yo mister, where you be?

Having had to take a day off the other day due to an unexpected situation, I returned to my school extremely early to clean up the carnage in my classroom that I knew inevitably awaited. When I entered the room, I was pleasantly surprised to find that things were "relatively" decent. Of course, desks were all over the place, but no bulletin boards had been vandalized and my desk only suffered from a minimum of pillage. Some items had mysteriously disappeared, but all in all, I was pleased. After a quick pick-up of the room, and running around trying to find some stuff, I was ready for homeroom.

The bell rang, and the kids came charging up the stairs. And five of my students from my other class came straight into my room asking, "Where I be?" Nice. Actually, very nice. Sometimes you can't quite gauge whether your connecting with some students, but this warm welcome back was a real nice surprise. What I didn't expect were the hugs. Now, I'm really careful when it comes to touching students. But one of the girls gave me this crazy huge hug as I stood there in this awkward position.

The one that was far more awkward came from Gangsta Thug Boy. Not only did I get a bear hug, but also a round of tickling.

The day went downhill from there. Evidently, learning to write thesis sentences and paragraphs were not on their agenda. But for today, the reception I received in the morning was enough to curtail any of the frustrations I might have brought home.