Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 09, 2012

It’s going to be a good year. Caulfield is pushing her buttons already.

It’s valid. I once got an A on a paper that was supposed to stress a strong emotion..(Social Studies I think)…I railed about having to do assignments all the time…Being appropriately absurd has it’s advantages…

Actually, one of the best things about a teaching job, is that it has a beginning, a middle and an end, each and every year….Brand new start the next year…It seems like a do over sometimes. Shake the Etch-a-Sketch and start over, correcting and improving…working things out….Most jobs just keep going week after week year after year……Whole new batch of kids to show you that they are smarter than you think….

Actually, I think they are permanently stuck in second grade. More of a Groundhog Day movie situation. And you also have to realize that she was Fraz’s second grade teacher when he attended the school.

Check out the book “The Straight Dope” by Cecil Adams. He, along with his research staff, seems to be an intelligent voice of reason. He states in this book that “no scientific or governmental body” has ever formally established a date for the start of the seasons. According to him, meteorologists define summer simply as June, July, and August. The reason I remember this at all is that I once believed that the seasons changed at the times of the equinoxes and solstices. No longer. I like the idea of simply using the months as the seasons. No particular reason why, that I can think of….

Caufield and Mrs Olsen at their best!!

Thanks, Rob. I didn’t know that. Now I do.

Student I’ve been calling Bouncy, after my hyperactive dog has taken to putting strips of tape across my chair. Gonna be a fun year!

Sigh. Caulfield’s predicament reminds me of something that happened when I was in the 7th grade (waaaay back around ‘65)… it was early December, and the teacher assigned an essay on the subject of a “white Christmas” (not the movie, the cliche about snow on Christmas). Never mind that we were in an unusual warm spell and it had been raining for the last three weeks. So I, having a bit of Caulfield in me at the time (which the school system proceeded to beat out of me over the years), wrote an essay titled, "I’m Dreaming of a Wet Christmas." The teacher was NOT amused. I got to write the assigned essay again. It was not anywhere near as interesting to read or to write. Sigh…

I say a certain amount of contact of that part of the anatomy will create a new attitude adjustment.

Finally, Mallett you got a funny one! (albiet IMHO.)

Quite a poet, ain’t he?

Made me smile.

Alexikakos: In reaction to Heinline’s Lazarus Long?

Night-Gaunt, yes it does….The 9 months of teaching, (as apposed to the classes that all teachers have to take for the first ten years every summer and after that even more..), just to keep their job. Paying for it themselves, of course..)..And it also includes the more than a thousand dollars that the average teacher spends for what she needs to teach…

In the school system I retired from, we didn’t have enough text books…about half the number I needed…So I had to make copies…..and there was no money for copy paper…sooooooo….Well, I’m a teacher, nobody ever said it would be easy,……I guess parents can understand what it means when the kids really really need something…Hell has to back off for a while…It’s the kids, man, nothing else matters……

I never went to one of those schools, but I had a teacher in 6th grade, had him for one of my subjects in 8th grade, at a different school, and had him again in 10th grade, at yet a third school. All very much by coincidence. Good thing he was a cool teacher. (ty Mr. Denton)

She should fail this little piss-ant and teach him a lesson.