Happy Teacher Day!

Today, as you are all aware, is Valentine´s Day. I have never much cared for the holiday and I certainly do not care for it as a teacher.  I do, however, feel it is 4,000 times better than Halloween as a teacher.

Halloween.

I shudder.

I do not know why, but we do not have school today, so we celebrated Valentine´s Day in the classroom yesterday.

My little ELL guy brought me in a bouquet of silk flowers and a card.  The card was a Valentines looking card and on the inside he had written in beautiful, very careful six year old print:
Happy Teacher Day.

Love him.

You might exclaim:  Taylor!  It was Valentines Day!  Not Teacher Day!

Reader.  This I know.  And this is why I love him.

I have been trying to communicate with his mama more and not use our district interpreter so much.  So I decided to use the Google Translate to tell the mama about how he would need to bring in a Valentine for each student in the class if he wanted to participate.

Side note-Parents.  DO NOT send your first graders to school with a box of unopened Valentines on Valentines Day and hope the teacher has time to help your child lovingly write out 25 Valentines for their classmates.  DO NOT DO IT.

Anyways.  I was feeling all accomplished so I cc´d the interpreter in on the email to impress her with my communication skills.

She replied that she was in fact proud of me, but that what I said to mom was that the child would need to write a card to SAINT Valentine.

She was going to text Mom and fix it for me.  I am sure she finds me endearing.

Later in the day at recess, two boys were play-wrestling.

Me:  Hey!  No wrestling!  This is Valentines Day!  It is a day for love, not wrestling!

ELL guy (proudly putting his finger in the air) AND TACOS!

Yes, buddy.  It is also a day for tacos.

He came up to me to tattle.  He does this all the time.  He knows how to say his classmates names and words like:  mean, rude, STOLE IT, and gum.

I do not ever need to check my sneaky students for gum.  This dude is all over it.  He is like an anti-gum superhero.

Anyways, when he tattles, he speaks mostly in Spanish and adds a few English words and is VERY animated.

So he is in full on tattle-mode and he keeps dropping the Spanish word ¨cuando.¨

And I took Spanish in high school and I feel like I should know this one.

Me:  Dude.  What is cuando in English?

ELL guy shrugs.

Me:  It is a question word, isn´t it?  Like who, what, where, or when?  Is it one of those, bud?

ELL guy looks at me like I am crazy and runs away.

And I later realized that if he knew what it was in English, he probably would have used the English word to communicate to his teacher who only knows English.

***

So.  Today.

Today I am home with the boys.  David left them a chore list which is lovely because it means they go outside and leave me be.

Oh!  And my new vacuum came and the boys set it up for me.  Moments later, I hear it running and I come out of my room in full attack mode.

Me:  That vacuum is NOT to be used by you.  It is just for me!

Boys:  That´s cool.  We were just making sure we set it up correctly.

So they went outside and I cleaned the house in peace.  At one point I notice them feeding the 8 calves grain, which I find to be strange because David is being very careful to not feed them too much grain as he is concerned about THE BLOAT.

We did lose a calf to THE BLOAT last spring.

So, I check the chore list and I do not see anywhere on it where David has instructed them to feed the calves.  So I call David.

He flips his lid.

He wants them to go out there and scoop it all up again.  And I am like, sorry, dude, those calves gobbled it up.  So he is sure they will die, all eight of them, and I call the vet and they say they will probably be ok but I need to watch them and make sure they are eating stem-y hay.

And they think I know what stem-y hay is.  I must sound like a true rancher now.

Full disclosure:  They are just getting their regular hay.  Let us all hope their hay is stem-y.

So, I am watching them.  I do not know exactly what I am watching for, but I am watching them.

Moments later, I see something hanging out of a cow´s backside.  So, naturally, I am excited and thinking one of the gals is in labor.  So I tell the boys to clean their room,  because it is a pit of despair,  and I go to check out the cow´s backside.

And something is definitely going on, Friends.  There is a lot of mucus and discharge coming out.  It is all very exciting.

I also looked at the 8 calves.  They are still alive.  So far, so good.

I went back inside to check on the boys.  HD is working hard on his room and LD is laying down moaning.  He is moaning because he burned his arm on the wood stove.  He burned his arm because he was backing up to the wood stove and accidentally touched it.  He was backing up to the wood stove because he was cold and even though it is winter, he is wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

So I take him upstairs to put some cream on it and wrap it.  When we are done, I walk into the living room just in time to see Charlie the puppy throw up.  I examine the throw up and somehow she, too, has eaten the grain that the boys fed the calves.

I clean it up and do another load of laundry, for that is my life, and I decided to go and check on the cows again.

And more mucus-y discharge is coming out of Maisy.  And it looks like Mildred is also having some mucus-y discharge!

And if you are wondering if I am walking around the cow pasture, sneaking behind cows and staring at their womanly areas, you are correct.

Happy Valentine´s Day!