A Little Alice Cooper, School's Out For the Summer

It's my last day at school.  Gnu goes one day longer than I do to close out all the necessary records she maintains.  As far as academics on the last day, there are none.  There is an awards program that takes up the majority of the morning and parental units are invited.  Gnu and I are hoping that our parental units will actually attend.  Immediately after the awards program there is a free lunch that the parental units can attend with their scholar.  For the first time since I arrived at this school, this is going to be a catered event and the main entre will be fried chicken.  Immediately at the end of the food line was a large table with books for various reading levels.  There is a sign on the table that says, summer reading books.  Next to this sign is another sign that says "free."  The school has an enclosed outdoor court yard that is used as a recess area for the prekindergarten scholars but today this court yard will serve as our outdoor cafeteria.

EM and MiniJ failed to attend school on our last day.  This is a bit troubling, but then again, I'm familiar with their parental units.  As you heard in a previous blog post, Knapper was struck by demons and was in a behavioral health facility so he couldn't attend.  All the other scholars are in attendance and after Gnu had them clean out all of the crap they had crammed into their desk and cubby (locker) we lined up to attend the awards program with all the other third grade scholars.  We were the last class to walk into the gym and I was quite surprised at the number of parental units in the gym.  After we were seated I scanned the audience.  Sitting close by was Grr!'s parental units.  Also seated close to us was Un-Uh-Uh's parental units.  Although I didn't know it at the time, ShortTime's older brother was in attendance.  That just left BigHouse and S&T's parental units as absent.  When the BigB invited Gnu up to the front to hand out her awards everything went smoothly.  Each of our scholars received an award and rightfully so as they all advanced academically.  The big surprise came when the special's (gym, art, and music) awards were handed out to the third grade scholars.  Uh-Uh-Uh received the art award and EM received the gym award.  For the fourth consecutive year the music teacher chose not a hand out an award.  That really irritated me for two reasons.  First, when scholars, not in my charge, get overly vocal or aggressive in the music class, I stand up and address the issue.  That is not my job but I do it so the remainder of the scholars in the room can continue singing.  Second, Grr!, by far, was the best music participant all year and should have been given the music award.

After the awards program, all of our parental units stayed for the lunch.  That gave Gnu a chance to talk to them about their scholar and explain to them what her plans were for the next school year.  The meeting with the parental units went very well.  The parental units thanked Gnu for all she has done for their scholar, finished their lunch, and if they chose to, they could take their scholar home for the remainder of the day.  So, at around 12:30pm all of our scholars, except for BigHouse and S&T, were gone for the day.  To keep these two scholars occupied, Gnu handed them an iPad and said to them, "pick out a game to play or I can get you some coloring pages."  That kept them busy for the remaining to the end of the day.

It's now around 3:00pm on the last day of school.  The classroom has been prepared for the summer break.  I've cleaned out some of the assorted crap that I accumulated.  Gnu has cleaned out the massive amount of crap that she accumulated and then we had our meeting.  "Prophet will be back at our school next year," she informs me.  "Are you serious, hopefully not in our classroom," I say.  "No," Gnu responds, "he will be in back in the life skills classroom where he belongs."  After making her big announcement that Prophet was returning and striking fear into my heart that he will be in our classroom again, she tells me what transpired that brought Prophet back to our school.  The primary reason for his return was that his parental unit did not want to place him in a residential facility.  Once she made that decision our school had to adjust, come up with an individual education plan (IEP), and decide where to place him.  So, guess who had to do all of this work.  The one person that was at the case conference that knew the least about writing an IEP for a life skills scholar. The one person at the case conference that isn't even licensed to teach life skills scholars, Gnu.  Ridiculous, absolutely, but I liked the way Gnu handled the situation.  

While at the case conference Gnu laid out the IEP for everyone on to read.  She then stated that Prophet will be placed into a life skills class that is for the older scholars and is on the second floor of our school.  When she finished, she informed the group that if there were any objections than someone else can take charge of the situation.  She also informed the group that, no matter what happens, Prophet will not be returning to her classroom.  That was a pretty bold statement when you consider that Gnu had the least amount of experience among all of our school corporation's attendee's at this case conference.  When Gnu finished her statement, no one said a word, meeting adjourned.
           

The report cards.  I'll start with our previous scholars.

Floss and Straw graduated and are moving on to middle school.  Wide was promoted to the sixth grade.  Leftside's position is uncertain as the last I heard, he had a run in with law enforcement.

Now on to our scholars.

EM will be moving on to the fifth grade.  This ends the longest run that I've had with a scholar as EM entered our classroom when he was in the second grade.  Although EM advanced academically, he has no business being in the fifth grade.  Sadly, there is nothing that can be done as he has been held back for academic reasons previously.  There is a summer school option for EM but it is not mandatory and I'm certain his parental unit will not step up and do the right thing and have him attend summer school.

MiniJ will be moving on to the fourth grade.  Despite all of his behavior rough edges he did will academically.  With a little luck he will pass the IRead3 retake test.  Gnu also informed me that MiniJ was attending summer school which really surprised me.  Finally, and with a smile on my face, MiniJ will start the next school year in a general education classroom.

Uh-Uh-Uh will be moving on to the fourth grade. Both academically and behaviorally, Uh-Uh-Uh had a really good year.  The academic highlight was that she passed IRead3.  Behaviorally, or maybe I should say socially, she advanced to the point that she has made friends outside our classroom.  Best of all, these friends are girls and that is great when you consider she spent the entire school year in a room full of boys.  Finally, and with another smile on my face, Uh-Uh-Uh will start the next school year in a general education classroom. 

Grr! will be moving on to the third grade.  Academically he has done well but his reading ability is still lacking.  Behaviorally, Grr! knocked it out of the park.  When he was in the first grade his entire school day was one hour long.  Yes, you read that correctly.  A combination of his anger issues in conjunction with anxiety issues seriously limited his time in the classroom.  For him to make it full time for the entire school year is a huge step forward.  Finally, with the third big smile on my face, Grr! will start the school year in a general education classroom.  

ShortTime will be moving on to the fifth grade.  He is an interesting story.  He arrived at our school just before winter break and Gnu and I were under the impression that he would only be with us a short time as he was going to receive off campus instruction due to his poor behavior at his previous school.  Although he was the most disruptive scholar in the classroom, the behavior issues we were told about before his arrival never appeared.

Knapper, as far as I know, will be returning to our school next year and will be in the fourth grade. There was some discussion about him starting the next school year in a general education classroom.  Unfortunately, that decision is on hold given his recent attack by the demons.

BigHouse will be moving on to the fourth grade.  Academically he is pretty solid but his anger issues erupted a couple times.  I'm not certain, but I think BigHouse will start the school year in a general education classroom.

S&T will be moving on to the third grade.  Academically, that should not happed as he is well behind in reading and math.  S&T has a very low IQ and is just a few points above the cut off point that would place him in a life skills class.  Apparently that can't happen unless he is retested and that is not in the plans right now.  At the start of the next school year, we will only have one returning scholar in our classroom and it is S&T.

That's it.  The school year is over.  We have two unknowns going into the next school year.  One, will we get any new students in our classroom.  Two, the decision on who will replace the BigB still has not been made.  We also have this, one of the two adults in the classroom is getting married a short time after the new school year starts.  I'll let you decide who I'm talking about.

I'm uncertain as to how often I will update my blog during summer break.  If anything news worthy comes up I'll inform everyone about the update just as I have been doing since I started this blog.  Thank all of you for continuing to follow along and hopefully we'll cross paths again at the start of the next school year.

PS - my reading challenge for the summer is to complete the entire Harry Potter series for the second time.  Right now I'm on book three.  Sirius Black just escaped from Azkaban, the dementors have made their first appearance, Hagrid is now teaching Care of Magical Creatures, and Draco Malfoy is, as always, acting like a horse's ass.  Bye!

 

     

720 Down and 180 To Go

I was sitting at the kitchen table all calm and relaxed when my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse asked me if I read a column written by Mark Russell.  My response was "nope".  "You should read it, it's an article about education," she said.  "Ok, hand me the column," I replied.  About three fourths of the way through the column I went from calm to agitated as Mr. Russell was taking about reading gaps.  I won't bother you with every statistic he mentioned in his column but there are a few that are interesting.  Thirty-two million adults in the U.S. can't read.  That is 14 percent of the population.  Twenty-one percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level and 19 percent of high school graduates can't read.  Following these statistics, Mr. Russell commented about a research project that was completed at the University of Kansas.  The research project was titled, "The 30 Million Word Gap."  Briefly, the researchers found that scholars from high income families were exposed to 30 million more words than scholars from families on welfare.  Not only were the scholars from high income families exposed to more words, they were exposed to words that had more meaningful messages.  The information mentioned by Mr. Russell in his column didn't really surprised me that much but then he started finger pointing and that is what set me off.  According to Mr. Russell, "all adults must hold schools and themselves accountable for participating in the lives of all of our children and hold political and civic leaders accountable for their acts of commission and omission."  Mr. Russell's quote is a little long but I'm going to give you a chance to pick out the four words in this quote that really got me agitated.  Go ahead, give it your best shot.  Let me know when you are finished so we can move one.

Dear Mr. Russell, you and so many others of your ilk continue to put forth a full scale frontal attack on schools for all of life's failures.  Mr. Russell please explain to me why a school has to assume the responsibility for a 30 million word gap that was created by scholars who are unfortunately products of piss poor parenting (P.P.P.).  Mr. Russell, these unfortunate scholars, over the first four or five years of their life, failed to get the attention they needed at home and entered a school 30 million words behind.  How and the hell do you think a school and the teachers in either a prekindergarten or kindergarten class are going to make up this massive gap?  Mr. Russell, here are the cold hard facts, they are not going to close the entire gap and here is why.  A teacher can put forth a herculean effort every day in the classroom to close the gap but at the end of the school day the scholar will return home to a parental unit who just does not give a damn about their scholar's education.  Here is my final quote from Mr. Russell.  "The current literacy rate isn't any better than is was 10 years ago."  That is correct Mr. Russell and here is why.  For ten years you and others of your ilk have raised up their arm, extended to boney, crooked, disjointed index finger and pointed it at schools and teachers for failing our young scholars.  Mr. Russell, the next time you decide to point your finger and place blame please direct it at the parental units of our scholars who are P.P.P. and not the schools.

Enough of that.  Let me tell you for the umpteenth time what a wonderful school I work at.  I think I'll start with one of our fourth grade teachers.  From the beginning of the school year this teacher was on a mission to raise funds so that every fourth grade scholar in our school could go on an overnight camping trip.  Every now and then during the school year I'd ask this teacher how the fund raising was going and she would smile and say, "it's going well.  I've been very fortunate that several members of the community have stepped up to help me with the finances for a few years now."  So, on June 1st, if my memory serves me correctly, just about every fourth grade scholar in our school boarded a bus at 9:30am and did not return to the school until mid day on June 3rd.  Not one of the fourth graders going on this field trip needed any money for transportation, lodging, or food.  This teacher came in to school early on a regular basis, stayed late after school on a regular basis, some how found the time to organize the field trip to include raising the money and few if anyone outside our school community knew a thing about this.

It's now Tuesday, June 7th, the penultimate day of the school year and it is Market Day in the second grade.  For the record, we have three second grade classrooms and this is what the teachers organized.  All the second grade students were put in groups of two or three and they had to come up with an idea for Market Day with the intent of selling a good or service to make money and hopefully a profit.  Although I didn't count all of the booths, there easily had to be twenty-five.  Items in the booths ranged from baked goods, face painting, fingernail polishing, art works, games of chance, sidewalk art drawing, and sports related games.  Invites to attend Market Day went to the entire faculty, to include the Big B, and all grade levels below second grade.  Each classroom attending was given an allotment of money to spend at Market Day.  All morning, scholars from the other classroom rotated through Market Day and it was fun for me to watch all of the vendors that had goods or services to sell interact with their customers.  These little entrepreneurs were doing their best to convince all of the scholars attending Market Day to purchase their goods or service.  It was amazing and as a reminder we are talking about second grade scholars doing this.  Three teachers came in early to organized this activity.  Three teachers stayed late to organize this activity.  Three teachers bust their butts and no one outside of our school knew this was going on. 

I work at a great school.  At every opportunity I do my best to promote my school because there are so many good things happening that no one ever hears about.  Unfortunately, if my school or for that matter any public school in my immediate vicinity makes the news it because of test scores.  There is Dibel testing, SRI testing, NWEA testing, IRead testing and the king of stupid testing, ISTEP.  If a public school does poorly, it's on the front page of the newspaper.  Did the fourth grade teacher that took twenty-five or thirty fourth grade scholars on a camping trip make the newspaper, NO.  Did three second grade teachers who did a wonderful Market Day project make the newspaper, NO.  So, do me a favor.  The next time someone brings up the quality of a public school education with you ask this person how much time they spent in a public school and actually sat in the back of a classroom and looked around to see what was going on.

I'm two days late publishing this blog.  It's summer break so don't give me any grief.  That's it, yard projects are calling my name and I need to go.  720 days down and 180 to go.  I'm out. 



      



 

The Demons Struck at 2:30pm

Oh my God, some of you people are off the hook.  Let's get this straight about the next school year.  My part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse is not going to tell you.  You can bug my 9Patch sister all you want but she has no idea what I'm going to do.  You can drive all the way down from Michigan to attend a baptism and bug me all you want about my plans for next year but you will get nothing.

"Mr. Schultz, if you are still in the building please stop by the office," was the announcement on the overhead public address system.  Crap!  I had everything I needed and was heading to door #4 with the intent of calling it another day when I heard the announcement.  "Must be a bus incident," I said to myself and headed to the front office.  The BigB speaking, "don't say a word, don't read anything, just take this ink pen and when I point with my finger, you sign."  Without any expression at all on my face I took the ink pen from the BigB and signed my name.  When I finished, I handed her back her pen, looked her in the eye and said "thanks," shook her hand and walked out of her office.  Pretty simple except for one thing.  On the paper I signed there were three boxes with text next to each box.  Box #1 stated, I accept this school assignment.  Box #2 stated, I resign my position with IPS.  My last day will be......  Box#3 stated I am retiring.  My last day will be .....  Guess what box I checked.

Earlier in the school year, each of our third grade scholars were required to take the IREAD3 reading test.  As I mentioned earlier, Un-Uh-Uh passed,  Knapper did not, and MiniJ was real close but did not pass.  This past Monday was the retest day.  Knapper did not come to school that day.  MiniJ was in attendance so he went to take the retest and I attended as a proctor.  After logging in MiniJ looked at me and said, "Mr. Schultz, there are only fifteen questions."  I looked back at him and said, "piece of cake," and thought to myself he can do this without losing his focus.  As MiniJ began reading the text, I silently read along.  When he finished, he read the first question, turned to me and said, "it's B Mr. Schultz."  As the proctor, plus his instructional assistant, I'm not allowed to give him even the slightest hint that he answered the question correctly or incorrectly.  If I do so, I jeopardize the whole testing process and if caught "helping," I'm unemployed.  That's a tough position to be in.  If MiniJ fails this IREAD3 test he is supposed to be retained in the third grade.  If MiniJ fails this test Gnu's teaching ability comes into questions.  Knowing this, I looked at MiniJ and said to him, "read each question carefully and choose what you think is the best answer."  MiniJ turned back to the computer screen, clicked on the "next question" icon and I knew that he got the first question right.  One down and fourteen more to go.

When MiniJ finished the IREAD3 test he raised his hand and the adult in charge of the testing process walked over to him and asked him if he was finished.  MiniJ responded, "yes."  The adult then said to him, "if you want, you can reread all the questions to check your answers."  MiniJ indicated that he did not want to do that so the adult said to him, "click on the submit button and you can return to your classroom."  When MiniJ clicked on the submit button I thought I would see his score but I didn't.  As we were leaving I approached the adult and asked what score MiniJ needed to pass the test.  I was told he needed to get nine correct which is sixty percent.  When the adult said nine I thought to myself it was going to be close and we continued back to the classroom.

You need a percentage score of sixty to pass a government mandated reading test in order to be promoted to the fourth grade.  Sixty percent?  What the hell is that?  I'm sorry, maybe it's a generational thing, but a score of sixty percent on any test is a failure score.  Later in the day I was sitting at the dinner table with my part time editor, part time consultant, and full time spouse when I brought up the sixty percent score.  "That's correct," she said to me.  "All you need is to get a sixty percent score or higher and you get promoted, welcome to the dumbing down of a nation."  As she said this, I thought back to what a teacher told me a couple years ago, "from kindergarten through second grade you learn how to read and from third grade on you read to learn."  I'm sorry, but a scored of sixty percent says to me you can't read so your ability to learn is limited and I know exactly where to put the blame.  Dear lowest life form (the politician) and all of the pointy headed intellectuals who made the IREAD3 test mandatory for all third grade scholars and established a passing grade of sixty percent.  You are a bunch of wrong headed, bone headed, fools who don't want to hurt anyone's feeling, who don't want to hurt anyone self esteem, and who are slowly destroying the education system in our country. A sixty percent passing score is doing nothing but setting up our young scholars for failure and you idiots need to be held accountable for this massive failure and not the school teachers. 

Getting our scholars to focus on academics continues to be a challenge as the school year winds down. Hell, it's an equal challenge for Gnu and I to stay focused on academics.  In an attempt to keep the scholars focused, Gnu chose a number of books that we will be reading daily.  The book of choice for the day is Martina the Beautiful Cockroach, which is a Cuban folktale.  Before Gnu begins to read she gets the scholars attention and says, "Who can tell me what a folktale is?"  Hands immediately go up, "it's a story that gets passed on from one generation to the next," is one response.  "It's a story that can change depending on who is telling the story," is the next response.  Both scholars were correct.  As a reminder, Gnu and I work with scholars with anger control issues and not intelligence issues.  As a second reminder, I'm working with an absolutely wonderful teacher.

Here is the abridged version of the book.  Martina is a cockroach that just reached the ripe old age of twenty-one days and she is looking to get married.  As Gnu begins to read, she has everyone's attention as it's not every day that they get to read a story about a cockroach.  Like she always does, at a critical point in the story, she will stop and ask the scholars to predict what is going to happen.  On this particular day Knapper is on top of his game.  Every time Gnu stopped to ask a question, Knapper had a response.  At one point Gnu was so impressed with Knapper's response to a question she left the front of the room, walked up to him, gave him a high five, and said "that is the best response to a question you ever made."  Knapper had this huge smile on his face as Gnu turned and walked back to the front of the classroom.

It was right at 2:30pm when Gnu finished our reading block when she told the scholars we were going to do some math and if everyone stayed on task they could go outside for a second recess.  That got all of the scholars excited and as Gnu handed each one of them their worksheet they immediately got started.  The last scholar to get a worksheet was Knapper.  When Gnu reached is desk, Knapper had his forehead on his desk and his arms were hanging limply at his sides.  Gnu and I made eye contact, I shrugged my shoulders to indicate I wasn't sure what was going on, but inside my head I knew the demons had struck Knapper.  Gnu reached down, place a worksheet next to Knapper's head and told him to get started so he could go outside for the second recess.  Knapper raised his head, saw the worksheet, and immediately swept it off his desk onto the floor and put his forehead back on his desk.  That is definitely not a good sign and my radar is up and I'm closely watching Knapper.  When the scholars finished their worksheet, Gnu quietly directed them out of the room and I told her I'd stay behind.  With the scholars gone I walked over to Knapper, tapped him on the shoulder and said to him, "what's wrong?"  Knapper raised up his head and said to me, "just leave me the f... alone." He then stood up, walked over to Gnu desk, crawled under it, raised his head up three times and banged it on the bottom of Gnu's desk.  A few minutes later Gnu returned to the classroom, got the scholars packed up and directed them to the buses so they could go home.  I then inform Gnu about what had happened and rather than try and get Knapper on his bus she decides to call his parental units to come and get him.  They agree to do so but don't arrived at school until approximately 4:30pm.  When they arrived both parental units tried to get him to get out from under the desk.  Finally, at 4:50pm Knapper crawls out from under Gnu's desk and calmly walked out of the classroom with his parental units and our day is finally over.  So what demon entered his head?  He kept talking about a choking incident that happened a couple years ago.

It's now two days later and the classroom phone rings.  "Please have Knapper ready to go home as his parental unit is here," the voice on the other end tells me.  I get Gnu's attention, tell her Knapper needs to go, and she says to me "I know," he has an appointment to get his hearing tested and out the door Knapper goes.  It's now the next morning and Knapper is not at school.  Gnu quietly informed me that he will not be at school the rest of the school year.  I look at her and say, "what?"  She told me that when he was getting his hearing tested he had an anger eruption to the point that the police were called and they took him to a behavior health hospital.   Just like that, Knapper is gone.

Yes, I know, that is not a good way to end the blog so I'm going to do my best to cheer your up.  You know that paper I signed, I checked box #1.  Early in the school year Gnu and I came to an agreement, we'll both felt we could tolerate each other for one more year.  Bye!

    




      

   

The Zoo

I'm jumping from academics and some of the occasional emotional eruptions that occur in a classroom to the bizarre, if not completely insane, thought process of board members and/or finance committee members.  Recently, said board members and/or finance committee members made the decision to make some salary adjustments for their teachers.  From what I know, the decisions were made for two reasons.  First, to make it easier to attract new teachers to the school.  Second, to raise the salary of the new teachers in order to retain them.  The decision making process was as follows.  Raise the salary of new teachers up to a certain dollar amount to retain them.  With this accomplished, these teachers would be making a salary comparable to the dollar amount unions are trying to get for fast food workers.  In fact, if the fast food worker works full time and the union gets them organized enough to get the desired wage, this hamburger flipper will make more that a new teacher.  Now that said board members and/or finance committee members spent money to attract and retain teachers they have to figure out a way to pay for these salary increases.  The solution they came up to was to lower the maximum salary cap for the teachers that have committed their entire career to teaching in their schools.  With these decisions made, questions are being asked by the teachers.  "You just raised the beginning salary for a teacher so are you going to increase my salary because I've been at this school for two, three, and even four years and new teachers are making the same salary as I am?"  The response to this question, NO!  "I'm just under the new salary cap, so you're telling me that if a I get a salary increase it will be my last one as I'm at the new lowered salary cap?"  The response to this question, YES!  Here is the logic, if logic is even the correct word, from these board members and/or finance committee members.  You should consider what you do as not so much a job but a mission and in your contribution to this mission you need to make some sacrifices.  I'm sorry, but I don't like this "logic" and I've come up with a better word, "bullshit."  Here is why I've chosen this word.  There are executives and/or leaders of these schools that live on palatial estates for free.  The palatial estate comes with free lawn care and landscaping.  The landscaping comes with fully furnished outdoor patios with barbeque grills built in brick plus built-in artificial water falls.  There is enough poured concrete in the driveway of this palatial estate that you could land a Cobra gunship and still have room for cars.  So you know, these board members and/or finance committee members are not part of the public school system.  They are part of the private school system and it is my belief that these private school systems just started in a downward spiral that will lead to their demise. 

Off to the zoo.  Of all the field trips that our scholars go on, this is easily my favorite because I like going to the zoo.  I've lost track of the number of times I visited the zoo with BigE and hopefully I'll lose track of the number of times that I go to the zoo with LittleE.  About a week before the field trip Gnu sent home the permission slips for all of the scholars.  For the first time, ShortTime will be able to go on a field trip and that is a good thing because his parental unit has been bugging Gnu to let him go on this field trip.  One by one the permission slips are signed and returned.  With only one day left before the field trips we are missing one signed permission slip, ShortTime's.  Gnu reminds him again the he can go but he will need his parental unit to sign the permission slip and to pick him up when we return to school as his bus that takes him home will not be available.  It's the morning of the field trip.  All scholars are in attendance but one, ShortTime.  Apparently, despite nearly bugging Gnu to death to let her scholar attend this field trip, the parental unit just couldn't get up the energy to pick her scholar up upon our return to school.  So, not only did ShortTime not get to go to the zoo, his parental unit didn't even send him to school.

On the day of the field trip to the zoo, the weather was a little iffy.  We'll depart for the zoo at 9:30am and will be back at school at 1:30pm.  The weather forecast states thunderstorms rolling through at 1:00pm so we should get to see most of the animals at the zoo.  The bus ride to the zoo was uneventful and so was getting through the admission gates.  Now standing inside the zoo the scholars decided they wanted to enter the Waters Exhibit and off they went.  As they started walking in the direction of the Waters Exhibit I realized that I made a mistake by letting them chose what to do first.  The scholars chose the counter clockwise direction through the zoo which meant the first three exhibits we would see would be indoors.  With rain approaching we should have taken the clockwise route so when the rain hit, we'd be inside. 

We survived the Waters Exhibit without incident and were heading to the Orangutan Exhibit when Gnu's cell phone rang.  Gnu answered the phone and looked over to me and silently said it was EM's parental unit.  EM's parental unit was supposed to join us on the field trip as she is a registered volunteer but she just couldn't get to school on time to join us on the bus.  I suspect the reason she couldn't get to school was that her driver's license was suspended.  As I listen to Gnu on her cell phone I realize that EM's parental unit was at the zoo and wanted to join us.  Gnu looks at me and says, "she's at the front gate, can you go and get her?"  "Sure," I responded and I head to the front gate.  When I arrive, there is a light crowd so I'm thinking it will be easy to find her.  As I begin my search, I looked in all directions and don't see her so I call Gnu on her cell phone.  "I'm at the front gate, there are very few people around and I don't see her."  "Ok, let me call her back so I can see where she is and I'll get right back to you," Gnu states.  A minute later my cell phone rings and it's Gnu.  "She is at the front gate where you pay to park."  I respond to Gnu, "Do you know where that is?  That's a long walk."  I know, she doesn't have any money to pay to get into the parking lot," Gnu informs me.  Gnu continues, "do you want me to tell her that she can't join us?"  Slightly irritated that a parental unit would arrive at the zoo without any money I respond, "no, let me try and figure this out and I'll get back to you."  I then walk over to the window where you purchase your ticket to enter the zoo and ask to speak to the manager.  I inform the manager of my situation, state to her that I'll pay the $6.00 to get her through the gate but I don't know how to accomplish that.  The manager pulls our her walkie-talkie, speaks to the front gate personnel, and they let her through.  I finally see EM's parental unit in the parking lot walking toward me with EM's littlest brother in a baby stroller and one of his older brothers, who I believe is in the 6th grade, walking toward me.  When they reach me I let the manager know that this is who I was waiting for and start walking to the ticket window to pay for parking and two admission tickets which will cost me about $35.00.  The manager looks at me and says, "follow me."  We do and she takes us to the exit, pulls out a stamp, stamps everyone's hand and we are heading in for free.  I thank the manager, direct EM's parental unit to wait for me on a bench just inside the zoo and head over to the ticket office to pay the $6.00 I owe for parking.  When we are finally inside the zoo, I pull out my cell phone and call Gnu to get her location.  As soon as she answers the phone she says, "did you find her?"  I respond back, "not her, them," and get her location and we are moving toward the rest of the scholars.

Despite a parental unit that missed the school bus in the morning.  Despite a parental unit that chose to drive to the zoo with a suspended driver's license.  Despite a parental unit arriving at the zoo with no money.  Despite a parental unit that Gnu and I thought would be by herself and not with two of her siblings, one of which should have been in school, the day worked out real well until the storm hit.  Fortunately, we were under a shelter when the storm hit.  There was thunder and lightning directly overhead and it was raining pretty hard.  Off in the distance we could see our bus approaching and Gnu informed the scholars that it was time to head back to school.  S&T states, "I'm not going back to school," and runs out into the storm.  With lightning coming down directly in the area of the zoo, with thunder rumbling overhead, with it pouring rain, I look at Gnu and say, "what do you want me to do?"  She looks over at S&T and then says to me, "he stopped in a pretty safe place, let him stand there by himself."  "No problem," I respond "but if he chooses to run rather than get on the bus, I'll chase him down."  Fortunately, being very wet and cold, our fine young scholar stepped onto the bus.  When S&T was in his seat and the bus was rolling back to school, Gnu looked over at me and said, "as long as he is in our classroom, he will never go on another field trip." 

Despite all the craziness going on, the scholars enjoyed the zoo.  Like our school field trip, where they were laughing hysterically as they rolled down a hill, they had fun and laughed a lot which is exactly what any young scholar should being doing while at the zoo.

Thanks again for following along.  The end of the school year is rapidly approaching so I'll have to make that decision pretty soon.  Actually, I've already made the decision.  I'm just not going to tell you right now.