A day in the life of a middle school math teacher

Last week was a bit crazy as weeks go. First, Thursday was picture day. Somehow the picture schedule managed to mess with 3 of my 4 math classes. Needless to say, we didn't accomplish too much on Thursday. Friday didn't fare much better for the seventh grade. Apparently the flu is going around the school. Four people were sent home on Thursday because they were throwing up. Lovely. Thankfully the sick people stayed home on Friday. Unfortunately, most of the sick population must be from the middle school. I was down 12 7th grade students on Friday. 12 out of 32--that's a huge percentage!! Again, we didn't really accomplish much because I didn't want to introduce new topics with only half of a class present. Friday was also notable because we finally came to a conclusion about why my room is always so cold. When I arrived on Friday morning, the temperature gauge in my room read 41 degrees. I had to wear my winter coat, scarf, and gloves in order to stay warm!! The room across the hall was about 25 degrees warmer than my room. The temperature steadily rose by about 3-5 degrees an hour and by lunch it was in the 50's!! Wearing a coat during class turned out to be a good thing when someone decided to set off the fire alarm. Apparently someone was warming food up in the microwave during lower school lunch when the thing began to smoke. The smoke set off the fire alarm and we were forced to go outside. My students were warmer than the rest because they were already wearing an extra layer thanks to may insanely cold room! A few minutes later the fire department arrived, checked the school, and cleared us for reentry. We had to laugh though at one of the little kindergarten kiddos. The kindergarten had a dress up day (I'm not sure why) and one of the kids came to school as a fireman. When the alarm went off he rushed to his cubby, grabbed his fireman's hat, and told everyone not to worry because he knew what to do! Too cute! After the firefighters had completed the search, the little boy was given an opportunity to meet the real deal. You should have seen the smile on his face!! After lunch we discovered that the heater in my room had been turned off for some reason. We flipped the switch and lo and behold by the end of the day we were in the 70's (it was so warm the kids wanted to open the door to cool off a little!) What a crazy couple of days. The craziness will likely continue this week as well because it is conference week. As a result, 7/8 will run on a half day schedule Monday and Wednesday so we can meet with parents in the afternoon. Tuesday and Thursday will be full days for us. At least we have a long weekend to look forward to!!