6:30 am
“You have five minutes to get out the door, Keely!” I’m still in bed, struggling to lift my limbs, exhausted from a marathon week:
Wednesday, we went to Memphis and picked up food from the restaurant supply store for the fundraiser dinner we’d planned for Friday. The restaurant supply store was awesome: it had a room the size of a normal grocery store, but refrigerated! They provided jackets by the door and kept 40 lb boxes of chicken on the shelves. By the time we’d unloaded everything into the refrigerators at school, it was 10:30 and we still had a long drive home.
On Thursday we prepared Mexican food in the home ec room. Two of my awesome juniors came to help. That part was a lot of fun, but kids have curfews and sometimes pork cooks slower than you want it to and you leave the school at 11:30 and still have a long drive home. When you get there, you have two messages from unhappy parents who’ve just gotten report cards.
Then suddenly, it’s Friday morning and I’m pretty sure I can’t make my body move, but I do it anyway and throw on a dress and brush my teeth and make it out the door just in time.
7:00 am
“Crap” I say aloud in the car: I’ve forgotten to put on a bra, and that ship has long-since sailed.
7:35 am
“You guys know you have a mariachi band in my room, right?” Vanessa says to Paige and me. We stare at her blankly (see aforementioned exhaustion). “Yeah, W has been coming in and working on it during his free time since Wednesday. It has a cutout to stick your face through.” We look at each other in wonderment. He’d suggested it at the Spanish Club meeting, but we hadn’t thought much of it. I guess I said “Make it happen, W” and he did. Some kids are too cool for school.
8:45 am
I am suddenly so glad that I got the better of the sandman and made it to school today: a group of my students has completed a rigorous linear functions project entirely in Spanish. They’re all over smiles.
9:30 am
I spend my prep period talking to the woman who runs the cafeteria about how not to burn down the school during the Spanish club dinner.
All morning long
teachteachteachteach. My 12th graders complete their video projects, and they’re awesome. We had a heck of a time figuring out how to send video from cellphones to the computer, but the results are pretty good. Some are outstanding. My 9th and 11th graders suddenly seem to be understanding linear functions, and they’re having fun doing creative math while I monitor and facilitate: a good formative assessment day, and not too demanding for an exhausted Ms. O.
1:19 pm
I receive the following communication from my superintendent:
High School Teachers:I am sorry that I have to send this email; but it seems that many of you are taking a very laid back approach to the job description of teacher. I am seeing way too many kids not engaged in the learning process. I am seeing way too many kids on cell phones, way too many TVs on in classrooms, way too many kids in the hallways and way too many kids sitting in groups talking while the teacher is sitting at his/her desk looking at the computer.The bottom line is this: THESE KIDS ARE NOT LEARNING BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT TEACHING!!!!I expect you to teach bell to bell from 8:00 a.m. to 2:58 p.m. for 178 days beginning in August and ending in May. If you can not do this or choose not to do this, please come see me.I told you at the beginning of school, we do not have “free days” or “just find you something to work on” days. We have student engaged learning days-178 of them.We only have one chance to teach our students-please make sure that they are receiving the education that they deserve…..the quality of education you want for your own kids.Please ignore this email if it does not apply to you.Thank you for your time.
Band and Cheerleaders are dismissed from my 7th period. That’s about half the class, so we have fifteen minutes of chaos while the remaining students struggle to understand that they’re still expected to work on their projects.
Pep rally! The cheerleaders look grumpy: nobody’s getting excited for these things anymore. Frankly, everyone knows we’ve had a terrible season and there’s just not much school spirit left in these parts.
Kitchen time with high schoolers: We used every dish in the cafeteria, I think, and made a tremendous mess, but the food was, by all accounts, muy delicioso. J made a delightful and energetic host, and all of the servers had a blast. W was a committed kitchen helper, always there when needed and unafraid to take on a challenge. A and C were devoted sous chefs, hollering over the fans and the hustle and bustle to Sean “Chef! what can we do now?” Morgan and Mallory turned up and joined the enchilada express line, and I finally took off my jacket when someone gave me an apron to wear.
Chef Chef!
pork tostadas
chicken enchiladas
We officially closed for the night. A had to go to be the drum major for the marching band, so we sent him with a message for the halftime announcements: $5 takeout trays available in the cafeteria! Somehow, by this point, all of the kids had vanished. They are involved kids, so they aren’t just in Spanish club, they’re in band or in cheer or color guard. Only W stuck it out with us. My love for this kid is totally boundless. He packed up all of the food in takeout trays and loaded them onto a cart, then got down to the business of dishes with me.
W left and Paige rolled the cart out to pick up some business from the fans leaving the game. I joined her after a while, and we did a steady trade in chicken enchiladas, even after the lights on the field flicked out with a quiet hum and we suddenly felt shady, hawking unmarked boxes of Mexican food just outside the gate of a sporting event.
“Yes sir,” Paige says, ever cool in the face of naked evil. I force a smile.
“Five dollars”
“Still?!” He chuckles and walks off.
Dishes. Mopping. Putting stuff away. It’s not fun. By 11:30 I have salsa all over my face.
We are about to become a pumpkin patch and this kitchen still ain’t clean, y’all.
Somewhere in there, we count the money and discover that we have made five hundred dollars, which is pretty crap if you think about the time and effort that we put into it, but pretty good if you think about the kids having a blast and the fact that we really needed the money to make our next payment on the Costa Rica trip.
When we left the school after midnight, we found this dirt-graffiti on our ride. Makes everything a little better.
chasing piggens 
Wow! I don’t think I could make it a day in your shoes. lol
Wow – can I have the recipe for the pork tostadas please !
It was a combination of two recipes. Mostly this one http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/07/the-food-lab-how-to-make-crisp-and-juicy-carnitas-without-a-bucket-of-lard.html
The other one is on cook’s illustrated, so I can’t link to it, but Sean sez:
“I didn’t use the salsa verde part, but it looks good. instead i took the liquids from cooking the pork and veggies, separated the fat from the liquid, cooked the liquid down to a syrup and then added both back to the meat before broiling”
Yup. Super delicious!