'Twas the week before Christmas . . .

"Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the halls,

Not a creature was learning, we were climbing the walls . . . "

This has not changed over thirty-seven years . . . it a week in which the kids get more hyper, more distracted, and completely sugar-overloaded while teachers get either the same, annoyed, or call in sick. Let's see, we had about 20% of our staff absent today . . . not even enough subs to go around. Ho, ho, ho! Isn't that fun?

There is a lot of fun to the franticness, like the traditional Secret Santa routine by the staff, the collecting money for the custodial staff, door or hall decorating, candygrams, cards and gifts from kids and friends, and parties, parties, parties! In my room alone today we had ice cream with toppings, toaster strudel, cookies, donuts, soda, juice, popcorn, corn chips and cheese dip, cakes, hot chocolate, and pizza. What a fun day! Alfio, my room cleaner, just said, "Mama Mia!" when he saw all the trash piled up. Yes, Italians really do say that! He wasn't too upset, though, because he got a generous Christmas gift.

We played Christmas Trivial Pursuit and Christmas Pictionary in AVID and had a White Elephant gift exchange. One can never tell with high schoolers, but I think a good time was had by all. Ninth-grade seminar was totally entertained by Wayne's World II, which they had never seen. They even stayed right through lunch to watch the end. That rarely happens.

One more day to get through . . .