Full Body Cow Costume

Attendance: Wendy, Ann, Robin, Jerry and eventually Steve
Location: 611
Teacher Bitching: Robin is so incredibly frustrated by the lack of action from the district special ed. team - surprise! Could be a blog in itself but boils down to - an informational meeting on the students' conditions (yes, 2 students) as studied by multiple people, including people from UW, information which Robin and Lynne have been screaming for since LAST SPRING is finally called. But, but since the spec. ed. people have screwed up and let a legal deadline approach the informational meeting becomes a rudderless IEP meeting, so the two teachers have to leave the meeting to teach still without months old information. Maybe they will find out about these students just in time to clue in next year's teachers.
Trick-or-Treat: This, of course, was the day Halloween was celebrated in school. We saw a great photo of Ann as a cow at work. Full body cow costume mind you. We ask: so do a lot of people dress up at the city for Halloween? Ann: no, it was pretty much just me in my cow costume.
She likes to just act casual and talk to people like she's not, you know, wearing a full body cow costume. Love it.
We heard about Jr. High costumes and at the elementary school everyone is in costume for the Halloween parade. Jerry was talked into a costume by his teammates who were doing a Superhero theme. He went as Clark Kent, which required only a Superman T-shirt under his shirt and a cool hat.
Episode of The Classroom: the one where a teacher wears an inapproariately revealing superhero costume to school causing boys throughout the school to suddenly go into puberty. (Can you guess who this is based on? And no, its not Clark Kent.)
Mandy Question: So what happens at your school for Halloween? I'm guessing costumes are not happening.

All Dressed Up

Attendance: Sarah, Vanessa, Wendy, Robin, Jerry
Location: The Saint
The Best Bits: Sarah and Vanessa looking hot on their way to an all-girl wedding. Best of all the wedding was at the same location as their wedding. We found out Sarah bought her dress in about 10 minutes right before showing up for cocktails. Did I mention they looked hot.
We missed Ann because she was away for the weekend with her mother. But we will be drinking with the Gormans Tuesday night - I'm guessing they are a really good mother/daughter drinking team.
The LWSD portion of the group discussed a stirring message from our fearless leader. Ask Wendy to forward it to you.
Some political talk about the upcoming election and who is voting for whom.
The first batch of chips was burnt. But don't worry, we got a new batch.
Wendy had the best weekend plans. They involved boating.
Episode of The Classroom: The one where the sup sends out a district wide pep-talk email that goes a rye. He/She is baffled by the results.
Questions? I keep forgetting to ask everyone to generate a question. I'm sure Sarah would have come up with a good one. Any questions for us?

LEAP (off a building would be nice)

Attendance: Wendy, Ann, Robin, Jerry
Location: 611
Need to know: You will be happy to know you missed a full day LEAP day today. At the elementary level we had a UW prof. talk for 2 1/2 hours on autism. The first part explaining a bit about what it is and the range of its expression in kids was OK. Then we are over an hour in with over an hour to go and she says "Only a 5 minute break and NO ONE LEAVE THE ROOM". Needless to say, teachers left the room.
While Secondary had a monotone lawyer telling teachers all the ways they can be sued by the parents of students with autism. Very inspiring from what I understand.
In the Public Sector: Ann had an enjoyable week telling off her boss on Monday after he returned from vacation after leaving her to deal with last week's budget deadline - not for the first time. (I'm considering having a sub the week before report cards are due and leaving in my sub plans - "Do my report cards.")
Episode of the Classroom: A teacher has a sub during important days/weeks of school and writes in the important work for her over eager new teacher sub to do. I.E. set up and conduct a conference with so-and-so's crazy military dad. Or rehearse and direct the school play.
Question for Mandy: Guess we decided we hope to ask our next question in person.

What Mandy Needs to Know

OK, the first 4 weeks of teaching are behind us so we may now have some time to begin the Mandy version of the Teachers' Cocktails blog. (It should s' right? since there are teachers, plural?) Any way, we were talking last week about what the categories should be. Suggested so far:
Attendance: you need to know who was there and who may be new.
The Story Mandy would most enjoy: for example, four weeks ago Robin and Jerry went on a team building retreat a la The Office. The lead up and aftermath of this event provided weeks of hilarious commentary that Mandy would have loved! Really Mandy, a team building ropes course retreat. No really. And, and, then Robin and Jerry's teams had to create a song, poem, dance that expressed what we learned. No really Mandy, we did this. (Sorry to switch back and forth from the 1st person plural to the 3rd person. Don't dock me credit.)
Episode of "The Classroom" ideas: should be a category (see above for best episode ever).
Our Question of the Week for Mandy: category - either an actually question: Why do east coast schools close for Columbus Day - or a Sarah question - You're about to go in for your doctor appointment and realize you forgot to put on underwear, what do you do? And that way you will have to comment by answering our questions.

What other categories do you want Mandy? We will all discuss it tomorrow as tomorrow is Friday, raise your glass - clink -.