The Ballad of King Namey McNamerson and the Magical Toothpaste

Before this starts…why, yes.  This is for a lesson I’m teaching.  I dare you to figure it out. 

Once upon a time, there stood a great kingdom: the kingdom of Town. And this vast kingdom was ruled by the great King Namey McNamerson, the king of Town. One day, King McNamerson was enjoying his favourite ice cream, pistachio, when all of a sudden…

“Zounds and egad! My teeth! This ice cream is so cold it has hurt-eth 3 of my 32 teeth! That’s 29 teeth left in fear of the ravages of this foul, villainous ice cream!”

Now, the King of Town, being an impulsive man who rarely thinks before he acts, decided at once to outlaw all ice cream in his kingdom! All flavours gone! Sally could not salivate over strawberry! Nicholas was negated of his neopolitan! Chelsea was cheated of her chocolate! Nay, not even a scoop of butter pecan was to be found in this new Kingdom of Town! The people of the kingdom of Town did love dear King Namey, but to be deprived of their ice cream?! That is simply too much to ask! The entire kingdom of 473 was divided on the issue! 237 people were demanding McNamerson’s immediate removal as king, 237 others were sympathetic to the King’s periodontal plight, and poor Johnny Seven-Shoes was trapped in the middle of the scuffle wondering just how much he missed on his day off.

Day and night the citizens of town battled and debated untill one day, a cloaked stranger strolled into the once glorious, but now ragged kingdom. And this shadowy, alluring stranger was called…Geoff. And Geoff was a dentist by golly, by gosh!

“Tales of your kingdom’s woe have reached me all the way in my village of Fluoride and I have come to solve all your problems! Lead me to King McNamerson!”

Namey sat high in his castle full of worry, “Oh, what have I done! My kingdom is a-shambles!”

At that very moment, Geoff burst into the hallway, “Fear not, oh King Namey! I have come bearing a gift from my village of Fluoride! We call it…enamel building toothpaste!”

And by and by, the mystical toothpaste strengthened King McNamerson’s teeth and they were no longer sensitive to the cold! And so he lifted the ban on ice cream and there was a great celebration in all of the Kingdom of Town. Every citizen, all 473 of them was gifted 3 pints of ice cream plus 4 for Geoff and 6 for Namey himself! 1429 pints of ice cream were consumed that night all together! And despite the horrendous tummy aches that afflicted them the next morning, they all lived happily ever after.

People I cannot stand…

If you don’t want to BE an educator, get out of education.  Education majors who don’t want to be education majors breed teachers who don’t want to be teachers and whenever I meet one of those I want to beat their face in.  I may not be where I want to be, but I’m doing what I love.  You are taking a career away from someone who is dreaming about what you do and you look upon it with disdain.  I get that employment is rough these days, I get that careers in performance (or creative writing or whatever major people are telling you will never amount to anything) are hard to come by, and I get that you think that because you have some skill that teaching will be easy.  These.  Are.  Stupid.  Reasons.  To.  Be.  An.  Education.  Major.  Do your future colleagues and future students a favour, go follow folly and do what you love and let us crazy people who love teaching do the same.

Saw a question about teachers having tattoos…

revolutionizeed:

…reminded my of my high school history teacher that had a gigantic Point Beer tattoo on his forearm and never covered it up.

Also, this past year, two of my colleagues got very visible tattoos (names on a forearm and a clover behind the ear) and nobody really cared about it.  

I think that people these days realize that the best teachers are the ones that are the best teachers…not ones that looks different…

Oh, the times they are a-changing.  And thank goodness.  I once had the principal at the school I was student teaching at tell me in a mock interview that she might not hire me because my nails were jagged and unmanicured and that shows that I don’t take care of myself or pay enough attention to detail.  Excuse me?  I feel like I should be hired based on the fact that I care more about getting my grades in on time than a small detail in my beauty regiment and I definitely think that working hard to come up with new and exciting way to teach music trumps the fact that I have a small tattoo on my finger.  Three cheers for administrators, faculty, and parents that are progressive enough to ignore the superficial in favour of good teaching!

(Source: revolutionizeed)

I love PS 22 at least 8000 times.  This is such a fantastic example of what a children’s chorus should be: fun, engaging, and best of all, they still sound like kids!  Anytime one of my younger students tells me that they can’t sing harmonies, or sound pretty, or perform complicated music because it’s too hard and they’re too little, my immediate response is “Nuh uh.  PS 22.  Now let’s work this out.”  <3

Week of DOOM

I’d been looking for a way to say thank you to the staff of my school and then this week crept up on us.  This week we have science fair, the band and orchestra concert, final dance rehearsals, Run Across America, an early release day with two assemblies on it, grades are due Friday, and all our inventories and classroom cleanings and such are due three days later.  12 cases of soda it is!  Because a caffeinated staff is a happy staff…well, more than not, anyway. 

To all of you experiencing the end of the year ball of stress, take a deep breath and remember, there’s always next year.  :P

Sith Rest.

Remember trouble chef?  Remember how when my students spell things wrong I imagine them in my head and then sometimes draw them out?  Well, on Wednesday, this happened…

…and as a result, this weekend, I drew this…

PS, the recent influx of my drawings?  Mainly Bobby’s fault.  ^-^