantly and publicly defy me. He refused to follow my directions when I was covering his class, and the other day he yelled, “NO! I’m not listening to YOU!” at me in front of a huge group of students. (That’s despite the fact that I had…

We were having an all-school meeting in the cafeteria, and the kids got a little ice cream snack to eat before it started. As they finished, our principal called for silence and started talking. I was standing by the table of our rowdiest 7th grade boys, trying to use my presence to make sure they…

You know it’s been a bad day when one cop asks you, “Well, how was your day otherwise?” and the other cop laughs and says, “Yeah, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”

My feedback is finally all back in, and it’s fine. I didn’t get exceptionally glowing reviews, but no one was as hard on me as I am on myself. No one came anywhere close. People complimented me on things that I’d been feeling really insecure about, and didn’t attack me on anything that hurt too…

I had horrible trouble sleeping last night. I swear I spent the entire night dreaming that I was at work, with a million things that I was supposed to be Dealing With. People kept coming to me to tell me that a kid had done something wrong and I needed to follow up. Then I…

Another detention? It’s not my fault I got detention. I didn’t do anything. That teacher just hates me. This is not your first detention. I have this feeling that’s not the whole story. Right. The teacher hates me. All the teachers hate me. They just give me detention all the time for no reason. No…

Why are you in the office? I don’t know. Did you come here from class? Yes. What happened in class? Nothing. Why did you get kicked out? I didn’t get kicked out! That teacher kicked me out. So you got kicked out. No I didn’t! She kicked me out. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Can…

I have never been so anxious about feedback in my life. I have to collect some anonymous survey data from teachers so that I can set goals for my year, and it has me shaking in my boots. I know that this is a great opportunity and their answers are information that I really want…

I’ve started seeing the following advertisement in my Gmail account: “Mobile Drug Test Kits For Law Enforcement Authorities”   This wouldn’t be noteworthy, except for the fact that Gmail uses information it picks up from your emails to target your ads. It’s also important to note that this comes from my personal email account, where…

Today, the following words came out of my mouth:   “This is not the time to make excuses for your child. No matter how frightened I have ever been, in my entire life, fear has never caused me to say descriptive things about anyone’s mom’s pubic hair. That is just not a typical stress response.”