February Vacation: Fill & Download for Free

Oh, I love this question! The absolute weirdest thing I’ve seen at school or in the classroom is…a sand table filled with baby octopiDuring my year as a student teacher, I was called in as an emergency sub for a teacher whose child had to be rushed to the hospital. It was the last period of the day on a Friday just before February vacation. It would have been very difficult to find a sub, so they asked me to take the class and manage it through dismissal. No further instructions were given to me.As I walked into the classroom, that distinct seafoody smell hit me and I was curious. But I never imagined that I would find a sand table filled with water and dead baby octopi floating around! Apparently, the teacher was doing a unit on sea life and had purchased some baby octopi for the kids to ‘play’ with during centers time. AGH!!!Anyhoo, since my job was to dismiss the class and had not received further instructions as to what to do with said baby octopi, I assumed the teacher had arranged disposal plans. I stopped in to check in with the custodian who said he had not received any notification so he too would assume that the teacher had arranged a proper disposal.Well, she hadn’t. So a week and a few days later, when we came back from February vacation, I was “greeted” by one of the angriest teachers I had ever met in my life. Furiously, she commanded me to follow her to her classroom where I was now attacked by the vomit-inducing stench of week-old decaying sealife. GAYG!!! Apparently, said teacher had NOT arranged for disposal of her lovely little baby octopi and they had sat around all through vacation week, just rotting in the sand table.I did let her know that I was never given instructions, nor had the custodians received instructions - and how would I dispose of dead octopi anyways? Throw them in the trash? The table full of water - how would I deal with that with no nearby sink and being in a basement classroom? She said it was “common sense” that I should have assumed she needed me to throw them away. But truth be told, I was a young student teacher who was pulled into subbing (against policy, I later found out, and my co-op director was LIVID that the school asked me to do so, especially since they never paid me for it as I was a student teacher working for “free”) at the last minute the day before vacation.Regardless, that was by far the weirdest thing I’ve seen - and experienced - so far.

When my daughter started kindergarten, we had to change daycares because of the school zoning in our city. There was a small home daycare right up the street from me, she could walk to it, so it seemed perfect. I’ll admit, my gut told me to go elsewhere but everything seemed fine so my daughter started there at the beginning of the school year. As the school year progressed, there were a couple things that didn’t sit well with me, but nothing major so I decided to finish out the year and find a new provider in the summer.“Breaking point” came on the Thursday of February vacation. I picked her up and we went to a friends house for dinner. On the way home from dinner, my daughter started singing, or rather rapping, a horrible violent mysoginistic song! The lyrics were inappropriate for teenagers (or anyone for that matter) and certainly nothing a six year old should ever, ever be exposed to! I asked her where she her those words and she said that Megan (the daycare providers 9 year old daughter) had the cd and they’d been singing and dancing to it all week!!! I got home and my friend, who I had just visited, called to tell me that her kids reported my daughter’s “singing” to her!I called another neighbor and asked for the name of their daycare provider - who they loved! I called her, told her the situation, and my daughter started at the new daycare the next morning — and continued going there right up until middle school!! The “bad” provider is still my neighbor, which is awkward, but I think she’s out of the daycare business!

I live in Staten Island, the smallest, whitest, and most Republican of the 5 boroughs, but there’s still a lot of diversity. When my son was in high school, during one February vacation he wanted to get together with his friend Ahmad, but, he told me, “First I have to find out if it’s—what’s that holiday? Rosh Hashanah?” I told him, “You’re thinking of Ramadan, and it’s in the summer.”